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The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth

From the moment that his debut book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), won him the National Book Award and earned him attacks from the Jewish community, Philip Roth has been among the most influential and consistently controversial writers of our age. Now the author of more than twenty novels, numerous stories, two memoirs, and two books of literary criticism, Roth has used his writing to continually reinvent himself – and in doing so remake the American literary landscape. This Companion provides the most comprehensive introduction to the works and thought of this major American author in a collection of newly commissioned essays from distinguished scholars. Beginning with the urgency of Roth’s early fiction and extending to the vitality of his most recent novels, these essays trace Roth’s artistic engagement with questions about ethnic identity, postmodernism, Israel, the Holocaust, sexuality, and the human psyche itself. They recognize that Roth’s work resonates through American culture because he demands that his readers pursue the kinds of self-invention, the endless remakings, that define both Roth’s characters and his own identity as an author. New and returning Roth readers, students and scholars, will find this Companion authoritative and accessible.

THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

PHILIP ROTH

EDITED BY

TIMOTHY PARRISH
Texas Christian University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521682930

© Cambridge University Press 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
The Cambridge companion to Philip Roth / edited by Timothy Parrish.
p. cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-86430-5
ISBN-10: 0-521-86430-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-68293-0
ISBN-10: 0-521-68293-2
1. Roth, Philip – Criticism and interpretation. I. Parrish, Timothy, 1964-- II. Title.
PS3568.O855Z617 2006
813.54 – dc22
2006023588

ISBN-13 978-0-521-86430-5 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-86430-5 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-68293-0 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-68293-2 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

VICTORIA AARONS, Professor and Chair of the English Department at Trinity University, Texas, is the author, most recently, of What Happened to Abraham: Reinventing the Covenant in American Jewish Fiction (2005).

JEFFREY BERMAN is Professor of English at SUNY-Albany, New York. His most recent book is Empathic Teaching: Education for Life (2004).

EMILY MILLER BUDICK holds the Ann and Joseph Edelman Chair in American Literature at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, where she is also chair of the American Studies Department. Her most recent publication is Aharon Appelfeld’s Fiction: Acknowledging The Holocaust (2005).

JOSH COHEN is Senior Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author, most recently, of How to Read Freud (2005).

DONALD M. KARTIGANER holds the Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi, and has recently completed a book-length study, Repetition Forward: The Way of Modernist Meaning.

TIMOTHY PARRISH, Associate Professor of English, Texas Christian University, is the author of Walking Blues: Making Americans from Emerson to Elvis (2001).

MICHAEL ROTHBERG, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000).

DEREK PARKER ROYAL, Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Commerce, is the editor of the journal Philip Roth Studies and Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author (2005).

MARK SHECHNER, Professor of English, SUNY-Buffalo, New York, is the author, most recently, of Up Society’s Ass, Copper; Rereading Philip Roth (2003).

DEBRA SHOSTAK, Professor of English, The College of Wooster, Ohio, is the author of Philip Roth – Countertexts, Counterlives (2004).

HANA WIRTH-NESHER, Professor of English Literature and the Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States at Tel Aviv University, is the author of Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature (2006).