Philip Roth, the American literary icon who won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1998 for his novel American Pastoral, has died at the age of 85. According to Claudia Roth Pierpont, who wrote for The New Yorker in 2006, his literary subjects included “the Jewish family, sex, American ideals, the betrayal of American ideals, political zealotry, personal identity,” and “the human body (usually male) in its strength, its frailty, and its often ridiculous need.”
Roth’s first published a story in The New Yorker, “The Kind of Person I Am,” in 1958, and then another entitled “Defender of the Faith,” was published the following year. Both prompted condemnations from rabbis and the Anti-Defamation League. In a profile of Roth in 2000, David Remnick wrote that this was because Roth had “violated the tribal code on Jewish self-exposure” by having the “audacity to write about a Jewish kid as being flawed.”
In addition to his novels, Roth leaves behind a vast collection of essays, criticism and other artifacts.
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