Not P but Roth

[Mark Kohut]

Didja know that, sometime after his earliest work, but starting with *The
Breast, *and skipping some, I think,  Roth did some light revising, some
tweaking of many-maybe most--of his maturest self--thematic irony
intended--fiction? The slightly revised paperback editions a year later are
the definitive editions used for the Library of America definitive
editions. Unexpected to me, since he took such pains all the writing while.

And I found THIS below. Roth responds to a review of *The Great American
Novel, *his baseball novel (and one of the best long works to "read" via
audio because it is wordplay and loose as a young athlete and you don't
have to 'follow' any plot carefully) by William Gass*, *it seems; perhaps a
review which treats earlier juvenilia, dunno, so to joke about*
Portnoy *and* The
Breast *speculatively. I really like the remark in itself and as a lifelong
theme/insight.


The Sporting News
<https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/05/31/the-sporting-news/> from the
May 31, 1973 issue

*To the Editors:*

Please advise Professor Gass that I am too old to be grown up.

Philip Roth
New York City

Bob Dylan: I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.