Notes from Philip Roth: A 75th Birthday Tribute, Columbia University. The line this afternoon outside the Miller Theatre on Broadway stretched down the long block, and Judith Thurman, moderating the first panel, said that it was great to see a crowd like this for something other than the Prada Warehouse Sale. But before the event began there was a little recording that was played and we heard Roth speak of how he had needed an opening, or permission, and it came from reading Henry Miller and perhaps also Lolita. No one was interested in publishing work that was about the “madness of masturbation” but Partisan Review did and paid him fifty bucks for it. And suddenly Roth had felt free. “No two words are more precious for a writer than to be free.”

Nathan Englander recalled that when he was a young teen his mother would call out to him, “Dinner’s ready, Portnoy.” Englander was on the first panel with Jonathan Lethem and Charles D’Ambrosio. Lethem said that, at the level of the sentence, Roth immediately involved the reader in the drama of the act of writing. And when D’Ambrosio said that Roth’s writing was always impatient with realism but it still continued to be realism, pushing its boundaries, drawing them out further, Lethem agreed, saying that Roth always built the pressure of consciousness, he kept up the emotional pressure, and that is why his writing was realist, despite all the distortions, as in Kafka, and also why it remained so scrupulously true. All this while, the panelists were aware that the man himself was sitting in the front row, looking at them, the fingers of each hand lightly pressed against the other in front of his mouth. He was like a judge watching the lawyers presenting their case, all the young men appearing to be in agreement with each other on the court floor. Lethem said Roth’s books were always a highwire act and, before that, either he or someone else said, what you have in all his books is language taking off and you’re in it for the ride.

Then, it was time for the second panel. But during the transition, they played another taped recording, Roth on “Fresh Air” talking of a conversation he had with his parents when Portnoy’s Complaint was about to come out. He warned them that the book was going to cause a sensation and that some journalists would want to call them and ask questions. It was okay with him if they didn’t talk, he told them. But it was also fine if they did, he said, but he’d advise against it. Later, when his mother was dead, and Roth and his father were out on a walk, his father told him that after that particular lunch conversation, Roth’s parents had got into a taxi and his mother had begun to cry. Roth’s father had asked her what was wrong, and she had said, “He has delusions of grandeur.”

The folks on the second panel, moderated by Joel Conarroe, were asked to name their favorite book. Hermione Lee, very much in command of her material, named Ghost Writer. For its perfect achievement of form, for its marking the start of a literary enterprise, and for its engaged representation of the power and play of time. Ross Miller, who is writing Roth’s authorized biography, voted for The Counterlife because it serves as the point of division in the writer’s career, dividing the earlier books which dealt more narrowly with a writer’s life from the later, big ones that deal with the pressure of history. Claudia Roth Pierpont’s choice was Sabbath’s Theater, to which she paid affectionate tribute and from which comes the title of this post. Pierpont singles out the book for its treatment of the themes of death and grief, and also because it is a love story with a great hero and a great immigrant heroine. Then it was Benjamin Taylor’s turn and he named Operation Shylock for its “extreme writing” which believes that too much is too little and too far is not far enough.

The “living literary legend” walked up to the microphone. Tall, wearing a dark suit, blue shirt, burgundy tie. He said he was glad to be reminded (by Hermione Lee) that this occasion was not his funeral. He patted his jacket and took out a sheet of paper from an inside pocket. The first words were, “Seventy five. How sudden.” He began to talk of the time when the war had ended, 1943, and he was ten. He wrote something under the assumed name Eric Duncan. And when he was twelve, he collaborated on the writing of a play with a girl in his class; the play was titled “Let Freedom Ring.” The girl played a character called Tolerance, and Roth himself played Prejudice. The play was against racism and anti-Semitism, and was offered in praise of the American melting pot. Roth was mocking his younger self but he was also being indulgent: he ended by saying that the boy wsa father to the man who wrote The Plot Against America. Roth thanked everyone for the honor. Then he said, “Let’s do it again in twenty five years. 2033. It will be here before we know it.”

[For Raj]

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