Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author

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Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, edited by Derek Parker Royal. Westport: Praeger, 2005. 303 pp. $39.95.

Though Philip Roth's American Pastoral only won runner-up honors in The New York Times recent poll of the best work of American fiction of the past twenty-five years (losing out to Toni Morrison's Beloved), Roth was the only writer mentioned more than twice by the panel of contemporary critics and novelists who judged the contest; in fact, Roth made the list a stunning six times. As Derek Parker Royal says in his excellent introduction to a new essay collection, Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author: "Of all contemporary American writers, Philip …