The Life and Writings of Philip Roth

I'm reveling in the welcoming warm air of southwest Florida, arriving back home just in time to attend the season's final lecture by distinguished Canadian literature professor and critic, Elaine Newton. http://annewainscott.com/the-art-of-the-book-review-a-conversation-with-elaine-newton/ Her in-depth book analyses have been holding readers in thrall for twenty years now and remind me how much I loved being in school and still enjoy auditing college classes at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Ms. Newton adores writers, never examining a title that she can't find something wondrous in. But her final presentation of the season was a retrospective of the works of Philip Roth and she may have finally lost all objectivity in her worshipful take on his lifetime of achievement. True confessions, I've often felt the same way about Roth, "American Pastoral" still one of the most powerful books I've probably ever read, but I've not been afraid to say so when I think a work doesn't live up to his standards. I'm thinking of some of his later work like "Exit Ghost," or "The Humbling."

At twenty-six years old, Philip Roth was the youngest writer to earn a National Book Award for "Goodbye Columbus." (another title I need to revisit) Where does one go from there? Well, to the National Book Critics Circle awards, the Pen-Faulkners, the Pulitzer. He wasn't one to rest on his laurels and he actually worked at writing, every day, eight hours a day, standing up at an architects' table because of an enduring back injury that had him in perpetual pain.

Before racial and gender identity became the in vogue subject of a new generation of writers, Roth was examining the identity of the Jewish-American male in the United States. The post World War II immigrants may have looked different than the immigrants of today but certainly they have more in common than not. Assimilation, acceptance, self-loathing, these were all part of the equation and they still are. Perhaps that's why Roth's work will never grow old.

Newton's favorite Roth book, she told us, is "Patrimony," a paean to Roth's father Herman. But the book that received the most publicity and the fewest number of rave reviews was the prescient "The Plot Against America," a novel written soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 sent Americans into a kind of collective madness. Always politically left of center, Roth decried the government crackdown on citizens' privacy rights and the vilification of "the other." He wrote of a fictional America where the Nazi sympathizer and renowned pilot Charles Lindbergh soundly defeated Roosevelt for the presidency and introduced Fascism to the United States. Is it any wonder that, after the 2018 election, a renewed interest in this novel resulted in a huge uptick in sales fourteen years after its original publication?

With this presentation, Newton ended the 2018-2019 season of her perennially sold-out book talks, having come full circle. She began the season with Lisa Halliday's phenomenal "Asymmetry," https://bit.ly/2LFkgVd, a fictional account of Ms. Halliday's May-December love affair with the man himself. Roth acted as mentor and friend to Halliday who was an editor at the Wylie Agency and her novel brings a touch of humanity and warmth to this very intimidating and towering man of letters.

I'll let you know some of the gems that Newton has on her famous summer reading list, from which next year's lectures will be chosen. More soon!