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On this day in history, March 19th, the American literary icon Philip Roth was born. I wanted to learn a little more about the man whose books have filled so many of my reading hours, so I used Oxford Reference Online which led me to the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. The following excerpt, by William H. Pritchard, is just a small portion of the fascinating biography you can find in the Oxford Encylopedia of American Literature. Happy Birthday Mr. Roth!

Philip Roth’s literary career is extra-ordinary in a number of ways other than its continued production of surprising, vital, imaginative works. It began when his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five stories, won the National Book Award for 1959; it reached a peak of notoriety ten years later when Portnoy’s Complaint became not only a best-seller but also a portent of the decay of American youth. (Students now came to college, declared Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, with pot and Portnoy secreted in their suitcases.) The career’s most recent stage, beginning in 1993, shows a writer in his seventh decade who brought out no less than six novels, all of them distinctive, three of them possible examples of masterwork. At his seventieth birthday in March 2003, he stood as a writer who has exhibited astonishing staying power, but also one who has deepened, extended, and invariably transformed himself.

It is not easy to name the qualities that most distinguish Roth’s work as a novelist. He has from first to latest shown a strong intelligence, fearsomely articulate in its ability to formulate positions, then argue with them by way of moving on to new ones just as temporary as the one abandoned. Everyone testifies to, even if they disagree about its ultimate value, his comic wit, often darkly sardonic but always incorrigibly playful. He has said that “Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends,” and it may be said of him (as Robert Frost liked to say about himself) that he is never more serious than when joking. Roth’s brand of serious play has been notably engaged in exploring, often in increasingly transgressive ways, the erotic life of American men and women in heterosexual relations that are usually combative, to say the least. One must speak also of what to some readers may seem nebulous: the auditory satisfactions of Roth’s narrative voices, whose lucidity and rhythmic movement are unsurpassed. Finally, and extending this remark about movement to the career as a whole, one notes with pleasure the way in which any book of his has succeeded its predecessor in a manner always surprising, yet somehow, upon thinking about it, inevitable. To describe the dynamic of that succession over the course of forty-four years is the burden of this account.

Early Life and Education
Roth was born 19 March 1933, the second son of Herman and Bess Finkel Roth; his older brother, Alexander, would become a commercial artist. His father was assistant district manager in the Essex, New Jersey, office of Metropolitan Life Insurance; his mother, as we might assume from Roth’s characterization of her in his autobiographical

Good Morning Friends:

Today’s post will be my last post here at Garden Painter Art. I will keep this blog up as a reference for myself, and because many people will still look for me here for quite some time.

I have finally taken the plunge and changed my business name. Along with the change comes a new blog, a new Etsy shop and a new world…Gerushia’s New World.

I would like to extend my thanks to all of my devoted readers and friends. You have all helped pull me through some dark hours over the last year. Your emails and “mail box notes” have been so appreciated.

I hope to put the darkness of my mom’s long and ugly illness behind me. My intentions are to open up a new blog filled with color, curiosity and goodness. So, if you would like to enter my new world and hear Gerushia’s story, please accept my invitation to visit my new blog...

Gerushia's New World


Sincerely and With Appreciation
Kim
Gerushia’s New World

Today is my last day at McNally Jackson Books. Tomorrow I will be the full-time proprietor of Greenlight Bookstore.

It feels weirdly like the last day of high school.

Remember that? If you were like me, you knew exactly where you were headed, and you were excited to be going there, stomach full of butterflies for the unknown adventure ahead. But there was also an almost unbearable nostalgia-in-the-making for all you were about to leave behind: the place, the people, the quirks, the routine. There's so much you learned here, both practical and philosophical, and so much you loved. It makes for a pretty intense set of emotions. (Which run the risk of sounding incredibly sappy when articulated.)

There's something about working in an indie bookstore which makes for a much more emotionally heightened workplace atmosphere than, say, working in an office. Some of us call it the "Empire Records phenomenon" (which is the best silly '90s movie about indie retail life ever -- highly recommended if you are of a certain age and sensibility, though I take no responsibility for it.) I've noticed a similar sense of cameraderie working in a restaurant -- the amount of physical work you do together makes for a set of shared jokes, systemic quirks, annoyances, and ways of working with and around each other that tends to bond coworkers pretty quickly.
But I think it's even more pronounced in a bookstore (and maybe a record store) -- there's a shared intellectual life as well as a shared physical experience. Not that we sit around and talk about Literature all day, but we're all doing this because we love books in our own particular way, and our engagement with books is part of our engagement with each other.

Additionally, I've never worked anywhere that the employees were as engaged and invested in the life of the bookstore as they are at McNally Jackson. This is primarily Sarah McNally's doing: she is both a visionary and an expert delegator, finding for each person the area of expertise where they can excel and giving them a great deal of autonomy in running it. Displays, signage, section maintenance, book clubs, and yes, author events are in a constant state of tweaking and improving, because they are run by booksellers who have the opportunity to figure out how to make things work better. This, too, makes for a strong bond to the store itself, since we all have a very real role in its existence and identity.

There are a million other reasons why working at McNally Jackson has been a rewarding and affecting experience -- but I'm running out of time.

Allison, John T., Katie, Dustin, Adjua, Yvette, David, Cheryl, Erin, Rebecca, Stewart, Angela, Doug, Brook, Eddie, Darrell, Sam, Jane, Byron, Gabi, Eva, Sandy, Keala, Caroline, John M., Yvonne, Javier -- you are damn fine booksellers and friends of mine, and I will miss you.

After tonight's author event, we're going out to a local watering hole for a proper drunken sendoff. I'm grateful for a moment to savor what has been, before turning my eyes to what's ahead.

I recently learned that Helen McGrath, my first agent and a devoted support of California Writers Club, passed away.

I was lucky enough to find the Mt. Diablo Branch of California Writers Club at the beginning of my career. That was some twenty-odd years ago and I was a bright-eyed, brand-new, and fairly intimidated new writer. Once I finally got up the nerve to attend a meeting, (no small feat) I met Helen McGrath. 

Helen was one of the founding members of the club and attended all the meetings as well as served on the board in various capacities. But back then I didn't know any of that. I only knew that she was a real, live literary agent and I was utterly awe-stuck at being that close to someone who was actually in the business. I can remember having Helen pointed out to me across the room but it was several meetings before I got the nerve up to ask someone to introduce me. 

She was very kind. 
I was really nervous. 
She asked what I was working on. 
I looked at my feet and mumbled, "Young adult romance." 

I waited for her to laugh, but she didn't. She murmured some encouraging words before moving on to chat with someone else in the room.
 
A few months later CWC convinced me to take on the job of the club newsletter. This was pre-computer days which meant I gathered the news at meetings and over the phone and then did a cut-and-paste mock-up that needed to be printed out. Helen was in possession of one of those rarities, a copy machine. Once a month I would make the drive to her house to drop off the copy. She would make the copies and someone else would stamp and mail them. She had two big dogs that thought the world rose and set on her. They loved Kleenex and Helen would stuff her pockets with Kleenex and pretend not to notice when they would sneak up and try to steal one from her. Every time they succeeded she would just laugh and laugh. A big dog lover myself, the dogs made it easy for me to talk to her. Dogs I knew. Writing I was learning.
 
One day while I was wrestling with her dogs she asked me how I was doing on my novel. I gulped hard and told her it was finally done. 

Then she asked those words that every writer wants to her from a respected professional in the business, "So when do I get to read it?" 

I stuttered a bit, blushed a lot, and mumbled something about bringing it to the next meeting. Sure enough, at the next meeting she sought me out and asked for the manuscript. I handed it over, my heart very much in my hands.

The waiting for her response was agonizing. What if she didn't like it? What if she did? When I went to drop off the newsletter the next month she found all sorts of things to talk about that had nothing to do with my manuscript. I was still too shy to speak up for myself. I finally gave up and turned to leave and she let me get the front door open before she called me back.

"I like it," she said. "It's good. I'd like to be your agent." I floated home on that proverbial Cloud Nine. 

Within a few months, she had sold my first novel for me. 

During that waiting time between selling the book and waiting to see it in print, Helen invited me to my first ever author event, a huge publisher sponsored book launch in San Francisco. I don't remember the name of the author or the name of the book that was being launched or even where it was held.

I do remember Helen telling me, "You need to get used to this. This is your life now."
 
Thank you, Helen, for opening the door for me and so many other writers over the years.

I know I'm out of school and all, but some things have happened this summer to cause me to seriously investigate my family tree. Fortunately, there are simply floors of paintings here in Castle Nyx . . . dozens of dark, mysterious paintings of the Nyx ancestors with eyes that I swear move! Most of them are of people long dead -- great-great-great something-or-others, but there are a few that looked to me as if the paint were fresher. It was these I studied.

First, in the hall to the first floor dining room was an old portrait of a cat-eyed woman dressed for safari. According to the brass plate screwed into the frame, this was my wicked Auntie Fae, who disappeared somewhere in the Australian Outback in '89. With a little help (1-800-CUZFNDR) I discovered my Aunt had had a son some years ago whom she had abandoned on the steps of the Public Library of New South Wales in Sydney. Trooper Cordell.

Second, in the west wing, just below the servants quarters, hung a portrait all in greys -- a face I could barely distinguish beneath the strange cape and hood he wore. Coincidentally (dun-dun-dun) as I pondered, the door rang and there stood a hooded figure claiming to be a Nyx cousin thrice removed - an enigmatic shadow-boy with arms full of books who called himself the Velvet Pickle.

Third, in the observatory is a portrait of someone Grandmama calls "That cousin who lurks on the moors." Of course my ears perked up at the word cousin -- but it turned out he was dead 54 years past, or was he? I stowed away on the next ship to Cardiff to find my dark eyed cousin (or is it his descendant?) Gabriel Gethin, who was wandering the moors with a dog-eared paperback copy of Wuthering Heights clutched in his long fingers and looking not a day past 16.

By now I'm sure you're wondering, where are Twyla's dearest evil cousins, Avery and Aislinn? Sadly, oh so sadly for me, they have spread their wings and started their own blog of reviews called nineseveneight. Read them, I command it, for though they have broken my dark heart, they write the most fawesome of reviews.

Welcome my 3 long lost cousins, and fare thee well Avery and Aislinn. I pray you'll stop by for a visit, my dearest ones -- for you will always be my Evil Cousins!

Yours truly,
Twyla Lee