Philip Roth, 1933–2018
Philip Roth, a towering figure of twentieth-century literature, has died at the age of eighty-five. He had a long history with the . His story “” was pulled from our slush pile when Roth was just twenty-five years old, and published in issue no. 18 (Spring 1958). Roth then made his first visit to New York, where he met the magazine’s young editors and writers. The connection was immediate. As he described in his speech at our 2010 Spring Revel, “This time I sent my story not to slush pile, from which I’d been plucked first time around by none other than Rose Styron, but right to the top.” His next story, “,” was published in issue no. 19 (Summer 1958), and ”was published in issue no. 20 (Autumn–Winter 1958–1959). In the early eighties, the writer Hermione Lee interviewed Roth for our . In her words, Roth “listens carefully to everything, makes lots of quick jokes, and likes to be amused. Just underneath this benign appearance there is a ferocious concentration and mental rapacity; everything is grist for his mill, no vagueness is tolerated, differences of opinion are pounced on greedily, and nothing that might be useful is let slip.” In 2010, presented Roth with the Hadada Award for lifetime achievement.
