Steven J. Zipperstein’s biog­ra­phy por­trays Roth as, first and fore­most, a writer. Philip Roth: Stung By Life draws on the places Roth lived and vis­it­ed, as well as his friends, fam­i­ly, lovers, and rivals, in order to cre­ate the works in his exten­sive oeu­vre. High­light­ing points of inter­sec­tion between Roth’s life and writ­ing — gleaned from archival mate­ri­als, inter­views, and mem­oirs of those who knew him, as well as inter­views with Roth him­self — Zip­per­stein gen­er­ous­ly nar­rates the life of a titan of Amer­i­can letters.

Roth was born in Newark, New Jer­sey, which boast­ed a bustling Jew­ish immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty and the site of sev­er­al of his most cel­e­brat­ed works. His par­ents, Bess and Her­man, loom large in his work. Roth’s Pat­ri­mo­ny: A True Sto­ry (1991) is a touch­ing mem­oir of his father’s ill­ness and death. Zip­per­stein writes that a scene in Portnoy’s Com­plaint (1969), in which the epony­mous onanis­tic narrator’s moth­er threat­ens him with a knife for not fin­ish­ing his meal, was based on an episode involv­ing Bess. The biog­ra­phy shows how Roth’s trav­els abroad, includ­ing trips to Prague (dur­ing which he met writ­ers from the ​“oth­er Europe” whose work he cham­pi­oned), to Israel, and the years spent in Lon­don with his sec­ond wife, Claire Bloom (whose por­trait of Roth in her Leav­ing a Doll’s House (1996) Roth felt cost him the Nobel Prize), informed his work.

Just as impor­tant­ly, writ­ers, includ­ing the angst-rid­den Franz Kaf­ka, the nov­el­ist Hen­ry James, and the play­wright William Shake­speare, are touch­stones in Roth’s writ­ing. The ever-sen­si­tive Roth was deeply wound­ed by Jew­ish crit­ic and nov­el­ist Irv­ing Howe’s scathing 1972 Com­men­tary essay ​“Philip Roth Recon­sid­ered.” In the wake of Howe’s cri­tique, Roth began pub­lish­ing nov­els fea­tur­ing his alter ego, Nathan Zuck­er­man. The first was The Ghost Writer (1979), in which Zuck­er­man imag­ines a fic­tion­al nov­el­ist, E. I. Lonoff, hav­ing a clan­des­tine affair with Anne Frank. Jew­ish­ness as a form of cul­tur­al and iden­ti­ty, rather than nor­ma­tive halakhic Judaism, is sig­nif­i­cant in Roth’s work, which is per­me­at­ed by Jew­ish pol­i­tics and fam­i­ly dynam­ics. Just as impor­tant­ly, Roth’s work touch­es on race rela­tions, the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, and near­ly every sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al trend in post­war America.

Sex­u­al­i­ty and the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women, includ­ing a mat­ter-of-fact­ness about infi­deli­ty, is preva­lent in Roth’s work as well as Zipperstein’s biog­ra­phy. Zip­per­stein high­lights Roth’s sex­u­al avari­cious­ness and the pul­chri­tude of his many para­mours. Although some read­ers may find this objec­ti­fi­ca­tion gra­tu­itous, it is true that Roth based many of his famous female char­ac­ters on women he knew. Dren­ka from Sabbath’s The­ater (1995), for exam­ple, was based on his phys­i­cal ther­a­pist, Malet­ta Pfeif­fer, with whom had an extend­ed affair. Zipperstein’s engage­ment with Roth’s sex life is used to show the cre­ative­ly gen­er­a­tive con­nec­tion between Roth’s life and art.