Novels 1973-1977: The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire

This third volume in The Library of America’s definitive edition of Philip Roth’s collected works presents three markedly different novels that together trace a crucial period in the bold evolution of one of America’s indispensable novelists. Surely the funniest novel ever written about baseball, The Great American Novel (1973) turns our national pastime into unfettered picaresque farce. The cast of improbable characters includes: Gil Gamesh, the pitcher who actually tried to kill the umpire; John Baal, the ex-con first baseman, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a home run sober; and the House Un-American Activities Committee. My Life as a Man (1974), Roth’s most blistering novel, presents the treacherous world of Strindberg nearly a century later in the story of a fierce marital tragedy of obsession and blindness and desperate need. The Professor of Desire (1977)-the novel that prompted Milan Kundera to proclaim Roth “a great historian of modern eroticism”-follows an adventurous man of intelligence and feeling into and out of the tempting wilderness of erotic possibility.

Library of America #165