Remembering Philip Roth, a Giant of American Literature
The writer, who died at the age of 85, was the last of the larger-than-life novelists of the mid-20th century.
Philip Roth, who died Tuesday night at the age of 85, was at the center of American literature for almost 60 years—a quarter of his country’s history. It has been six years since Roth announced his retirement from writing, and there were surely no more books to come; so why does his death feel so much like a loss, as if readers had been deprived of something? Perhaps it is because Roth was the last of the larger-than-life novelists of the mid-20th had in 1969.
