Philip Roth and the Jews (Suny Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) [Paperback]

Alan Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2010 | Series: Suny Series in Modern Jewish Literature & Culture

In a style richly accessible to the general reader, this book presents Roth's secular Jewishness, with its own mysteries and humor, as most representative of the American Jewish experience. Thirty years into his career as a writer, Philip Roth remains known to most readers as a self-hating Jew or a flawed would-be comic. Philip Roth and the Jews shows Roth the ironist, the master of absurdity, for whom twentieth-century America and modern Jewish history resonate with each other's signal accomplishments and anxieties. Roth's "egoism" is a persona, an abashed moralist discomfited by the world. Cooper shows that in the "Jewish" works Roth has taken the pulse of America and read the pressures of the world. Modernism, the universal tug for individual sovereignty and against tribal definition, is an issue everywhere. Roth's own odyssey of betrayal, loss, and return-the pattern of the Jewish writer in the last 200 years-is so shaped by his origins that Roth has carried his home and neighborhood into the corners of the earth and thus never left them.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cooper (York Coll., CUNY) has written a fascinating study of Philip Roth, placing him as the premier writer of the Jewish experience in America. All the "corruption and vulgarity and treachery of American life" and the attempt to live as a Jew and as a free, unsponsored person is present in Roth's fiction. Cooper discusses Roth's work from his early college writings to his latest, National Book Award-winning work, Sabbath's Theater (LJ 7/95; see LJ's Best Books of 1995, p. 46-50). Cooper presents the critical reaction to Roth?both literary and Jewish?as an integral part of Roth's biography and evolution as an artist. For Cooper, the eruption of the "bad" and the search for identity in Roth's art are the keys to his important and liberating voice. An insightful study, essential for literature collections.?Gene Shaw, NYPL
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About the Author

Alan Cooper is Professor of English at York College, City University of New York. He chaired the English Department for 20 years and now serves as the college's faculty leader.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (July 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791429105
• ISBN-13: 978-0791429105
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,662,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Phil Roth and his relationship with the Jews, March 12, 2007

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This review is from: Philip Roth and the Jews (Suny Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture) (Paperback)

I have to say that I was skeptical of this book. I was doing research on Phil Roth for my students. I found the book to be an interesting tool in understanding and clarifying Roth as an author. He was born at Newark's Beth Israel Medical Center and raised in the Jewish enclave of Newark also known as Weequahic section. Every culture or ethnic group had their sections in Newark just like they did in New York City. His relationship with Judaism is not an easy one. He is not a religious Jew nor a practicing one. I don't know if he believes in God at all and I don't expect them too. We, writers and authors are quite a strange bunch. Anyway, Roth's Jewishness is examined but it's not quite clear to the reader. I believe that Roth like others thought that his neighborhood would have stayed the same since he left but it didn't. The Jewish community has become quite assimilated into American culture. Driving past the Weequahic section last week on a snowy day only by accident, I saw his Newark as once a section where it was a community. That's the problem, we have all lost our sense of community by moving away for a little more property and nicer homes and better schools. We now have longer commutes and expenses but we miss our families and friend and the familiarity of our neighborhoods. Maybe that's why some towns have generations of families like mine in the same community, at least, we know of each other. Anyway, Roth's relationship with his religion, culture, and ethnicity is often the subject of his many novels especially about the conflict regarding assimilating or becoming mainstream once they were seen as outsiders before. Remember in their time, it seemed that there were only two religious groups, Christians and Jews. Now you have Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, etc. among our mix. Life certainly has changed for the Jews who were once seen as unwelcome outsiders but tolerable. Now they are a part of American culture, they are no longer outsiders and are welcome into our families, communities, and society.