Not Getting It: The Allure of the Counterlife in Early and Late Roth
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2017
Abstract
Philip Roth, throughout his career—from “Goodbye, Columbus” (1959) to his final novel Nemesis (2010)—has been preoccupied with selfhood and identity in ways that lend themselves to analysis with fundamental psychoanalytic concepts and issues, particularly as they relate to uncontrolled impulses, unconscious drives and desires, and sublimation and repression. This essay engages with the ways in which Roth's fiction stages the impulsive dialectics of flight and return and fantasy and sublimation in his first and final works.
Identifier
10.5703/philrothstud.13.1.0029
Publisher
Purdue University Press
City
West Lafayette, IN
Repository Citation
Aarons, V. (2017). Not getting it: The allure of the counterlife in early and late Roth. Philip Roth Studies, 13(1), 29-44. doi: 10.5703/philrothstud.13.1.0029
Publication Information
Philip Roth Studies