Declaration of Independence

This chapter examines Roth’s struggles with his father, his decision to go to college at Bucknell University after a year at Rutgers Newark, and his early girlfriends; the influence of his early professors at Bucknell and his editing the campus literary magazine where some of his earliest writing appeared. Graduate study at the University of Chicago and early publications followed, as well as his meeting influential novelists like Saul Bellow and Richard Stern. New friendships also emerged, notably with Theodore Solotaroff, critic and later editor of the New American Review, and Arthur Geffen and Barry Targan. “Bibliography by day, women by night” was their motto.