Playful and serious : Philip Roth as a comic writer

Bibliographic Information

Playful and serious : Philip Roth as a comic writer

edited by Ben Siegel and Jay L. Halio

University of Delaware Press, c2010

Available at  / 1 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Few contemporary American writers have stirred the minds and emotions of their readers as Philip Roth has done. Even fewer writers have excelled in various forms of the comic as Roth has for over a half-century. "Playful and Serious" assembles a group of outstanding Roth scholars and critics who focus their attention on the different ways Roth brings his comic tendencies to bear on essentially serious topics. The term 'comic' is used in the broadest sense to include humor, irony, satire, comedy, black comedy, and their variations. As co-editor Ben Siegel points out, Roth's special humor often appears to grow 'more surrealistic and obsessive, as in each new fiction he tries not merely to surpass the daily news but to touch what is deeply private and dark in the modern psyche'. In the process, he targets 'his society's most deeply embedded pieties and hypocrisies, enthusiasms, and lunacies'.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top