It’s the birthday of Philip Roth, born in 1933 and still kicking, whose reputation as the “great American novelist” is perhaps unparalleled. He has written over 30 books of fiction, the majority of them novels, and is known for his exploration of Jewish themes and of “the tension between license and restraint,… a struggle between the hunger for personal liberty and the forces of inhibition” (Roth’s own words).

Roth was born and raised in suburban Newark, New Jersey, in a Jewish-American family; he had one older brother and a secure childhood family-wise but faced prejudice and sometimes violence for being Jewish. (Ironically, some of his satirical handling of Jewish themes later opened Roth himself up to accusations of anti-Semitism.) After attending a mostly Jewish high school, he studied English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1954, and got his M.A. from the University of Chicago (where he met Saul Bellow) in 1955. By then he had started writing fiction.

His first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, was published in 1959 and won the National Book Award and several other awards; the charges of anti-Semitism began. He then wrote a couple of books considered “meh” by some critics but in 1969 published Portnoy’s Complaint, which was very well-received critically, sold hugely, and was banned in Australia. (Australia! Who knew?) The book is a monologue of a young, unmarried Jewish lawyer talking to his psychoanalyst and describing in crude, unvarnished, hilarious detail his various adventures in masturbation (among other things). The novel garnered Roth so much attention that he actually moved out of New York City and to the Yaddo Artist Colony.

So: many more books and some teaching (University of Iowa, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania). His novel Sabbath’s Theater (1995) won him a second National Book Award, and American Pastoral (1997), the first novel in a trilogy, won the Pulitzer. He continued to write and win major awards well into old age and, interestingly, has become a literary superstar in France: his work is being included in the Pléiade series, which publishes top French and world literature—a very rare honor for a living (and foreign) author. (I guess they prefer their authors French, and dead.)

Roth finally stopped writing around 2010. He has retired to the Upper West Side in New York City and lives alone; his two marriages both ended badly. He said in a 2018 New York Times interview that these days he spends a good deal of time reading, particularly nonfiction and particularly American and modern European history—but also dips into things like Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run.” Roth, who today turns 85, said this: “I have many dear dead friends. A number were novelists. I miss finding their new books in the mail.”

Have a whole lot more coffee as necessary on this chilly Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.