Philip Roth Studies最新文献

{"title":"A Portrait of the Artist as a Ghost: Joycean Echoes in Philip Roth’s Depiction of the Artist","authors":"Rachele Puddu","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907258","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This essay traces the origin of the ghost’s metaphor in Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979) and argues that, under the influence of James Joyce, Roth molds his poetics through his most famous fictional double and his artistic journey. At the same time, he shapes an authorial figure that questions the act of writing in the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Odd Couple: Strindberg and Roth","authors":"Ira Nadel","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907257","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: At first glance, it would seem that Philip Roth and August Strindberg, Swedish dramatist, novelist, social critic, and iconoclast, share little. However, a careful comparison of the two authors reveals numerous connections. Roth owned a series of Strindberg texts and commentaries and drew from his plays and life in a number of his works. This discussion not only highlights connections between the two authors but also explores why Roth felt a union, personally and thematically, with Strindberg. Whether it was women, marriage, Judaism, or sex, Strindberg and Roth united. Additionally, like Strindberg, Roth found monogamy difficult, while railing against female dishonesty. “When it comes to war, women have their own rules” (24), Strindberg wrote in The Father (1887). Roth never forgot it as he demonstrates that marriage is a battleground where love and hate coexist.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Athenian Logomachy in The Human Stain and Philip Roth’s Fight for the Word","authors":"Thomas Gustafson","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907259","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In The Human Stain (2000), Philip Roth develops a concern that animates his canon: the potentials and dangers of our most human trait—our capacity to fire back and forth words and letters. For Coleman Silk, in the world of Athena College—just as in ancient Athens—the battle of words in the forum becomes as dangerous as the battle of swords on the Homeric battlefield, and a mission of Roth in this novel, as in other works, is to turn logomachy into self-reflective art about the violence and corruption of the word in the American city-state.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2022","authors":"Derek Parker Royal","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907268","url":null,"abstract":"Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2022 Brittany Hirth (bio) The following is a bibliography of philip roth-related texts published during 2022 including books, book chapters, journal articles, and a miscellaneous section that contains a sampling of notable magazine articles. Individual essays included in books not solely centered on Roth are grouped in “Book Chapters” and are cross-listed according to MLA style. Digital book editions, such as those designed for Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook readers, are not included in this listing, but they can be easily accessed online. Brittany Hirth Brittany Hirth, PhD, is an assistant professor of English at Florida Gateway College, where she teaches composition and American literature. She has published articles on Jewish American literature, war representation, and Philip Roth. BOOKS Bloom, James D. Roth’s Wars: A Career in Conflict. Lexington Books, 2022. Google Scholar Samarini, Francesco. Philip Roth e l’Italia: Storia di un amore incostante. Longo Editore, 2022. Google Scholar Shipe, Matthew A. Understanding Philip Roth. U of South Carolina P, 2022. Google Scholar BOOK CHAPTERS Blouin, Michael J. “The Imperial Presidents of American Literature.” The Presidents of American Fiction: Fashioning the US Political Imagination, edited by Michael J. Blouin, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 159–83. Google Scholar Boxall, Peter. “Neoliberalism.” The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics, edited by Christos Hadjiyiannis and Rachel Potter, Cambridge UP, 2022, pp. 307–22. Google Scholar Effe, Alexandra, and Alison Gibbons. “A Cognitive Perspective on Autofictional Writing, Texts, and Reading.” The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms, edited by Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 61–81. Google Scholar Gelber, Mark H. “Ruth Klüger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective.” The Legacy of Ruth Klüger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, edited by Mark H. Gelber, De Gruyter, 2022, pp. 89–112. Google Scholar Goodman, Brian K. “American Jewish Writers and the Eastern Bloc: The Dissident Generation.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures, edited by Greg Barnhisel, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 113–30. Google Scholar Hartung, Heike. “Illness Memoirs, Ageing Masculinities and Care: The ‘Son’s Book of the Father.’” Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Narratives, edited by Heike Hartung, Rüdiger Kunow, and Matthew Sweney, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 179–96. Google Scholar Heister, Iven L. “‘No New Newark’: Rewriting Place through the Failed Form of Family Romance in Philip Roth’s The Anatomy Lesson.” Rethinking Place through Literary Form, edited by Rupsa Banerjee and Nathaniel Cadle, Springer International, 2022, pp. 211–26. Google Scholar Holler, Barbara. “The Classicist as a Literary Character in Contemporary Literature: The Depiction of a Discipline.” Classical Controversies: Reception of Graeco-Roman Antiquity ","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135181358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Single Life","authors":"John J. Fitzgerald","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907267","url":null,"abstract":"A Single Life John J. Fitzgerald (bio) Daniel Ross Goodman. A Single Life: A Novel. KTAV Publishing House, 2020. 289 pp. $24.95 hardback. Published during daniel ross goodman’s prolific summer of 2020, a Single Life: A Novel, one of his first two books (along with Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema [Hamilton, 2020]) is as eclectic as the writer himself. A rabbi with a PhD in Jewish theology, Goodman also has completed graduate-level coursework in English and Comparative Literature and engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue in other published works. A Single Life displays a compelling and evocative fluency in these areas, as well as in the vexed matters of dating and race relations in our contemporary world. In addition, the lead character’s struggle with Jewish identity may particularly resonate with readers of Philip Roth. The protagonist of A Single Life is Eli Newman, whom we are introduced to in Part I as a yeshiva student in Baltimore with an unenviable romantic résumé; he hasn’t made it to a third date in eight years. Proclaiming to his roommate Yoni that he has resigned himself to a life of holy celibacy like the rabbinic sage Ben Azzai and many Christians, Eli initially presents as self-absorbed, whiny, and neurotic (and perhaps inspired by the identically named central figure in Roth’s short story “Eli, the Fanatic” [1959]). While his anxiousness perdures, he becomes a more familiar and sympathetic figure as the novel marches on and we are gradually introduced to his background. (Even in the first chapter, there are suggestions that his “appearance” and love of secular literature aren’t facilitating his dates with religious Jewish girls.) Yoni invites Eli to go out with his sister Rena, who shares Eli’s interests in literature and film but not his devout religious practice, which quickly sinks a promising start. Part II fast-forwards to Eli’s life in his early thirties as a Talmud teacher at a Modern Orthodox high school in Connecticut. Here some readers will recall Roth’s representations of romance in academic settings, as we find Eli visually and intellectually smitten with English teacher Emma Yates, who appears to feel the same way about him. While they only glance at each other from afar due to Eli’s reticence to engage publicly with a non-Jewish woman, Emma sends him a Facebook friend request and they begin exchanging messages and background stories. At this point, it’s revealed [End Page 112] that Eli is half Black and Emma (who is white) was raised Catholic but presently rejects all religion. The third and final part of A Single Life begins with a flashback to Eli’s time as a twelve-year-old in Houston with his fellow book-loving classmate Jessica David. Like Eli, Jessica is Jewish and at least partially Black, although their hand-holding mutual crush is abruptly severed by Eli’s father’s decision to relocate to Baltimore. Part III then returns to Eli’s exclusively virtual relationship with Emma, whi","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Literary Mafia","authors":"James D. Bloom","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907263","url":null,"abstract":"The Literary Mafia James D. Bloom (bio) Josh Lambert. The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature. Yale UP, 2022. 272 pp. $35.00 hardback. If you’re reading philip roth studies, you’ll need to read the literary Mafia. But if you’re expecting a story about the mafia—about offers you can’t refuse or about pole dancers at the Soprano family’s Bada Bing club—fuhgeddaboudit. Nathan Zuckerman, who considered hiring Al Capone and a Meyer Lansky henchman to do his dirty work, and Philip Roth, who worked for Newark mob boss Longy Zwillman as a schoolboy, might have been disappointed at this bait-and-switch tease (Anatomy 67; Zuckerman 110; Facts 41). In his introduction to The Literary Mafia, author Josh Lambert has, to his credit, made a point of distancing himself from what’s probably a publisher-imposed title, conceding that “it may seem strange that this book takes its title from a myth” about “a concentration of Jewish literary power,” which Lambert “deems false and even pernicious.” In his introduction, Lambert identifies the most influential culprits in promoting this myth: Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, and “mother-tongue” defender Katherine Anne Porter (1), along with two disgruntled Jewish writers, Meyer Levin (4) and Richard Kostelanetz (4–5). Having documented this myth, its origins during the Cold War years, and the “homophilous logic” underpinning the myth (24, 59), Lambert surveys the gate-keepers who constituted this “imaginary [. . .] so-called Jewish literary mafia” (166, 168). Lambert’s meticulous account of the careers of these gatekeepers decisively discredits this myth. At once weaving and casting a wide net, Lambert explains the influence of some marquee name influencers—Alfred Knopf, Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsberg, Lionel Trilling—and their relationships with the supporting players whom they depended on, sponsored, or clashed with. In introducing this large cast, Lambert mentions in passing or offers thumbnail sketches of Knopf editor Harold Strauss and Viking editor Pascal Coivici, Commentary editor Marion Magid, American Review founder Ted Solotaroff who “owed his career to Roth” (59). Lambert also thoroughly sketches the career narratives of promising upstarts like novelists Ann Birstein who lampooned Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Our Gang (1971), and The Breast (1972) in a [End Page 92] single sentence (116); Sam Astrachan, whom Lambert makes sound like a wannabe Faulkner (71); and Ivan Gold. In Portnoy’s Complaint, Lambert reports, Roth replayed a joke about a Jewish GI’s Japanese bride featured in Gold’s 1963 story “Taub East.” Giving Roth his due, Lambert also argues that “Taub East” “reads like a rewriting of Philip Roth’s ‘Defender of the Faith’” (Portnoy 189; Lambert 88, 87). The range, analytic acumen, and archival thoroughness of The Literary Mafia as a chronicle of the literary marketplace in which Roth launched his career makes it a must-read for Roth devotees. Despite Lambert’s learned and enthusia","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Roth’s Wars","authors":"Stuart S. Miller","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907264","url":null,"abstract":"Roth’s Wars Stuart S. Miller (bio) James D. Bloom. Roth’s Wars: A Career in Conflict. Lexington, 2022. 173 pp. $95.00 hardback. James d. bloom introduces his new book with a chapter entitled “study War: An Overview.” Here he establishes Roth’s interest in war and compares his writing about the subject with that of other novelists (e.g., Fyodor Dostoevsky, J. D. Salinger). Bloom demonstrates Roth’s preoccupation with war, which goes beyond the battlefield and includes his description of children who make model war planes, adults who become bombers, or soldiers who may or, as in his own case or that of the Swede or Bucky Cantor, may not, experience actual combat. The subtitle to Bloom’s book reveals, however, that he is interested in much more than how Philip Roth writes with World War II, the Holocaust, Korea, and Vietnam in the background. The messiness of war and its consequences translated for Roth into the messiness of life and is expressed in conflicts of all types that imbue Roth’s literary imagination. Here I will attempt to convey a sense of what Bloom characterizes as “conflict” and where he sees its various manifestations emerge in Roth’s writings. Special attention will be given to Bloom’s novel contention that some of Roth’s struggles can be compared to those of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus. Bloom devotes the first half of his book (through chapter 4) to issues most directly related to war in Roth’s works. In Chapter 2, “Rescue, Refuge, Escape,” Bloom mines Roth’s oeuvre for examples of the author’s preoccupation with these themes. For example, The Ghost Writer (1979) has Anne Frank and even Kafka posthumously resurface after the war, when refugees would also find their way to Weequahic and from there flee to the suburbs. In “Eli, the Fanatic” (1959), Hasidim hoping to find refuge in the land of the free by settling in goyish Woodenton reexperience victimization and hatred, this time emanating from their very own people, who did not know war firsthand and are living comfortably among non-Jews. Those who attempt to “rescue” others from the ravages of war or subsequent conflicts include not only the transformed Eli, the Fanatic, but also Herman Roth. In The Plot Against America (2004), Herman attempts to save Seldon and, initially, his mom. Likewise, the Swede, in American Pastoral (1997), searches for his daughter Merry in the hope [End Page 97] of rescuing her from the war she has brought home to her country, her hometown, and her family. Roth seems to be saying that we cannot escape the conflicts surrounding us. In Chapter 3, “Don’t Count the Dead,” Bloom invokes Bob Dylan’s 1963 stinging “With God on Our Side,” which includes the lyric, “For you don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.” Bloom insists that Roth was haunted by death and in a sense his “entire career was an antidote to this heartless reassurance” (65). Soldiers face disaster, casualties mount, and devastation is the result. Paraphrasing Dylan, Bloom sees R","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When She Was Good and the Eclipse of the Virtuous Heroine: A Revaluation","authors":"Julia Prewitt Brown","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.a907261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.a907261","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Beginning with a brief discussion of the lack of serious revaluations of Roth’s work amidst the scandal surrounding Roth’s biographer Blake Bailey, this essay considers the overlooked importance of Roth’s early satiric novel, When She Was Good (1967). The novel may be said to mark Roth’s lasting challenge to the Anglo-American tradition of the heroine distinguished above all by her virtuous character. Roth implicitly alludes to earlier saintly heroines in his portrait of Lucy Nelson, who, as she comes of age, ultimately embodies the apotheosis of what Harold Bloom has called “the heroine of the Protestant will.” Roth’s representation of the American middle class Protestant value system, with its imperial conviction of its own righteousness and its blind sentimentalization of the women who carried its banner, freed Roth to write his next novel, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). It was as if exorcising the demonically virtuous shiksa Lucy Nelson was necessary before he could speak in his own voice. In When She Was Good , Roth explores a psychology of personal grievance that resonates eerily on both sides of the political spectrum today.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Eating Across Borders: Dietary Politics in \"Goodbye, Columbus\" and Absurdistan","authors":"Madeline McCluskey","doi":"10.1353/prs.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper compares the dietary politics of Philip Roth's \"Goodbye, Columbus\" (1959) and Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan (2006). \"Goodbye, Columbus\" shows characters who can never fully eat without worry, whose dietary behavior marks the rigidity of their lives and the predetermined trajectory of their class identity The cultural anxieties that underpin Roth's characters' diets are noticeably absent from Shteyngart's novel, yet in each story characters' appetites reveal nuanced class and racial implications of their respective positions. Misha, through his excessive alimentary and cultural consumption, can transgress social and geographic borders with ease; for Roth's characters, dietary anxiety exposes a fixed social class with limited geographic mobility By juxtaposing these two works, we can see how diet becomes a way for Roth's characters to perform an upper-middle class whiteness, but it also tethers each character to the position into which they were born. In contrast, Shteyngart's Misha rejects this type of performative dietetics while, in fact, using food to perform his own ill-conceived cultural ideals.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42464964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reverse Biography: The Philip Roth We Still Don't Know by Jacques Berlinerblau","authors":"Eric Vanderwall","doi":"10.1353/prs.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44582458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}