Editors' Introduction Other People's Roths
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Ever since its inception, Philip Roth Studies has been publishing essays dealing with Roth's relationships with other writers, exploring the ways in which his work has directly influenced, and been influenced by, novelists, dramatists, poets, philosophers, and critics; and the ways in which his works can be read intertextually—placed in dialogue with that of precursors, peers, and a younger generation of writers. In this special issue, however, we wanted to highlight some of the ways in which Roth (which is to say, his work, his public persona, and his cultural presence) has been adapted, appropriated, and translated (literally and metaphorically) by others.
Consequently, this special issue features a range of forms to explore the Roths that emerge in and around other voices. We include academic essays—on the film adaptations of The Humbling (by Andrew Gordon) and Indignation (by David Gooblar), on Listen Up Philip (which implicitly invokes Roth not just in its title but in numerous other ways articulated by Tanguy Bérenger), on the uses Jonathan Franzen has made of Roth in his fiction and non-fiction (by Michael Kalisch) and on the uses Roth has made of Yeats (by Jack Knowles). The issue is enriched by an account of the challenges and opportunities afforded by the process of translating Roth into Hungarian (by Anna Nemes), an interview with a visual and performance artist (Bryan Zanisnik) who has developed a complex relationship with Roth over the course of a number of artworks and a legal dispute, and an exuberantly satirical reinvention of Roth in the form of a story by Tim Parrish, who will be known to many readers of the journal for his excellent body of critical work on Roth. What unites all these pieces—and all the various versions of Roth that these artists, film-makers, translators, and writers have produced—is a tension between reverence and irreverence, and/or a struggle to arrive at an authentic version of Roth that is at the same time a subjective reinvention of him. In this way, "Other People's Roths" both contributes to existing conversations on Roth and begins new ones. [End Page 6]
David Brauner is Professor of Contemporary Literature at The University of Reading (UK) and Executive Co-editor of Philip Roth Studies. He is the author of three books: Post-War Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2001), Philip Roth (Manchester University Press, 2007) and Contemporary American Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2010). He is the co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction (2015) with Axel Stähler and of a special Lorrie Moore issue of The Journal of American Studies (46.3) with Heidi MacPherson. His essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, including The Journal of American Studies, The Yearbook of English Studies, Studies in the Novel, Modern Language Review, Canadian Literature, Studies in American Jewish Literature and Philip Roth Studies.
Debra Shostak is Mildred Foss Thompson Professor of English Language and Literature and co-chair of the Department of English at the College of Wooster, Ohio. Co-editor of Philip Roth Studies, she is the author of Philip Roth: Countertexts, Counterlives and editor of Philip Roth: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America. She has published widely on contemporary American fiction and on film.
