Download Philip Roth: The Biography

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Philip
Roth
The
Biography
Description
New York Times Bestseller The renowned biographer
8217sdefinitive portrait of a literary
titan.Appointed by
Philip Roth and granted independence and complete
access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over
Roth8217spersonal archive, interviewing his
friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth
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himself in breathtakingly candid conversations.
The result is an indelible portrait of an
American master and of the postwar literary
scene.Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a
lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the
heights of literary fame, how his career was
nearly derailed by his catastrophic first
marriage, and how he championed the work of
dissident novelists behind the Iron
Curtain.Bailey examines Roth8217srivalrous
friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and
William Styron, and reveals the truths of his
florid love life, culminating in his
almost-twenty-year relationship with actress
Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996
memoir, Leaving a Doll8217sHouse.Tracing
Roth8217spath from realism to farce to
metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the
American Trilogy, Bailey explores
Roth8217sengagement with nearly every aspect of
postwar American culture. 100 photographs