American literary giant Roth dead

Fearless and celebrated author

NEW YORK, May 23, (Agencies): Philip Roth, the prize-winning novelist and fearless narrator of sex, death, assimilation and fate, from the comic madness of “Portnoy’s Complaint” to the elegiac lyricism of “American Pastoral,” died Tuesday night at age 85.

Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, told The Associated Press that he died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure.

Author of more than 25 books, Roth was a fierce satirist and uncompromising realist, confronting readers in a bold, direct style that scorned false sentiment or hopes for heavenly reward. He was an atheist who swore allegiance to earthly imagination, whether devising functions for raw liver or indulging romantic fantasies about Anne Frank. In “The Plot Against America,” published in 2004, he placed his own family under the anti-Semitic reign of President Charles Lindbergh. In 2010, in “Nemesis,” he subjected his native New Jersey to a polio epidemic.

He was among greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for “American Pastoral.” He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including “The Human Stain” and “Sabbath’s Theater,” a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work.

He identified himself as an American writer, not a Jewish one, but for Roth the American experience and the Jewish experience were often the same. While predecessors such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud wrote of the Jews’ painful adjustment from immigrant life, Roth’s characters represented the next generation. Their first

in a statement last month Bergling’s family appeared to suggest he took his own life, saying that he struggled with his thoughts and “could not go on any longer”. language was English, and they spoke without accents. They observed no rituals and belonged to no synagogues.

In the novel “The Ghost Writer” he quoted one of his heroes, Franz Kafka: “We should only read those books that bite and sting us.” For his critics, his books were to be repelled like a swarm of bees.

Feminists, Jews and one ex-wife attacked him in print, and sometimes in person. Women in his books were at times little more than objects of desire and rage and The Village Voice once put his picture on its cover, condemning him as a misogynist. A panel moderator berated him for his comic portrayals of Jews, asking Roth if he would have written the same books in Nazi Germany. The Jewish scholar Gershom Scholem called “Portnoy’s Complaint” the “book for which all anti-Semites have been praying.” When Roth won the Man Booker International Prize, in 2011, a judge resigned, alleging that the author suffered from terminal solipsism and went “on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book.”

Best-selling

Ex-wife Claire Bloom wrote a bestselling memoir, “Leaving a Doll’s House,” in which the actress remembered reading the manuscript of his novel “Deception.” With horror, she discovered his characters included a boring middle-aged wife named Claire, married to an adulterous writer named Philip. Bloom also described her ex-husband as cold, manipulative and unstable. (Although, alas, she still loved him). The book was published by Virago Press, whose founder, Carmen Callil, was the same judge who quit years later from the Booker committee.

Roth’s wars also originated from within. He survived a burst appendix in the late 1960s and near-suicidal depression

Avicii, known for international hits such as “Wake Me Up” and “Hey Brother”, announced in 2016 that he was retiring from touring for health reasons, but he kept in 1987. After the disappointing reaction to his 1993 novel, “Operation Shylock,” he fell again into severe depression and for years rarely communicated with the media. For all the humor in his work — and, friends would say, in private life — jacket photos usually highlighted the author’s tense, dark-eyed glare. In 2012, he announced that he had stopped writing fiction and would instead dedicate himself to helping biographer Blake Bailey complete his life story. By 2015, he had retired from public life altogether.

He never promised to be his readers’ friend; writing was its own reward, the narration of “life, in all its shameless impurity.” Until his abrupt retirement, Roth was a dedicated, prolific author who often published a book a year and was generous to writers from other countries. For years, he edited the Writers from the Other Europe series, in which authors from Eastern Europe received exposure to American readers; Milan Kundera was among the beneficiaries. Roth also helped bring a wider readership to the acclaimed Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld.

Roth began his career in rebellion against the conformity of the 1950s and ended it in defense of the security of the 1940s; he was never warmer than when writing about his childhood, or more sorrowful, and enraged, than when narrating the shock of innocence lost.

“I’m in a state of shock. I’m stunned and speechless. He was a truth teller,” Roth’s friend Judith Thurman, also a writer, said.

Being snubbed for the Nobel every year had “become a joke” for the author, said his friend French writer Josyane Savigneau on Wednesday.

“Every year we talked about it, it became funny,” Savigneau said, adding that great writers such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce had also missed out on the prize.

making music and was nominated for a Billboard music award in April. (RTRS)

NEW YORK:

A radiant Claire Danes walked the red carpet for the New York premiere of her new film, “A Kid Like Jake.” She was glowing for a good reason — not just a new movie.

“I’m quite pregnant, but feeling good so far,” Danes told The Associated Press. The actress is in her second trimester. It will be the second child for Danes and husband, Hugh Dancy.

Her co-star, Jim Parsons, was feeling good, too, though he strolled in with a cane and walking cast. It was the result of an onstage accident he sustained during his Broadway play, “The Boys in the Band.”

“I injured it going to curtain call. I don’t have any physical feats in this play that require me to jump or anything like that, I just tripped going down a stair, and cracked my foot and tore a ligament in my ankle,” Parsons said.

As for the film, Danes and Parsons play the parents of a 4-year old boy named Jake who likes dressing up as a princess. The couple wonders if they should exploit Jake’s gender nonconformity to gain an edge in school applications.

Danes identified with the challenge of finding the right school, because she was experiencing a similar issue while making the film. (AP)