Project MUSE®: Philip Roth Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Philip Roth Studies.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2005) through current issueLatest Articles: Philip Roth StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Philip Roth Studies1940-52781547-3929Latest articles in Philip Roth Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editors' Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988648
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In a particularly memorable exchange in exit ghost (2007)—the final Nathan Zuckerman novel and the subject of this issue's "Perspectives" section — Amy Bellette, the woman who a young Nathan Zuckerman had fantasized to be Anne Frank in The Ghost Writer (1979), reunites with Zuckerman nearly fifty years after they had first encountered each other in E. I. Lonoff's house in the Berkshires in the winter of 1956. Both now appear diminished by age and the reality of death's nearness, and while the erotic impulse that had initially drawn Zuckerman to Bellette has dissipated, they share a concern over E. I. Lonoff's legacy and what they see, more broadly, as the decline of literary culture. Recalling Lonoff's words, Amy
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallEditors' Note2026-04-28text/htmlen-USEditors' Note2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®83992026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28The Spectral Architecture of Deception: How Roth's Novel Haunts Its Readers (and Itself)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988649
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Philip roth's deception (1990) is a text that continually redefines it-self, eluding fixed categorization and compelling its readers into a state of adaptive engagement. In it, Roth strips away the traditional architecture of the novel to create a narrative entirely built of voices. The novel revolves around fourteen private conversations, eschewing description and any kind of transitional exposition. Initially, the conversations seem to offer a linear account of an affair between a writer named Philip and a nameless Englishwoman. This apparent linearity is soon interrupted (and disrupted) by the intrusion of other, possibly archived voices: phone calls, interviews, and memories of other women. The turning point
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallThe Spectral Architecture of Deception: How Roth's Novel Haunts Its Readers (and Itself)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThe Spectral Architecture of Deception: How Roth's Novel Haunts Its Readers (and Itself)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®696672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28"The Death of Her Childhood": What Maisie Knew and the Haunted Narrator of Roth's Letting Go
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988650
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This study maintains that philip roth's first novel letting go (1962), while foregrounding such Jamesian works as The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), is haunted by narrator Gabe Wallach's silent recollections of What Maisie Knew (1897), and specifically by his unspoken identification with the rakish Sir Claude, who contributes to the death of Maisie's childhood. In Roth's novel, the actual death of a child occurs when Cynthia, the daughter of divorcée Martha Reganhart, is thought by Gabe to have pushed her brother, Markie, from an upper bunkbed. Nobody else attributes willful action to the tragic incident, and Martha more generally dismisses Gabe's worries by insisting that "your
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmall"The Death of Her Childhood": What Maisie Knew and the Haunted Narrator of Roth's Letting Go2026-04-28text/htmlen-US"The Death of Her Childhood": What Maisie Knew and the Haunted Narrator of Roth's Letting Go2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®784282026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28The Irrational Catastrophe of Death: Spectral Ethnicity in Indignation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988651
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In 2014, philip roth was interviewed by daniel sandstrom, the cultural editor at Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish daily newspaper. He was asked about the shift to a shorter narrative form, such as that found in the Nemeses tetralogy — Everyman (2006), Indignation (2008), The Humbling (2009), and Nemesis (2010). In his answer, Roth connected the brevity of his last books with the "irrational catastrophe" that happens in everyone's life, the final and ultimate nemesis: death. He then highlighted how "fiction frequently defines human nature by extreme situations" (Why Write 385), thus attesting to the fundamental role of stories in understanding life and death.Beyond insisting on narrative's centrality in exploring the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallThe Irrational Catastrophe of Death: Spectral Ethnicity in Indignation2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThe Irrational Catastrophe of Death: Spectral Ethnicity in Indignation2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®623832026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Indecent Hauntings: Bataille, Sabbath, and Erotic Transgression
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988652
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And when I scream I AM THE SUN an integral erection results because the verb to be is the vehicle of amorous frenzy."I am Drenka! I am Drenka!"Michel leiris referred to his friend georges bataille, the french sur-realist philosopher, writer, and museum curator, as a "mystic of debauchery" (Bataille and Leiris 5), a description that perfectly fits Mickey Sabbath, the protagonist of Sabbath's Theater (1995), Philip Roth's most erotic novel since Portnoy's Complaint (1969). The disgraced puppeteer of The Indecent Theater of Manhattan, "a kind of id on the loose" (Kermode), Sabbath indulges in erotic transgression and verbal exhibitionism. Phrases such as "The Monk of Fucking," "Sabbath Antagonistes," "The Evangelist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallIndecent Hauntings: Bataille, Sabbath, and Erotic Transgression2026-04-28text/htmlen-USIndecent Hauntings: Bataille, Sabbath, and Erotic Transgression2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®319772026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Letting in the Repellent
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988653
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I first fell in love with philip roth (and nathan zuckerman) after reading The Ghost Writer (1979). It was the first Roth I had read, assigned to me as a college sophomore in a class titled "The Art of the Novel." As I was also a young Jewish-American with dreams of becoming a writer, Nathan quickly became a kind of role model for me (for better and worse). Indeed, the idea of spending an evening with my writing hero (as Nathan does with E. I. Lonoff in The Ghost Writer) and being told how brilliant my voice is felt a tad intoxicating. I read parts of the novel as if it were a manual on how to write, as if it were a craft book. I began to write as if Lonoff had said to me and not Nathan, "You're not so nice and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallLetting in the Repellent2026-04-28text/htmlen-USLetting in the Repellent2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®391822026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28The Repellent (or Lack Thereof) in Philip Roth's Exit Ghost
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988654
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"Let the repellent in! that's your achievement, mr. zuckerman" (exit 272), declares Richard Kliman, Nathan Zuckerman's nemesis and archrival in Exit Ghost (2007). This proclamation aptly summarizes Philip Roth's own legacy; at their best, his books abound with repellent men shamelessly lusting for power, sex, and control. Roth, through what Ross Posnock terms the "art of immaturity" (xii), desolates and undermines the very hegemony his characters pursue. Roth's weapon of choice is often the body, a slippery, slimy vehicle that dements and delights Roth's production line of male protagonists, almost all of whom suffer from impotence, decay, and/or bodily pain as they age.However, the playful immaturity Posnock
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallThe Repellent (or Lack Thereof) in Philip Roth's Exit Ghost2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThe Repellent (or Lack Thereof) in Philip Roth's Exit Ghost2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®260762026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28A Haunted Map
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988655
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When considering the focus of this essay, the first thing that occurred to me was to interpret Philip Roth's Exit Ghost cartographically: to organize all of the novel's settings, composing a visual zigzag made of sentences through Manhattan's map. How would that look?A more practicable idea, though, turned up: to reread the novel annotating every single place mentioned, trying to understand the importance of the physical spaces and how Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator, would move through the book. And that's the labyrinthian thread I followed — Zuckerman's tracks.The opening fragment "1. The Present Moment," related to Exit Ghost's first chapter, is an example of collected footprints from this path. In order of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallA Haunted Map2026-04-28text/htmlen-USA Haunted Map2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®611142026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988656
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Naomi klein's doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world (2023), a piquant and engrossing mix of social commentary, political analysis, and COVID memoir, is not about Philip Roth. And yet, both explicitly and implicitly, the book makes a compelling case for reading and teaching Roth in the twenty-first century. Klein deftly demonstrates Roth's value in preparing us to endure "doppelganger culture," the "mirror world" and "shadow lands" beyond, not to mention the most inane forms of fascism one could imagine, while also dramatically expanding Roth's vision of the limits of the self and the future of solidarity.In Doppelganger, Naomi Klein follows her persistent shadow, Naomi Wolf (aka "Other Naomi," or, as I call
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/503/image/coversmallDoppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World2026-04-28text/htmlen-USDoppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®232452026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28