If this book were a conventional bio- A graphy,' Claudia Roth Pierpont states in her wise and captivating analysis of the work of Philip Roth, 'there would be names and dates; that will come along, in time.' This, clearly, is not a conventional biography but a chronicle of the man through the 'life of his art'. Mr Roth's fiction willingly lends itself to such an approach, given the hefty dose of autobiography that runs throughout. But Ms Pierpont is always mindful of the gaps between the author and his creations: 'The facts, as Roth has explained time after time, exist to be eviscerated by the imagination.' From the moment Mr Roth entered the literary scene with 'Goodbye, Columbus' in 1959, he was seen as a troublemaker. But it was ten years later with his angry, sexy 'Portnoy's Complaint'-'one of the signal subversive acts of a subversive age'-that he became an enfant terrible. Certain sections of Jewish America viewed his raucous portrayal of Jewish life as a betrayal. Confronting these objections, Ms Pierpont argues that Mr Roth is no more bound to defend 'his people' than John Updike was to defend his. As Mr Roth wrote in a 1963 essay, plainly titled 'Writing about Jews', the act of 'putting on a good face' was a subtle part of persecution: a persecution he bluntly rejected.
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