Steven J. Zipperstein on Philip Roth, in conversation with Judith Thurman

Steven J. Zipperstein on Philip Roth
in conversation with Judith Thurman
Wednesday, October 29, 6:30 pm, the Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Born in Newark, New Jersey—where his short stories and novels were often set— Philip Roth (1933–2018) wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to produce great literature. No writer was more dedicated to his craft, even as he was rubbing shoulders with the Kennedys and engaging in a spate of famous and infamous romances. And yet, as much as Roth wrote about sex and self, he viewed himself as socially withdrawn, living much like, in his words, an “unchaste monk."

Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews, including conversations with Roth himself about his life and work, Zipperstein provides an intimate and insightful look at one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers, placing his work in the context of his obsessions, as well as American Jewishness, freedom, and sexuality.

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author of ten books, including "Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History" and "Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing." Zipperstein's work has been translated into a wide range of languages and he has taught at Oxford and at universities in Russia, Poland, and France. Zipperstein is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Judith Thurman is the author of "Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller," which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction; "Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette,” which won the Los Angeles Times and the Salon Book Awards for biography; and two essay collections, "Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire" and “A Left-Handed Woman,” which won the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for The Art of the Essay. Among her other honors are the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Republic, and, most recently, the 2024 Silvers-Dudley Prize for Arts Criticism from the NYRB foundation. She began contributing to The New Yorker in 1987, where she has been a Staff Writer since 2000.