Philip Roth: Face to Face

Abstract

Philip RothFace to Face Ira Nadel (bio) It was Chancellor Blvd. that brought me to Philip Roth. Stash's Anchor Inn on Hawthorne Avenue and the Weequahic Diner at the corner of Elizabeth and Hawthorne avenues also helped. My mother, Newark-born, would often return to visit her old haunts and I would troop along to enjoy a shrimp cocktail at Stash's or dessert at the diner. Often, we went shopping at Bamberger's department store for school clothes. In distant Rahway, the styles and choice were just not au courant for the suburban primary grades. My mother's preferred parking lot was next to the Empire Burlesque Theatre on Washington Street, a block from Market, and I vividly recall studying the posters of the scantily clad women just as Portnoy remembers in his complaint. The Adams Theatre, run by Harold Minsky, was another local attraction, but it was a few blocks away. The Empire and Adams, however, both had to close in 1957 because of new anti-burlesque bylaws. One night in January 1957, twenty-one of Newark's most talented performers were arrested. South Orange, West Orange, and Irvington were not mythical but actual places for me with swim clubs, cousins, and even dates. Neil Klugman's world of Goodbye, Columbus was for me a place to touch and taste and linger. Connections with Roth existed even before I learned that he and I were both born in Newark's Beth Israel Hospital, although a decade apart. I Roth and I first met formally when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers (New Brunswick, not Newark). I soon began to read every new Roth work and vividly recall attending a seminar he gave for some fifty—or was it sixty?—at Princeton. Crowded into a large, oak-paneled room, I still remember his wry answer to what was back then an archetypal question: "do you write with a pen or with a typewriter?" He characteristically deflected a reply, choosing [End Page 105] instead to emphasize the daily struggle to write well, something borrowed from the world of Henry James, but expressed with Newark style. Click for larger view View full resolution Copyright The Star Ledger; NJ Advance Media. Published June 11, 1954. My doctoral defense at Cornell unexpectedly continued my engagement with Roth. It was largely devoted to only one subject and it was not "Renunciation in the Works of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot." Portnoy's Complaint took precedence, having appeared only a few months before. Of course, I had studied [End Page 106] it carefully and considered myself a partial expert, confidently explaining to my New Jersey born committee member, M. H. Abrams, that it might indeed signal a new and enthralling urban Romanticism. He wanted to know more. Roth after graduate school became a repeated pleasure, although I did not begin to write about him until years later. Articles, conferences, and a reference book expanded my own early understanding of identity politics for I, too, had spent listless hours in Hebrew School, wandered about Weequahic Park, and hoped to go to Bucknell—but Roth also taught me about the complexities of an American Jewish identity and conflicts with the social world one inhabited. Attracted to his language, themes, and carefully detailed settings, I sought to know more and his essays taught me what questions to ask. Although there was halting correspondence over the years (most often with his legal representatives), we did not meet again until his eightieth birthday celebration at the Newark Museum. Offering congratulations while in the swirling crowd, he stared at me for a moment, aware I was about to undertake a critical biography, before saying, with a tone of incredulity, "You? You're Ira?" "Yes," I replied, unable to utter another word before he was swept away by his ardent admirers. I took solace in being photographed with Blake Bailey. Without time for an incisive question, or another compliment that evening, I became an observer, understanding the importance of boundaries as he refused requests to sign books and even to speak to certain intrusive individuals. Roth was happiest entering with the Weequahic High School marching band and sitting with Edna...