"The Book of My Life is a Book of Voices": Philip Roth and the Bloodlines of his Fiction

The brio, the punch, the vigor, and the rich, rude tang of Philip Roth’s writing have, of course, been well documented. In the innumerable news features after his death, critics, scholars, and friends reflected on the frenetic pace of his writing, as well as the humor, the vitriol, and the anger that informed his work. And surely not even the most skeptical reader can deny that Roth’s prose throbs with a uniquely caustic and savage energy, which, as his friend David Hare has observed, was directed towards skewering hypocrisy wherever he saw it. For me, though, the appeal of Roth’s writing lies not just in its vigor and energy, but in its depth, its sophistication, its moral and historical profundity. People often describe his books as angry, funny, sexy, or moving; but I think the lifeblood of Roth’s work is more than just an abiding wrath or lustiness. Rather it is his sustained engagement, throughout his career in fiction, with his ancestors, literary or otherwise. This energy manifests itself in two ways: in the raft of literary influences to which he was never shy of admitting, and in the various representations of characters who assess their lives in terms of those who have formed them.1 The first of these manifestations is nowhere more evident than in the book in which I first encountered Roth’s distinctive voice, I Married a Communist (1998). Contemplating his life and the friendships that have formed him, an older Nathan Zuckerman reflects: