On what would have been Philip Roth’s 90th birthday, readers and writers descended on the late author’s hometown to honor and debate his legacy
NEWARK — Yes, there were countless liver jokes, in reference to the most creatively abused organ in American fiction, as in: “After reading Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint,’ I could never eat liver again.” There was even a noble mound of chopped liver served at Hobby’s Delicatessen , a corner noshery where stand-up comedians ripped jokes, many off-color, in honor of this city’s acclaimed literary son.
For all our current division about identity, political correctness and cancel culture — subjects Roth presciently and without hesitation tackled in his fiction, particularly “The Human Stain” — here was a Great White Dead Male Author being honored as though he had published this month.Roth was a literary provocateur who dove head first into third-rail subjects.
“He wanted to be a good man — not a nice man,” said author Bernard Avishai, a friend of Roth’s, over the weekend. Roth courted controversy. He repelled legions of readers, including some. He rarely idled in neutral. After a lull in conversation at one Newark gathering, writer Philip Gourevitch recalled Roth saying, “The Bible is the worst book ever written! It has no literary merit! It’s a ridiculously bad book!” Added the New Yorker writer, “I think he was just bored.
“Some people say he’s misogynistic. I love the structure of his language,” said Terri Smith, 61, an attorney in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “I keep reading Roth even when I want to strangle him.”
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