Front cover image for Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity

Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity

Has anyone ever worked harder and longer at being immature than Philip Roth? The novelist himself pointed out the paradox, saying that after establishing a reputation for maturity with two earnest novels, he ""worked hard and long and diligently"" to be frivolous--an effort that resulted in the notoriously immature Portnoy's Complaint (1969). Three-and-a-half decades and more than twenty books later, Roth is still at his serious ""pursuit of the unserious."" But his art of immaturity has itself matured, developing surprising links with two traditions of immaturity--an American one th
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Princeton University Press, uuuu
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9781282086890, 9780691116044, 1282086898, 0691116040
1091514866
Preface; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; 1 Introduction: Roth Antagonistes; 2 Immaturity: A Genealogy; 3 Ancestors and Relatives: The Game of Appropriation and the Sacrifice of Assimilation; 4 "A very slippery subject": The Counterlife as Pivot; 5 Letting Go, or How to Lead a Stupid Life: Sabbath's Nakedness; 6 Being Game in The Human Stain; 7 The Two Philips; Coda: "The stars are indispensable"; Notes; Works Cited; Index