Understanding Philip Roth

The main aim of this work is to provide a comprehensive guide to the major writings of Philip Roth, articulating the overlapping contexts of his fiction. Dealing with the range of Roth's work - starting with "Goodbye, Columbus" in 1959, and including works from the 1960s and 1970s such as "When She was Good", "Portnoy's Complaint" and "My Life as a Man" to "The Counterlife" in 1987 - this analytic study elaborates the course of his career as a major western writer who responds to the modern situation, the contemporary Jewish and ethnic predicament, the problems of gender and American literary, social and political history. The ways in which the sources of Roth's satire become the resources for his comic cultural analysis are treated chronologically. Thematically organized, separate chapters focus on groups of novels. Roth's own comments on his work serve both to clarify differences among the novels and some of his abiding concerns, including the power and value of urban life.