Editing Philip Roth (section)

==Legacy==
[[John Updike]], considered by many Roth's chief literary rival, said in 2008, "He's scarily devoted to the novelist's craft... [he] seems more dedicated in a way to the act of writing as a means of really reshaping the world to your liking. But he's been very good to have around as far as goading me to become a better writer." Roth spoke at Updike's memorial service, saying, "He is and always will be no less a national treasure than his 19th-century precursor, [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=2009-01-28 |title=John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html |access-date=2023-04-07 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> After Updike's memorial at the [[New York Public Library]], Roth told [[Charles McGrath (critic)|Charles McGrath]], "I dream about John sometimes. He's standing behind me, watching me write." Asked who was better, Roth said, "John had more talent, but I think maybe I got more out of the talent I had." McGrath agreed with that assessment, adding that Updike might be the better stylist, but Roth's work was more consistent and "much funnier". McGrath added that in the 1990s Roth "underwent a kind of sea change and, borne aloft by that extraordinary second wind, produced some of his very best work": ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'' and the American Trilogy (''[[American Pastoral]]'', ''[[I Married a Communist]]'', and ''[[The Human Stain]]'').<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McGrath |first=Charles |date=2019 |title=Roth/Updike |url=https://hudsonreview.com/2019/10/roth-updike/#.ZDAtOfbMK00 |journal=[[Hudson Review]]}}</ref> Another admirer of Roth's work is [[Bruce Springsteen]]. Roth read Springsteen's autobiography, ''[[Born to Run (autobiography)|Born to Run]]'', and Springsteen praised Roth's American Trilogy: "I'll tell you, those three recent books by Philip Roth just knocked me on my ass.... To be in his sixties making work that is so strong, so full of revelations about love and emotional pain, that's the way to live your artistic life. Sustain, sustain, sustain."<ref>{{cite web |last=O'Hagan |first=Sean |date=September 25, 2004 |title=Philip Roth: One angry man |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/26/fiction.philiproth |access-date=May 31, 2018 |website=the Guardian}}</ref>

Roth left his book collection and more than $2 million to the [[Newark Public Library]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Taylor |first=Candace |date=October 30, 2019 |title=Philip Roth Left More Than $2 Million to His Hometown Library in Newark, N.J. |work=The Wall Street Journal |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/philip-roth-left-more-than-2-million-to-his-hometown-library-in-newark-n-j-11572467686 |access-date=April 30, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Harris |first1=Elizabeth A. |last2=Tullo |first2=Vincent |date=2021-06-07 |title=Look Inside Philip Roth's Personal Library |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/books/philip-roth-newark-library.html |access-date=2023-04-02 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> In 2021, the Philip Roth Personal Library opened for public viewing in the Newark Public Library.<ref>[https://www.prpl.npl.org/ Philip Roth Personal Library]</ref> In April 2021, [[W. W. Norton & Company]] published [[Blake Bailey]]'s authorized biography of Roth, ''[[Philip Roth: The Biography]]''. Publication was halted two weeks after release due to sexual assault allegations against Bailey.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Parker |first=James |date=March 13, 2021 |title=The Relentless Philip Roth |work=[[The Atlantic]] |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-relentless-philip-roth/618081/ |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Sehgal |first=Parul |author-link=Parul Sehgal |date=March 29, 2021 |title=In 'Philip Roth,' a Life of the Literary Master as Aggrieved Playboy |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/books/review-philip-roth-biography-blake-bailey.html |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Riefe |first=Jordan |date=March 31, 2021 |title='That was harsh': Philip Roth's biographer defends his book and his subject |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-03-31/blake-bailey-discusses-controversial-biography-of-philip-roth |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Alter |first=Alexandra |date=April 21, 2021 |title=Philip Roth's Biographer Is Accused of Sexual Assault W.W. Norton, citing the allegations that the author, Blake Bailey, faces, said it would stop shipping and promoting his new, best-selling book. |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/books/philip-roth-blake-bailey.html |access-date=April 22, 2021}}</ref> Three weeks later, in May 2021, [[Skyhorse Publishing]] announced that it would release a paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions of the biography.<ref>"Philip Roth Biography Finds a New Publisher", ''The New York Times'', May 17, 2021 [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/books/blake-bailey-philip-roth-biography.html]</ref> Roth had asked his executors "to destroy many of his personal papers after the publication of the semi-authorized biography on which Blake Bailey had recently begun work.... Roth wanted to ensure that Bailey, who was producing exactly the type of biography he wanted, would be the only person outside a small circle of intimates permitted to access personal, sensitive manuscripts, including the unpublished ''Notes for My Biographer'' (a 295-page rebuttal to his ex-wife's memoir) and ''Notes on a Slander-Monger'' (another rebuttal, this time to a biographical effort from Bailey's predecessor). 'I don't want my personal papers dragged all over the place,' Roth said. The fate of Roth's personal papers took on new urgency in the wake of Norton's decision to halt distribution of the biography. In May 2021, the Philip Roth Society published an open letter<ref>"Statement on the Possible Destruction of Essential Materials Pertaining to Philip Roth" [https://www.philiprothsociety.org/single-post/statement-on-the-possible-destruction-of-essential-materials-pertaining-to-philip-roth]</ref> imploring Roth's executors 'to preserve these documents and make them readily available to researchers.'"<ref>Alex Shephard, "Blake Bailey Had Exclusive Access to Philip Roth’s Personal Papers. Roth’s Estate Plans on Destroying Them." ''The New Republic'', May 21, 2021 [https://newrepublic.com/article/162475/philip-roth-blake-bailey-documents-biography]</ref><ref>Copies of ''Notes for My Biographer'', ''Notes on a Slander-Monger'', and other "typescripts and manuscripts" were "deeded" by Benjamin Taylor, to whom Roth had given them, "to the Manuscripts Division of Princeton's Firestone Library." Benjamin Taylor, "Even in His Retirement, Philip Roth Wrote Thousands of Pages", ''Literary Hub'', May 19, 2020 [https://lithub.com/even-in-his-retirement-philip-roth-wrote-thousands-of-pages/]. The text of this article was included in Benjamin Taylor, ''Here We Are: My Friendship With Philip Roth'' (Penguin Books, 2020).</ref><ref name=":1">"What Happens to Philip Roth's Legacy Now?", ''The New York Times'', June 4, 2021 [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/books/philip-roth-biography-blake-bailey.html]</ref>

After Roth's death, [[Harold Bloom]] told the [[Library of America]]: "Philip Roth's departure is a dark day for me and for many others. His two greatest novels, ''American Pastoral'' and ''Sabbath's Theater'', have a controlled frenzy, a high imaginative ferocity, and a deep perception of America in the days of its decline. The [[Zuckerman Bound|Zuckerman tetralogy]] remains fully alive and relevant, and I should mention too the extraordinary invention of ''[[Operation Shylock]]'', the astonishing achievement of ''[[The Counterlife]]'', and the pungency of ''[[The Plot Against America]]''. His ''[[My Life as a Man]]'' still haunts me. In one sense Philip Roth is the culmination of the unsolved riddle of Jewish literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The complex influences of [[Kafka]] and [[Freud]] and the malaise of American Jewish life produced in Philip a new kind of synthesis. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon]] aside, he must be estimated as the major American novelist since [[Faulkner]]."<ref>{{Cite web |date=June 11, 2018 |title=Megan Abbott, Jonathan Lethem and other writers pay tribute to Philip Roth |url=https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1417-megan-abbott-jonathan-lethem-and-other-writers-pay-tribute-to-philip-roth}}</ref>

''[[The New York Times]]'' asked several prominent authors to name their favorite work by Roth. The responses were varied; [[Jonathan Safran Foer]] chose ''[[Patrimony: A True Story|Patrimony]]'', Roth's memoir of his father's illness: "Much has been written about Roth since he died. In keeping with the unseemliness of our profession, we all have something to say. The responses have overflowed with a kind of blunt adoration that would be perfectly un-Rothlike if they weren't the efforts of children agonizing over the right way to bury our father. None of it feels right, perhaps because nothing could. Roth's words dressed his father for death, and they dressed so many of us for life. How does one properly acknowledge that? How does one say thank you for the thousand almost-invisible preparations? This morning, as I was getting my children dressed for school, I felt the profound gratitude of a 'little son.'"<ref>{{Cite news |title=What is Philip Roth's Best Book? |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=May 25, 2018 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/books/philip-roths-best-book.html#link-570d528e|last1=Beckerman |first1=Gal }}</ref>

[[Joyce Carol Oates]] told ''[[The Guardian]]'': "Philip Roth was a slightly older contemporary of mine. We had come of age in more or less the same repressive 50s era in America—formalist, ironic, 'Jamesian', a time of literary indirection and understatement, above all impersonality—as the high priest [[TS Eliot]] had preached: 'Poetry is an escape from personality.' Boldly, brilliantly, at times furiously, and with an unsparing sense of the ridiculous, Philip repudiated all that. He did revere Kafka—but [[Lenny Bruce]] as well. (In fact, the essential Roth is just that anomaly: Kafka riotously interpreted by Lenny Bruce.) But there was much more to Philip than furious rebellion. For at heart he was a true moralist, fired to root out hypocrisy and mendacity in public life as well as private. Few saw ''The Plot Against America'' as actual prophecy, but here we are. He will abide."<ref>{{Cite news |date=May 23, 2018 |title='An astonishing force field': Philip Roth, as remembered by authors and friends |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/23/philip-roth-remembered-authors-friends}}</ref>