Ask readers about Neil Klugman, and they recall their youthful sexual stirrings. Ask them about Sophie Portnoy, and they recall shuddering at their Jewish mothers.
Philip Roth has affected readers powerfully ever since his first novella "Goodbye, Columbus," the story of Klugman's summer idyll with Brenda Patimkin, was published in 1959. It captured the National Book Award with its portrayal of American Jewish life in the 1950s, replete with echoes of Roth's grandparents' immigrant roots and his family's mid-20th century Jewish strivings. It's class conflict, with a whiff of chicken schmaltz and fried onions, played out at Aunt Gladys' Newark apartment and in the Patimkin's spacious suburban home.
The groundbreaking "Portnoy's Complaint," published in 1969, evoked fierce criticism and acclaim, making the New York Times bestseller list and establishing Roth as a literary presence. It is a comic characterization of Alexander Portnoy - as told to his therapist - whose possessive mother Sophie makes him so guilty that he resorts to sex to assuage his insecurities.
The two Roth classics have been chosen by The Library of America to initiate the publication of an eight-volume collection of his work by the prestigious publisher. Volume one, "Philip Roth: Novels and Stories 1959-1962, Goodbye, Columbus & Five Short Stories, Letting Go," and volume two, "Philip Roth: Novels & Stories 1967-1972, When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang, The Breast," (The Library of America, $35 each hardcover) preserve Roth's work in new editions edited by Ross Miller. Completion of the Roth set is scheduled for 2013, to mark the writer's 80th birthday.
Roth was born in Newark, N.J., in 1933, the son of American-born parents and grandson of European Jews. He grew up in the city's Weequahic section and attended public school. He received a bachelor's degree from Bucknell University and a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Chicago, where he later taught. He also taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, retiring from teaching in 1992.
He is the author of 27 novels and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in literature for "America Pastoral," a sprawling family saga set against the background of the Vietnam War. His newest novel, "Everyman" will be released this year.
Heralded by some as a definitive Jewish American voice, Roth eschews the title, bristling at such narrow categorization of his work. Much of it, from "Goodbye, Columbus" on, draws on his post-war Jewish world, with settings from his childhood and characters who appear to be caricatures of those who lived there. But in a recent interview with Danish journalist Martin Krasnik that appeared in The Guardian, a British newspaper, Roth dismissed the notion that his work was autobiographical - "It's all me," he told Krasnik when the reporter pushed the question - and suggested that those who attempt to label literature according to the religion or ethnicity of its author were using those labels "to strengthen some political agenda."
Still, Roth's work has resonated for generations of Jewish readers. The romance between Neil and Brenda, with its undertones of sexual craving and material longing, is classic. And Portnoy's descriptions of everything from sex with a shiksa to eating forbidden food ooze Jewish tam.
Roth writes, "Even in the Chinese restaurant where the Lord has lifted the ban on pork dishes for the obedient children of Israel, the eating of lobster Cantonese is considered by God (Whose mouthpiece on earth, in matters pertaining to food, is my mom) to be totally out of the question."
Masturbation, constipation, kosher abrogation, all are fodder for Roth's irreverent wit and all-too-sly observation.
Reader Howard Seftel says he remembers vividly first reading "Portnoy's Complaint."
"It was the summer of '69," says Seftel. "I was a counselor at a Jewish camp in upstate New York, near Woodstock. I was 19 at the time and had not seen much of the world."
Reading Roth that summer, Seftel says, "I almost dropped my teeth."
The sexual frankness was astounding, and the no-holds barred characterization of Sophie Portnoy equally outrageous.
"There was a resonance there," says Seftel dryly. "The archetypal Jewish mother."
Marlene Benjamin recalls "absolutely detesting" "Portnoy's Complaint" at first read.
"I was very young and not a very sophisticated reader," writes Benjamin in an e-mail. "I thought that Roth was doing a disservice to his own people."
In retrospect, writes Benjamin, she accepts Roth's perspective as uniquely his.
"Roth describes the world and our Jewish presence in it as he sees us - perhaps not as we would like to be seen - but with all our ironies and faults."
"Goodbye, Columbus," written a decade earlier by a seemingly more innocent and less abrasive Roth, has a more winning appeal, but still with an edge.
It tells of the summer romance between a lower-middle-class library employee and the spoiled daughter of a wealthy plumbing supplier. Steamy trysts in the Patimkins' home while the family is sleeping, interspersed with idle summer pastimes, paint a wistful picture of sexual coming of age constrained by social convention.
Roth captures the tension in a dialogue between Brenda and Neil after her parents discover the nature of the couple's relationship. He writes:
"Neil, look at the reality of the thing, will you?"
"Did you do anything wrong?"
"Neil, they think it's wrong. They're my parents."
"But do you think it's wrong -"
"That doesn't matter."
"It does to me, Brenda..."
Reader Richard Grayson loved Roth's "Goodbye" precisely because "it presented Jewish characters as less than honorable; as lazy, as greedy, as sexually needy," he writes in an e-mail.
But "Portnoy's Complaint," writes Grayson, "blew my mind."
"Alexander Portnoy's voice ... was exhilarating as Huckleberry Finn's or Holden Caulfield's except that this was a voice much closer to home for a middle class secular Jewish kid in 1960s Brooklyn."
And that voice may continue to explain Roth's appeal, despite what the writer says.
