Novels 1973-1977: The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire

by Philip Roth

This third volume in The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected works presents three markedly different novels that together trace a crucial period in the bold evolution of one of America's indispensable novelists. Surely the funniest novel ever written about baseball, The Great American Novel (1973) turns our national pastime into unfettered picaresque farce. The cast of improbable characters includes: Gil Gamesh, the pitcher who actually tried to kill the umpire; John Baal, the ex-con first baseman, "The Babe Ruth of the Big House," who never hit a home run sober; and the House Un-American Activities Committee. My Life as a Man (1974), Roth's most blistering novel, presents the treacherous world of Strindberg nearly a century later in the story of a fierce marital tragedy of obsession and blindness and desperate need. The Professor of Desire (1977)-the novel that prompted Milan Kundera to proclaim Roth "a great historian of modern eroticism"-follows an adventurous man of intelligence and feeling into and out of the tempting wilderness of erotic possibility.

Library of America #165

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction

906 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2006

About the author

Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.

Reviews

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please see my reviews for the three individual novels contained in this volume.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great American Novel (** 1/2 out of 5) Read July 2019
My Life as a Man (*** 1/2 out of 5) Read November 2020
The Professor of Desire (**** out of 5) Read February 2022

In which Roth continues to stumble around for his proper subject, then finds it, then hones it. In light of the incredible works in store -- the Zuckerman novels, the American trilogy, the short autumnal works that ended his career -- it's easy to overlook these three books, but there is wondrous bounty to be found in them, especially in the latter two.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

The two shorter books at the end save this volume from being bored down with the first book's tedious overbearing style.

[Willy Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

These made me want to read many, many more by one the greatest American novelists.

[Jisoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no raw meat fucking in any of these three novels.

[Martin Bihl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Great American Novel - finished 11/18/17

My Life as a Man - finished 09/08/18

The Professor of Desire – finished 07/14/19