Understanding Philip Roth

"Never has there been a greater need for a brisk, open-minded exploration as to why Philip Roth matters. A first-rate survey of contemporary American literature's most astute and provocative novelist"—Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University

"Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth pushes our understanding of Roth further, incorporating Roth's personal history with American life and trauma through original and stylized fictions matched by formal inventiveness. With concision, example and detail, Shipe shows how and why it matters."—Ira Nadel, author of Philip Roth: A Counterlife

"Matthew Shipe has done something extraordinary, rendering the breadth of Philip Roth's oeuvre in a mere 120 pages. Even more astonishing, his critical study is both accessible and sophisticated; bright undergraduates, along with seasoned Roth scholars, will be engaged. This is an important and deft introduction to one of the major writers and voices of our time."—James Schiff, University of Cincinnati

"Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth engages the key word—'understanding'—in two distinctive ways: by helping readers understand the author and by revealing Roth's own understanding of such important contemporary issues as the role of the writer, the vagaries of history, the origins of the American project, and the pleasure and pain at the heart of the human condition."—Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University, co-executive editor of Philip Roth Studies