Limited clothbound publication available exclusively through the LOA website.

On March 25, 2018, friends of Philip Roth gathered at the New York Public Library for a memorial service to celebrate his life and extraordinary career.
This keepsake volume gathers the remarks delivered by the evening’s speakers. Claudia Roth Pierpont reminds us that there were two Philip Roths—the writer and the man—and remembers how he was “truly at home in New York . . . a walker in the city.” Norman Manea recalls his first meeting with Roth soon after he had emigrated from Romania and the thirty-year friendship that began with a disagreement over the relative merits of Proust and Celine. Bernard Avishai channels the older generation of “totemic Jewish men” whose voices populated Roth’s daily conversation. Nicole Krauss discusses the solace and inspiration she found in both Roth’s novels and his everyday conversation.

Janis Bellow reminisces about Roth’s relationship with Saul Bellow and her own friendship with the writer that endured after her husband’s death. Judith Thurman, who remembers talking with Roth about his own death as early as 1983, concludes that while “the specter of mortality haunts Philip’s fiction, he could mock his own dread of it.” Julia Golier describes Roth’s unexpected relationship as an honorary grandfather to her twin children. Edna O’Brien pronounces him “The Great Comic Literary Conquistador” whose forebear was Kafka. Roth’s literary agent Andrew Wylie pulls back the curtain on what his client was really like. Benjamin Taylor relates Roth’s final days and recounts one of his “earlier brushes with the great enemy.” And Joel Conarroe concludes the event with several uproarious excerpts from his dear friend’s letters.

ISBN: 978-1-59853-660-7

This special clothbound publication features acid-free paper and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.