David Gooblar. The Major Phases of Philip Roth.

In his 1984 discussion of the art of fiction, Philip Roth observes that, although he has always pursued his own line of work, his books have never been detached from his country’s history and culture or from his personal experience and reading. Indeed, Roth agues, “[t]here’s always something behind a book to which it has no seeming connection, something invisible to the reader which has helped to release the writer’s initial impulse” (“The Art of Fiction” 234). In response to this remark, Dav...