ERIC BEECH: Philip Roth, towering genius of modern fiction, dead at 85
'Roth explored shame, embarrassment and other guilty secrets of the self, although usually with a heavy dose of humor'
Author Philip Roth, who was both hailed and derided for laying bare the neuroses and obsessions that haunted the modern Jewish-American experience, died on Tuesday at the age of 85, his agent said. Roth died in New York City at 10:30 p.m. local time of congestive heart failure, his literary agent Andrew Wylie said. Roth wrote more than 30 books, including the 1991 memoir “Patrimony,” which examined his complex relationship with his father and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In his later years, Roth turned to the existential and sexual crises of middle age, never abandoning his commitment to exploring shame, embarrassment and other guilty secrets of the self, although usually with a heavy dose of humor. After more than 50 years as a writer, Roth decided that 2010’s “Nemesis,” the story of a polio epidemic in the Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood where he grew up, would be his last novel. He then went back and reread all his works “to see whether I’d wasted my time,” he sai...
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