Today is the birthday of novelist Philip Roth, born in 1933. In 1959, when he was 26 years old he published his first book, a novella and short stories titled “Goodbye, Columbus”. It won the National Book Award. In 1969 he wrote a best seller “Portnoy's Complaint”, which is entirely made up of a monologue delivered by a patient, Alexander Portnoy, to his analyst.
I read and loved Philip Roth's novels when I was in graduate school. (I went to a predominately Jewish college, so I had some contest to appreciate the humor.) In 2nd year Russian we read "The Nose", which I also enjoyed. Our professor (from Moscow) didn't tell us about what an eccentric Gogol was. We often tried to get her to talk about what it was like to grow up and live in the Soviet Union (I think she was born in the early 1930s and left in the early 1960s) but she rarely was willing to.
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Johnny!
I read and loved Philip Roth's novels when I was in graduate school. (I went to a predominately Jewish college, so I had some contest to appreciate the humor.) In 2nd year Russian we read "The Nose", which I also enjoyed. Our professor (from Moscow) didn't tell us about what an eccentric Gogol was. We often tried to get her to talk about what it was like to grow up and live in the Soviet Union (I think she was born in the early 1930s and left in the early 1960s) but she rarely was willing to.