Philip Roth’s Rage and Obsessions

To many readers—both admirers and detractors—Philip Roth’s early novel Portnoy’s Complaint is a celebration of libertinism and lewdness. Steven J. Zipperstein, reading the novel as a young man, found it offered something else: a warning about the dangers of a life freed from restraints. Having recently written a biography of Roth, Zipperstein, in conversation with Abraham Socher, shares his mature insights about the novelist. Together they examine the difficulties of separating the man from his work, the merits of a previous biography by Blake Bailey, Roth’s rage, the accusations of misogyny, the time Roth was fêted at Yeshiva University, and his one true obsession. (Audio, 35 minutes. Mosaic doesn’t employ trigger-warnings, but be warned this isn’t a podcast to be listened to in earshot of young children.)