‘The Trust of the Reader Is Distrusted by Roth’

Philip Roth died this week at the age of 85, six years after announcing his retirement from writing. Over the past five decades, the novelist has loomed almost as large in The Atlantic’s pages as he has in the broader world of American letters. His name first appeared in the magazine when an excerpt of his third book, When She Was Good, was published in the November 1966 issue. By that time, Roth was already a known—if not remarkably well-known—figure in American literature. In the introduction to the excerpt, he was referred to as a “distinguished author” and praised for writing “fiction of a quality that brings perspective to truth.”

But Roth was then still in the early stages has published three more pieces by Roth and grappled with his powerfully personal, and at times controversial, writing in dozens of reviews, essays, and printed readers’ letters.