Author: The New Yorker / Source: The New Yorker
Roth was the liberator. From the moment I read him, I knew it was going to be O.K. One could have dreams and desires (oh, the desires) and somehow work them into art; one could mine family, community, religion for whatever ore was needed to make the word-generator run.
As a forty-five-year-old, I am now perfectly positioned to look back at early Roth (wanting, lusting, needing) and forward to late Roth (preparing, accepting, dying). No writer has made a fuller meal out of life. His “complete works” are just that: complete. I am humbled to have met him and ecstatic over what he has accomplished. This is a sad day for many, but the books will live on in endless celebration. As I write this, I am smiling.—Gary ShteyngartI walked to the mailbox and pulled out a sheaf of envelopes that included a letter from Philip Roth. I was twenty-nine and pregnant. I had written a book but assumed that no one would read it—and, anyway, I was preoccupied with three older children, a passel of miserable cats, barn spiders in the eaves of the house, and a pot of rice. I set down the pile of mail and didn’t open the letter. Assuming that it was an invitation to join a famous person for a cause or a favorite charity, I forgot about it.
As it turned out, the envelope contained a bona fide letter of appreciation from Philip Roth, a response to a story of mine that The Atlantic had just published, “Saint Marie.”
The day before, I’d bought a bag of shrimp that cost eight dollars.
I had never spent that much money on an item of food. I had just stirred the shrimp into the pot of hot buttered rice when I opened the letter. I put the lid on the pot and tried to understand what I was reading. I was reading a letter from Philip Roth. He had typed it out and signed his name. It did not seem forged. I read the letter over and over.Roth’s earliest works were fearless and fearlessly funny—then came the subtler beauty of “The Ghost Writer.” His work had struck down self-consciousness for me. I would write what I would write.
My guests, intimidating faculty from Dartmouth, arrived. When I took the lid off the pot, the shrimp had dissolved into the rice. Someone asked what the dish was called, and I said, “Mexican shrimp and rice.”
“Where’s the shrimp?” the professor said.
I pointed at some faint pink specks.
I had a letter from Philip Roth. He had taken the time to write. I felt that things might change.
That letter is somewhere in my accumulated stacks of paper. He also sent a quote for my novel “Love Medicine,” which I keep in a cardboard folder on my desk. For years, I occasionally saw Philip and Claire, then, after their divorce, just Philip. Life had thrown him around. Famously thrown him around. I had landed hard, too. It was a relief to talk to someone who made…
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