Philip Roth: Stung by Life

Steven J. Zipperstein

Hardcover

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A landmark biography of one of our most prominent chroniclers of American life

In this groundbreaking literary biography, Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip Roth (1933-2018), one of America's most celebrated writers. Born in Newark, New Jersey--where his short stories and books were often set--Roth wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to produce great literature. No writer was more dedicated to his craft, even as he was rubbing shoulders with the Kennedys and engaging in a spate of famous and infamous romances. And yet, as much as Roth wrote about sex and self, he viewed himself as socially withdrawn, living much like an "unchaste monk" (his words).

Zipperstein explores the unprecedented range of Roth's work--from "Goodbye, Columbus" and Portnoy's Complaint to the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews, including conversations with Roth about his life and work, Zipperstein provides an intimate and insightful look at one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, placing his work in the context of his obsessions, as well as American Jewishness, freedom, and sexuality.

Book Details

Publisher: Yale University Press
Publish Date: Oct 14th, 2025
Pages: 368
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 7.70in - 6.10in - 0.90in - 1.20lb
EAN: 9780300251555
Categories: • Literary Figures• Modern - 20th Century• Jewish

About the Author

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Praise for this book

"Mr. Zipperstein's volume [is] composed with the tact of a historian who has read the archives and the novels with equal care, . . . rescuing Roth from the noise and restoring him to the exuberant sentences he spent his life turning around."--Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal

"A moving portrait of Roth in all his complexity."--Emily Gould, New York Magazine

"Well-modulated and immensely erudite. . . . This biography will introduce Roth to new readers as one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century and one of the most influential voices in shaping American Jewish identity."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Slim and eloquent . . . consistently insightful. . . . Dishes head-turning revelations from archives and informants."--David Mikics, Jewish Review of Books

"An admiring, thorough, and swift account of an immensely single-minded writer's unabating struggles with ambition, romance, and the politics of his time, [with] some fascinating scoops' major interviews and materials to which Zipperstein alone had access."--Julius Taranto, The Forward

"This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life's work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) 'a writer's writer.' And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer's biographer. Zipperstein is one."--Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller

"Steven Zipperstein's appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth's written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft."--Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America