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Literary Imagination Advance Access originally published online on April 3, 2009
Literary Imagination 2009 11(2):228-237; doi:10.1093/litimag/imp014
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

"We Are All Here to Be Insulted": An Epistolary Exchange on the Work of Philip Roth

David Yaffe* and Daniel Torday{dagger}

*David Yaffe, Syracuse University, English Department, 401 Hall of Languages, Syracuse, NY 13244
{dagger}Daniel Torday, Bryn Mawr College, English House, 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19119. E-mail: dtorday@brynmawr.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Dear Dan,

It is an honor to be in the midst of Indignation with you. It is not only the title of Philip Roth's twenty-ninth book, but perhaps also his serial muse. At least since Alexander Portnoy had to ask his shrink why his mother was the most unforgettable character he ever met, Roth has been a kind of indignation virtuoso. He uses it to spur on pages and pages of compulsively readable arguments, self-flagellations, and, sometimes, epiphanies when his characters not only riff, but grow. I think of a story Harold Bloom told me about receiving Roth backstage when he was giving readings from his very controversial Book of J. Bloom had already been attacked by Cynthia Ozick, and now the crowd outside seemed to be out for blood. Roth's words of comfort came from Heinrich Heine: "We are all here to be insulted."

In one of my . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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