“... a complicated bastard, which is why he needed so many alter egos (Nathan Zuckerman, David Kepesh, Peter Tarnopol) to thrash himself out.Any efforts at fine-shading Roth’s behaviour with women into a three-dimensional portrait runs into the problem of his two marriages. If any man had been shaped by nature and disposition to be a permanent bachelor, a ...”

“... a more complex state of enchantment with the theatre. Early in The Tragic Muse, the young diplomat Peter Sherringham, not yet in love with the actress Miriam Rooth, notices that ‘the plastic quality of her person was the only definite sign of a vocation.’ Later, he sees that ‘she was always acting, that her existence was a series of parts assumed for the ...”

“... February 1933, after staying over New Year with Hale in California, he made straight for their graves in Bellefontaine Cemetery: ‘Certainly the town was full of sadness for me; not so much on account of my mother as on account of my father; it was his city not hers; he was born there and worked for it and died there; and also I shall be haunted by my ...”