Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Roth's twenty-seventh book, Everyman, centers on a successful septuagenarian's response to his physical decline and approaching death.
The man, who's never named, has no religion or philosophy to cling to; reviewer Gail Caldwell of the Boston Globe writes that the book is a "swift, brutal novel about a heartbreakingly ordinary subject, and it is also testament to Roth that the book leaves you a little breathless and not at all bereft."
Roth, whose Portnoy's Complaint became a literary exemplar of the late-'60s sexual revolution, is one of only three living authors to see his work collected in the Library of America series.
This interview originally aired on May 18, 2006.
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