Philip Roth’s Transgressions

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>From beginning to end, Philip Roth’s fiction is animated by the rebellion of desire against duty. For Roth, both sex and art are forms of self-assertion, pitting the individual against the needs of those he is supposed to love: wives, parents, children, mentors, and, above all, the Jews. It is a mistake to look to his books for the kind of free and rounded characters found in classical realist novels. The questions we ask in reading Roth—What drives a man to write so furiously about Jews, about women, about death and sex and America? What inner experience and conflict is he forever symbolizing in his books?—are mostly about Roth himself. He is the true protagonist of his books, which makes his biography uniquely relevant to understanding his work.</jats:p>