Philip Roth (1933-2018)
American novelist PHILIP ROTH, 85, died of congestive heart failure on May 22, 2018 in a Manhattan hospital. Roth was the author of more than 30 books including Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), and his American trilogy: American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000). During his career he won two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Man Booker International Prize. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2011. His novel The Plot Against America (2004) won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
Philip Milton Roth was born in Newark NJ on March 19, 1933. He earned a BA degree in English from Bucknell University in 1954 and an MA in English from the University of Chicago in 1955. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1955 but was medically discharged due to a back injury sustained during basic training. From 1956 to 1958, Roth taught English classes at the University of Chicago. He married Margaret Martinson Williams in 1959; they separated in 1963 but remained married until her death in an car accident in 1968. In 1990 he married actress Claire Bloom with whom he had been living since 1976. They divorced four years later.
