Us author of portnoy's complaint7/2/2023 ![]() The American dream, or nightmare, was to become “a Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness.” The reality, more often, was to be regarded as a Jew among gentiles and a gentile among Jews. They observed no rituals and belonged to no synagogues. Their first language was English, and they spoke without accents. While predecessors such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud wrote of the Jews’ painful adjustment from immigrant life, Roth’s characters represented the next generation. ![]() He identified himself as an American writer, not a Jewish one, but for Roth the American experience and the Jewish experience were often the same. ![]() But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for “American Pastoral.” He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including “The Human Stain” and “Sabbath’s Theater,” a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work. ![]() He was among the greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. ![]()
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