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A review by komet2020
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography by Philip Roth
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography encapsulates 3 phases of the life of Philip Roth, who became one of America's pre-eminent novelists in the late 1960s with the publication of the best-seller Portnoy's Complaint and remained on that lofty perch until his death in 2018, age 85.
I enjoyed reading about the first 2 phases of Roth's autobiography which described his childhood, adolescence (capturing the essence of what life was like for a Jewish boy growing up in Newark, New Jersey from the late 1930s into the early 1950s), and his time as an undergraduate at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, followed by his stint at the University of Chicago (on a fellowship), where he earned an M.A., engaged in some teaching, dropped out of a doctoral program, and began developing his skills as a writer. I felt that Roth largely followed the path of the traditional autobiography by laying bare essential truths about himself to the reader.
But when I began reading the third phase of Roth's autobiography, I felt that he had tired of the undertaking and showed a reluctance to share more about himself. Roth had brought the reader up to the late 1960s, when, following a divorce from his first wife (who came from a very troubled background and proved a trial for Roth to deal with - that is, until she died in an auto accident in NYC), had taken up with another gentile woman, and was just hitting his stride as a novelist. I was expecting that he would take the reader into the following 2 decades of his life, shedding more light about how the impact of his growing fame as a writer impacted his life and relationships. Alas, that was not to be.
Nevertheless, The Facts was an interesting book to read because it gave me some additional insight into Philip Roth that I didn't have before.
I enjoyed reading about the first 2 phases of Roth's autobiography which described his childhood, adolescence (capturing the essence of what life was like for a Jewish boy growing up in Newark, New Jersey from the late 1930s into the early 1950s), and his time as an undergraduate at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, followed by his stint at the University of Chicago (on a fellowship), where he earned an M.A., engaged in some teaching, dropped out of a doctoral program, and began developing his skills as a writer. I felt that Roth largely followed the path of the traditional autobiography by laying bare essential truths about himself to the reader.
But when I began reading the third phase of Roth's autobiography, I felt that he had tired of the undertaking and showed a reluctance to share more about himself. Roth had brought the reader up to the late 1960s, when, following a divorce from his first wife (who came from a very troubled background and proved a trial for Roth to deal with - that is, until she died in an auto accident in NYC), had taken up with another gentile woman, and was just hitting his stride as a novelist. I was expecting that he would take the reader into the following 2 decades of his life, shedding more light about how the impact of his growing fame as a writer impacted his life and relationships. Alas, that was not to be.
Nevertheless, The Facts was an interesting book to read because it gave me some additional insight into Philip Roth that I didn't have before.