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This course will guide you through the high points of Philip Roth's prolific career, as well as the meaning of its apparent end in October, 2012. Then 79, Roth, the author of 32 works, announced to a French magazine that he “was done” and would write no more. He never did get the Nobel prize for literature many feel he deserved. We will explore differences between the humor and pathos of his early novels, Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus as well as the dark, meditative philosophy of his last novel, Nemesis. We will explore one of his autobiographies, remembering Oscar Wilde’s insight that man “is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” The vast criticism surrounding Roth as one of America's major writers, as a voice for the Jewish experience and the immigrant experience will be sampled. Students should purchase the following from the university bookstore:
Required:
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959)
The Breast (1972).
The Facts (1997)
The Human Stain (2000)
Nemesis (2010) |
