The Philip Roth Society

Bonhams auction house in New York has two important manuscript collections of Roth material coming up for sale on March 6. The separate collections are from close Roth friends: Barbara Sproul who was the dedicatee of The Great American Novel and the basis for at least one character in his novels, and Joel Conarroe, close friend and sometime editor, former President of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. More information on the auction can be found here: https://www.bonhams.co

The Newark Public Library is hosting two fundraising events for the Roth Library. The first is on a Saturday, April 25th. It is a(n updated) tour of Roth’s Newark, followed by a display of materials that have come to us so far for the personal library — a kind of sneak preview. The materials have some interest: Roth’s handwritten eighth grade year book (“My favorite author is John R. Tunis”), an email exchange with Kundera tucked into a book, and books with marginal notations

Entertainment Weekly gives David Simon's adaptation of The Plot Against America a rave review. The six episode miniseries debts March 16 on HBO. See the full review here: https://ew.com/tv-reviews/2020/02/18/plot-against-america-review/?fbclid=IwAR3MSUVZ63frY5Nj_i81TfG2PahzYzwNr5EK7h5oLFJBR651-SN6oaw2HXo

Congratulations to Luke Heister, who won this year's Siegel McDaniel Award for his essay, "The Consequences of the Sin of Informing: Philip Roth and Commentary." Luke is a Ph.D. candidate in English literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His work explores how the intersection of comedy and psychoanalysis crucially structures a notion of guilt in the themes and writing practices of Philip Roth. He received Mark Diamond Research Fund support to visit the Philip Roth pap