Book Review // Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books
Life Beyond Portnoy
By Alan Stone
Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books
Claudia Roth Pierpont
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2013, pp. 353, $27.00
Philip Roth’s pen has finally run dry, and he has announced his retirement. As if to commemorate that event, Claudia Roth Pierpont—no relation, but a good friend and a superb writer—has produced this brilliant literary biography, Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books. Her project, which began as an essay for The New Yorker, where she’s a staff writer, grew into this extraordinary, encompassing account as the dialogue between the two writers deepened into friendship and mutual admiration. Roth, as anyone who has met him can tell you, is an amazingly charming man. One can sense this on every page of Roth Unbound. That said, Pierpont’s literary judgments are exacting: One comes away from her book with the...