Philip Roth's rude truth : the art of immaturity / Ross Posnock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Posnock, Ross.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature.

Roth, Philip--Criticism and interpretation.

Roth, Philip.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (325 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Has anyone ever worked harder and longer at being immature than Philip Roth? The novelist himself pointed out the paradox, saying that after establishing a reputation for maturity with two earnest novels, he "worked hard and long and diligently" to be frivolous--an effort that resulted in the notoriously immature Portnoy's Complaint (1969). Three-and-a-half decades and more than twenty books later, Roth is still at his serious "pursuit of the unserious." But his art of immaturity has itself matured, developing surprising links with two traditions of immaturity--an American one that includes Emerson, Melville, and Henry James, and a late twentieth-century Eastern European one that developed in reaction to totalitarianism. In Philip Roth's Rude Truth--one of the first major studies of Roth's career as a whole--Ross Posnock examines Roth's "mature immaturity" in all its depth and richness. Philip Roth's Rude Truth will force readers to reconsider the narrow categories into which Roth has often been slotted--laureate of Newark, New Jersey; junior partner in the firm Salinger, Bellow, Mailer, and Malamud; Jewish-American regionalist. In dramatic contrast to these caricatures, the Roth who emerges from Posnock's readable and intellectually vibrant study is a great cosmopolitan in the tradition of Henry James and Milan Kundera.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1. Introduction: Roth Antagonistes

2. Immaturity: A Genealogy

3. Ancestors and Relatives: The Game of Appropriation and the Sacrifice of Assimilation

4. "A very slippery subject": The Counterlife as Pivot

5. Letting Go, or How to Lead a Stupid Life: Sabbath's Nakedness

6. Being Game in The Human Stain

7. The Two Philips

Coda: "The stars are indispensable"

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [287]-294) and index.

ISBN:

9786612086892

9781282086890

1282086898

9781400827343

1400827345

OCLC:

369293576