SOURCE: Shechner, Mark. “On the Road with Philip Roth.” New England Review 24, no. 3 (summer 2003): 89-96.

In the following essay, Shechner assesses Roth's influence on his own literary outlook.

For all I know, I was the only person in America who was taken by surprise by the double-barreled attack on Philip Roth in the December 1972 issue of Commentary, which featured Norman Podhoretz's essay “Laureate of the New Class” and Irving Howe's surly and agitated “Philip Roth Reconsidered.” Even Roth, who had been taking blows for more than ten years, must have been on red alert for this. It certainly took me by surprise; the revelation that literary culture was a war zone was a wake-up call. I probably should not have been so surprised. I had spent the years from 1964 though 1970 in Berkeley and San Francisco and knew about cultural combat as a daily experience, one that exuded the...