The Facts Book Cover

The Facts


A work of Non-fiction


Subgenres:

  • Autobiography,
  • Literary Memoir,
  • Jewish American
Buy from Amazon

Read Sample

This book is for you if you're into...

  • Autobiographies that blur the line between life and art
  • Authors critiquing their own storytelling in real time
  • Literary coming-of-age stories set in mid-century America
Publisher Description

The unconventional autobiography of the Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author who reshaped our idea of fiction.

A work of compelling candor and inventiveness, instructive particularly in its revelation of the interplay between life and art.

Philip Roth concentrates on five episodes from his life: his secure city childhood in the thirties and forties; his education in American life at a conventional college; his passionate entanglement, as an ambitious young man, with the angriest person he ever met (the "girl of my dreams" Roth calls her); his clash, as a fledgling writer, with a Jewish establishment outraged by Goodbye, Columbus; and his discovery, in the excesses of the sixties, of an unmined side to his talent that led him to write Portnoy's Complaint.

The book concludes surprisingly—in true Rothian fashion—with a sustained assault by the novelist against his proficiencies as an autobiographer.

More Philip Roth

Follow This Author

Sign up & we'll email you when a new title is available for pre-order or hits the bookshelf

Get Free & Discounted eBooks

Curated reads, irresistible prices—subscribe now

Add this book to your To Be Read list

Sign up to build your personal library

Archive This Book

Sign up to build your personal library