The Roth of tenderness and of rage

I suggest, by the way, that the best person to ask about the autobiographical relevance of the climactic death of the father in Zuckerman Unbound is my own father, who lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I’ll give you his phone number.

Roth is the master of voices: the arguments, the joking, the hysterical exchanges, the inner wrangling even when a character is alone, the sound of a mind at work.