Review by Choice Review
An established Roth scholar, Posnock (Columbia Univ.) deals incisively and provocatively with the novelist's entire body of work, from Goodbye, Columbus (1959) to Everyman (2006). He illuminates Roth's "investment in provoking genteel sensibilities, in embodying the unpalatable ... [his] infamous mocking of bourgeois pieties," showing Roth's carefully developed commitment to rudeness and immaturity as outgrowths of both US and eastern European traditions. Recent years have seen a constant flow of critical studies on Roth, among the more recent Debra Shostak's Philip Roth--Countertexts, Counterlives (CH, Jan'05, 42-2675), Elaine Safer's Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth (CH, Nov'06, 44-1401), and two collections of critical essays, Turning Up the Flame: Philip Roth's Later Novels, ed. by Jay Halio and Ben Siegel (CH, Oct'05, 43-0811), and Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, ed. by Derek Parker Royal (CH, Nov'05, 43-1427). The present title offers a sophisticated, original vision and is a fine addition to the excellent body of critical material available on this significant, prolific novelist. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. H. Leeds Central Connecticut State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
