Hundreds remember author Roth at N.Y. library
NEW YORK — Philip Roth had it all planned.
“Many years ago, I received in the mail a letter in which he outlined the instructions for his memorial service,” his close friend Joel Conarroe told a gathering of hundreds Tuesday during a tribute at the midtown Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library.
The author of “American Pastoral,” “Portnoy’s Complaint” and other celebrated novels was as precise about his death, Conarroe explained, as he had been about his life and work.
Attendees included Robert Caro, Salman Rushdie, Mia Farrow and Don Delillo. Speakers ranged from Conarroe, president emeritus of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to fellow authors such as Edna O’brien, Norman Manea and Judith Thurman.
The setting, the library’s Celeste Bartos Forum and its glass domed ceiling, was requested by Roth. So were the speakers, even though the list changed over time as such previous choices as Saul Bellow and William Styron died.
Roth also picked out the music, Gabriel Faure’s Elegie in C Minor, Op. 24, which ended the nearly 2½-hour ceremony.
Roth died in May. He was 85. According to Conarroe, Roth wanted as much laughter as tears, and guests shared memories of his wit and of the surprising tenderness for a man so direct and unsparing in hiswork.