"Invariably the prelude to missing the point": Philip Roth, Mickey Sabbath, and Me

Abstract

I spent the second half of my twenties writing a book on Philip Roth. The book, which began as my PhD dissertation, was a study of Roth’s literary career, from its beginnings in the late fifties up to the end of the twentieth century. Of course, Roth’s career did not end at the end of the twentieth century. In fact, as I wrote my study, Roth kept writing, too. When I began in late 2003, he had published twenty-five books. By the time my book came out in 2011, that number had swelled to thirty-one. My subject wouldn’t keep still. So I needed to draw lines, to limit the project’s scope in some way. The turn of the century seemed a good endpoint: both for the round number, and for the growing sense that Roth’s “American Trilogy,” which culminated with 2000’s The Human Stain, would be the defining achievement of Roth’s latecareer resurgence. I couldn’t have an open-ended study, expanding every time Roth published a new work. So, with the blessing of Kasia Boddy, my exceedingly wise PhD supervisor, I planned out a study of Roth’s fiction, beginning with Goodbye, Columbus (1959) and concluding with The Human Stain. I could always briefly touch on the twenty-first-century work in the conclusion. But even within those defined limits, I couldn’t write about everything. Forty-one years in a career as productive as Roth’s was more than a single dissertation could comprehensively cover. Writing is selection; the choices I would make about what books to cover would make a statement about their significance. In crafting the book’s focus, especially after I decided to title the book The Major Phases of Philip Roth, I was making an argument. Here are the peaks of Roth’s career, the books that make the biggest contribution to literary history, the books that are in some way representative of his entire achievement.