Introduction

Abstract

This book offers an overview of the career of Philip Roth, with particular emphasis on his later work, and an assessment of his contribution to contemporary American fiction. Rather than attempting to survey all of Roth's work, it concentrates on the second half of his career, from the publication of The Ghost Writer (1979) to The Plot Against America (2004). The book considers some of the ways in which Roth's generic experimentation appropriates, complicates and finally parodies aspects of both realism and postmodernism, making connections between these texts and works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O'Brien and Bret Easton Ellis. Moreover, it discusses Roth's treatment of morality, mortality and masculinity in what it considers to be his masterpiece, Sabbath's Theater (1995), comparing it with a short story by Stanley Elkin and a novel by Howard Jacobson that share many of its themes.