The American author Philip Roth (born 1933) used his Jewish upbringing and his college days for the basis of many of his novels and other works. Roth used his experiences in growing up in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey, and his days as a col...

[This entry was updated by S. Lillian Kremer (Kansas State University) from her entry in DLB 173: American Novelists Since World War II, Fifth Series, pp. 202-234.] A major writer of twentieth-century American literature, Philip Roth has produced an impr...

In 1973, Philip Roth wrote a satirical novel about baseball which he entitled The Great American Novel. The title refers to the parodies of a number of classic American novels in the book, but it also may be an answer to critics who keep waiting for him...

Philip Roth's latest book is about Philip Roth, so what else is new? Only that this time, there are two of him. The first Philip Roth, the author of Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint, is the narrator of Operation Shylock. The second...

In his first major novel since the Zuckerman series of the 1980s (collected in Zuckerman Bound, plus The Counterlife; see WLT 60:4, p. 632, and 61:4, p. 630), Philip Roth has moved from "counterlives," imagined by Nathan Zuckerman, to a protagonist named Philip...

Philip Roth says he's done with Nathan Zuckerman. But is Nathan done with Philip Roth? "Goodbye, Nathan Zuckerman," the headline from Time magazine reads. Roth, the story declares, "has exhausted the possibilities of his character," the fictional adventurer of "The Ghost Writer," "The Anatomy Lesson"...

[Bloom is one of the most prominent contemporary American critics and literary theorists. Some of his best known works include The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973) and Kabbalah and Criticism (1974). In the review below, he discusses characterization and the theme of Jewishness in Operation Shylock.]

[A prizewinning novelist, short story writer, poet, dramatist, and critic, Updike is one of America's most distinguished men of letters. Best known for such novels as Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), and Rabbit Is Rich (1981), he is a chronicler of life in Protestant, middle-class America. A contributor of literary reviews to various periodicals, he has frequently written the "Books" column in The New Yorker since 1955. In the following review, he remarks on theme and character...

[In the following review, Turner speculates on Roth's motivation for writing Operation Shylock and other novels that feature a Philip Roth persona.]