false 62485661 925 11652 0679749055 9780679749059 13 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166483334m/11652.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166483334s/11652.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11652.The_Facts_A_Novelist_s_Autobiography 3.46 114 The Facts is the unconventional autobiography of a writer who has reshaped our idea of fiction—a work of compelling candor and inventiveness, instructive particularly in its revelation of the interplay between life and art.

Philip Roth concentrates on five episodes from his life: his secure city childhood in the thirties and forties; his education in American life at a conventional college; his passionate entanglement, as an ambitious young man, with the angriest person he ever met (the "girl of my dreams" Roth calls her); his clash, as a fledgling writer, with a Jewish establishment outraged by Goodbye, Columbus; and his discovery, in the excesses of the sixties, of an unmined side to his talent that led him to write Portnoy's Complaint.

The book concludes surprisingly—in true Rothian fashion—with a sustained assault by the novelist against his proficiencies as an autobiographer.]]> 463 3.68 41865 4829 1988 4 0 false Tue Jul 07 10:31:50 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 10:31:50 -0700 2009