title: Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity
author:  Ross Posnock 
description: "The present title offers a sophisticated, original vision and is a fine addition to the excellent body of critical material available on this significant prolific novelist. . . . Highly recommended." (<i>Choice</i>)<br /><br />"Crisply written, well argued and persuasive. Reading it, one looks forward to reading Roth again, in Posnock's new light."<b>---Chanan Tigay, <i>Forward</i></b><br /><br />"Ross Posnock's study may be the most intellectually complex as well as fiercely independent study of Roth's career to date. Filled with deft observations, [Posnock] offers authoritative readings of literature and society which have profound implications that exceed considerations of Roth, its ostensible solitary subject."<b>---Ranen Omer-Sherman, <i>Modernism/modernity</i></b><br /><br />"A very learned and stimulating critique of Philip Roth's fiction.... Ross Posnock has written one of the three best books on Philip Roth--if not the best.... He treats Roth's work as it deserves to be regarded, especially since no one as yet has adequately traced its roots to the major traditions of American literature."<b>---Jay L. Halio, <i>Shofar</i></b><br /><br />"In this complex and stimulating book, Ross Posnock . . . rethinks the career of American novelist Philip Roth. . . . Posnock places Roth within a cosmopolitan community of authors ranging from Melville to Salinger who have rejected the separation of mind and body in favor of an aesthetic that rejects the very idea of knowing oneself. . . . Posnock has written an excellent book of criticism, exploring not just Roth, but also literature that emerged mid-century with roots in a long tradition of American and European art."<b>---Peter Terry, <i>ForeWord</i></b><br /><br />"Ross Posnock's meditation upon Philip Roth is the best literary criticism yet afforded to our foremost novelist since Faulkner. Roth emerges from this study as a major American novelist in a literary tradition that goes back to Emerson and Henry James. Posnock clearly defines the writer whose heartening motto is: 'We are here to be insulted.' One of Roth's favorite adages is Heine's: 'There is a God and his name is Aristophanes.'"<b>Harold Bloom, literary critic</b><br /><br />"Far and away the most astute and nuanced account we have or likely to have for many years to come, of Roth's emergence as an unrivalled master of irony and irreverencea rhapsodic genius most alive when provoking moralists and liberationists alike. No critic has made a better case for Roth's place among the classic writers of the nation and the world."<b>Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles</b><br /><br />"Ross Posnock takes a familiar figure, on whom rivers of ink have been spilt, and completely reorients the critical context for an understanding of his work. His book gives us a powerful and original perspective on Roth, placing him in the mainstream of American literature from Emerson and Whitman to Ellison. Rightly emphasizing his later books, Posnock sees him as an antinomian writer, ruthless, outrageous, mind-bendingly complex yet deeply consistent."<b>Morris Dickstein, Graduate Center of the City University of New York</b><br /><br />"Philip Roth is arguably one of the two or three most important writers in America today, and Ross Posnock's book is a superlative achievement fully worthy of its subject. It is a masterful work of literary and cultural criticism. I loved reading it, and will return to it frequently for exhilaration and enlightenment. I have not the slightest doubt that many other readers will share my enthusiasm."<b>Michael Gilmore, Brandeis University</b>
zlib_text: For three amazing people
  who came through when I needed them most:
  Brian Feehan, Domini Stottsberry
  and Cheryl Wilson—
  with much love and many thanks.
  
   
  
  “I
  1
  can live with being on a small boat with no privacy for seven long days, the sun turning me into
  lobster girl, and mosquitoes feasting on me, I really can,” Riley Parker informed her mother. “But I
  swear to you, if I hear one more complaint or disgusting sexual innuendo from Mr. I’m-So-Hot-Every-
  Woman-Should-Bow-Down-To-Me, I’m just going to shove the idiot overboard. His constant licking
  his lips and saying he likes the idea of mother and daughter gives me the creeps.”
  Riley cast a glance of pure loathing at Don Weston, the annoying idiot in question. She’d met a lot
  of narcissistic pigs while earning her doctorate in linguistics, and a few more among the faculty at
  University of California, Berkeley, where she now taught, but he took the cake. He was a great brute
  of a man, with wide shoulders, a barrel chest and an attitude 