Editing Philip Roth (section)

==Personal life==
While at [[University of Chicago|Chicago]] in 1956, Roth met Margaret Martinson, who became his first wife in 1959. Their separation in 1963, and Martinson's subsequent death in a car crash in 1968, left a lasting mark on Roth's literary output. Martinson was the inspiration for female characters in several of Roth's novels, including Lucy Nelson in ''[[When She Was Good]]'' and Maureen Tarnopol in ''[[My Life as a Man]]''.<ref>Roth, Philip. ''[[The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography]]''. New York, 1988.  Roth discusses Martinson's portrait in this memoir. He calls her "Josie" in ''[[When She Was Good]]'' on pp. 149 and 175. He discusses her as an inspiration for ''[[My Life as a Man]]'' throughout the book's second half, most completely in the chapter "Girl of My Dreams," which includes this on p. 110: "Why should I have tried to make up anything better? How could I?" Her influence upon ''Portnoy's Complaint'' is seen in ''The Facts'' as more diffuse, a kind of loosening-up for the author:  "It took time and it took blood, and not, really, until I began ''Portnoy's Complaint'' would I be able to cut loose with anything approaching her gift for flabbergasting boldness." (p. 149)</ref>

Roth was an [[atheist]] who once said, "When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place."<ref name="Ulysses Press">{{cite book|title=The Wit and Blasphemy of Atheists: 500 Greatest Quips and Quotes from Freethinkers, Non-Believers and the Happily Damned|year=2011|publisher=Ulysses Press|isbn=978-1569759707|page=190|quote=When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place. – Philip Roth}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Philip Roth on Fame, Sex and God|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philip-roth-on-fame-sex-and-god/|publisher=CBS Interactive Inc.|access-date=May 5, 2014|first=Rita|last= Braver|date=October 3, 2010 |quote='Do you consider yourself a religious person?'  'No, I don't have a religious bone in my body,' Roth said. 'You don't?'  'No.'  'So, do you feel like there's a God out there?' Braver asked. 'I'm afraid there isn't, no,' Roth said. 'You know that telling the whole world that you don't believe in God is going to, you know, have people say, "Oh my goodness, you know, that's a terrible thing for him to say,"' Braver said. Roth replied, 'When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.'}}</ref> He also said during an interview with ''[[The Guardian]]'': "I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie ... It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it. It's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/14/fiction.philiproth|title=It no longer feels a great injustice that I have to die|first=Martin|last=Krasnik|date=December 14, 2005|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref>

In 1990, Roth married his longtime companion, English actress [[Claire Bloom]], with whom he had been living since 1976. When Bloom asked him to marry her, "cruelly, he agreed, on condition that she signed a pre-nuptial agreement that would give her very little in the event of a divorce—which he duly demanded two years later."{{Citation needed|date=November 2024}} He also stipulated that Bloom's daughter [[Anna Steiger]]—from her marriage to [[Rod Steiger]]—not live with them.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/claire-bloom-a-star-who-lives-up-to-her-name-1.430246 | title=Claire Bloom - a star who lives up to her name }}</ref> They divorced in 1994, and Bloom published a 1996 memoir, ''[[Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir|Leaving a Doll's House]]'', that depicted Roth as a [[misogynist]] and control freak. Some critics have detected parallels between Bloom and the character Eve Frame in Roth's ''[[I Married a Communist]]'' (1998).<ref name=":0" />

The novel ''[[Operation Shylock]]'' (1993) and other works draw on a [[post-operative]] [[nervous breakdown|breakdown]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=j6a0IJjWYe4C&pg=PA5 p. 5], Philip Roth, ''The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography'', Random House, 2011: "I'm talking about a breakdown. Although there's no need to delve into particulars ... what was to have been minor surgery ... led to an extreme depression that carried me right to the edge of emotional and mental dissolution. It was in the period of post-crack-up medication, with the clarity attending the remission of an illness ..."</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=hH3obsqzRvUC&pg=PA79 p. 79], Timothy Parrish (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth'', Cambridge University Press, 2007: "In point of fact, Roth's surgeries (one the knee surgery, which is followed by a nervous breakdown, the other heart surgery) span the period ..."</ref><ref>pp. 108–09, Harold Bloom, ''Philip Roth'', Infobase Publishing, 2003</ref> as well as Roth's experience of the temporary [[side effect]]s of the [[sedative]] Halcion ([[triazolam]]), prescribed post-operatively in the 1980s.<ref>{{cite news|last=Stoeffel|first=Kat|title=Roth on 'Roth v. Roth v. Roth'|url=http://observer.com/2012/05/roth-on-roth-v-roth-v-roth/|access-date=September 13, 2012|newspaper=[[New York Observer]]|date=May 24, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=McCrum|first=Robert|title=The story of my lives|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/21/philiproth.fiction|access-date=September 13, 2012|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=August 21, 2008|location=London}}</ref>