The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography
by Philip Roth
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Description
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 show more "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. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I actually fell asleep reading this book at my desk, lost half an hour of my afternoon redeemed only by the fact my Roth induced nap involved a mildly erotic dream, woke up with a dead right arm from where I had slumped over the edge of my desk, and discovered drool running from the corner of my mouth. I'm not even sure why I picked the thing up to read in the first place, it was a completely random act. Aside from the final section I had to force myself through the pages.
Not bad as a read, but seems to have been put out by Roth to counter bad press from ex-wives and associates.
Feiten, opgeschreven door een romanschrijver. Dat lijkt niet samen te kunnen gaan. En als Philip Roth "feiten" gaat opschrijven, en die dan ook nog voorlegt aan een van zijn bekendste romanpersonages, Nathan Zuckerman, voor commentaar, dan is duidelijk dat het woord "feiten" met een korreltje zout genomen moet worden. Spel van feit en fictie, heerlijk!
Primera parte de su autobiografÃa
Apr 2, 2011 (Edited)Spanish
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Author Information
113+ Works 74,590 Members
Philip Milton Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on March 19, 1933. He attended Rutgers University for one year before transferring to Bucknell University where he completed a B.A. in English with highest honors in 1954. He received an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1955. His first book, Goodbye, Columbus, received the National Book Award show more in 1960. His other books include Letting Go, When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint, My Life as a Man, The Ghostwriter, Zuckerman Unbound, I Married a Communist, The Plot Against America, The Facts, The Anatomy Lesson, Exit Ghost, Deception, Nemesis, Everyman, Indignation, and The Humbling. He won the National Book Critic Circle Awards in 1987 for his novel The Counterlife and in 1992 for his memoir Patrimony: A True Story. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1993 for Operation Shylock: A Confession and in 2001 for The Human Stain, the National Book Award in 1995 for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for American Pastoral. He stopped writing in 2010. He died from congestive heart failure on May 22, 2018 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Gallimard, Folio (7152)
Meulenhoff editie (1025)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- De feiten
- Original title
- The Facts. A Novelist's Autobiography
- Alternate titles*
- De feiten : autobiografie van een schrijver; De feiten : de autobiografie van een schrijver (omslag) (omslag)
- Original publication date
- 1988
- People/Characters
- Philip Roth; Nathan Zuckerman
- Original language*
- Engels
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 487
- Popularity
- 61,902
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.58)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 33
- ASINs
- 9
