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Original Title:	The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography
ISBN:	0679749055 (ISBN13: 9780679749059)
Edition Language:	English

The Facts Paperback | Pages: 208 pages

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Title	:	The Facts
Author	:	Philip Roth
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 208 pages
Published	:	January 28th 1997 by Vintage (first published 1988)
Categories	:	Biography. Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir

Commentary Toward Books The Facts

The Facts is an unconventional autobiography. Roth concentrates on five episodes from his life: his secure city childhood in the 1930s and '40s; his education in American life at a conventional college; his passionate entanglement, as an ambitious young man, with the angriest person he ever met (the "girl of my dreams" Roth calls her); his clash, as a fledgling writer, with a Jewish establishment outraged by "Goodbye, Columbus"; and his discovery, in the excesses of the sixties, of an unmined side to his talent that led him to write "Portnoy's Complaint." The book concludes, in true Rothian fashion, with a sustained assault by the novelist against his proficiencies as an autobiographer.

Rating Based On Books The Facts

Ratings: 3.67 From 944 Users | 104 Reviews

Crit Based On Books The Facts

I actually fell asleep reading this book at my desk, lost half an hour of my afternoon redeemed only by the fact my Roth induced nap involved a mildly erotic dream, woke up with a dead right arm from where I had slumped over the edge of my desk, and discovered drool running from the corner of my mouth. I'm not even sure why I picked the thing up to read in the first place, it was a completely random act. Aside from the final section I had to force myself through the pages.

It does take hubris or narcissism or whatever to write an autobiography of the "Facts" behind the written fiction. The author must believe that somebody has taken the time to read *those* works and then regards those works well enough to want to read the behind the scenes details. Well, since I'm reading all of Roth, the author might be correct in his assumption. It mainly works since Roth approaches the same level of writing that he does in his novels. Which isn't hard since the main character

William Burroughs referred to Paul Bowles autobiography, "Without Stopping", as "Without Telling". I was reminded of that while reading "The Facts". It isn't that Roth doesn't tell us the truth, whatever that might be, it's simply that he doesn't tell us anything that those of us who have read everything else didn't already know.Having said that, his family is removed a few steps from the representations in the Zuckerman novels--meaningfully so--and the entire narrative resonates profoundly in

Only Roth would write an autobiography in which his fictional alter-ego chastises him for not being fully introspective and honest, a meta-trick fully acknowledged and in turn criticized: " . . . the book is fundamentally defensive. Just as having this letter at the end is a self-defensive trick to have it both ways." Either brilliant or exasperating or both.

BUS RIDING BOOKS"The Facts, a novelist autobiography", by Philip Roth Here is my review of the bookIn his autobiography, Philip Roth is looking at the wounds that plagued him for decades, yet were kept at a distance. The same troubles that led him to a grave depression after he decided to open himself up by writing these pages. For him, like for so many other writers before him, this self-investigation is like a second chance. That's the beauty of being a writer I suppose: Roth can fictionalise

Should you care about the life story of novelist Phillip Roth? I've read a few of his books (Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint were my long ago introductions, and Everyman is my all time favorite) and I've enjoyed listening to him in interviews. I found this book worth reading because it is so redolent of, and parallel to, my father's Bronx immigrant Jewish world, and my father's experience of coming out of that world into the larger American world. Like my father, Roth married a troubled

It is a given these days to treat the "facts" contained within autobiographies with a grain of salt. In the past, authors quietly manipulated events to tell a specific story with the hope that reviewers did not notice. Today, blending fiction and fact is all the rage. Whereas some autobiographers (James Frey, for example) get into trouble by falsifying information, most others get away with their constructed versions of reality.Given Philip Roth's long career as a novelist drawing on his