SOURCE: Milowitz, Steven. “Holocaust Writing.” In Philip Roth Considered: The Concentrationary Universe of the American Writer, pp. 147-65. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000.

In the following essay, Milowitz examines Roth's treatment of the Holocaust in such works as The Professor of Desire, The Prague Orgy, Deception, Operation Shylock, and others.

Why come to the battered heart of Europe if not to examine just this? Why come into the world at all? ‘Students of literature, you must conquer your squeamishness once and for all! You must face the unseemly thing itself! You must come off your high horse! There, there is your final exam.’

—Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire

“Black milk” enters our consciousness as one of the most remarked upon and treasured metaphors of the Holocaust, encapsulating of the reversal of normalcy and the metamorphosis of what once nourished into that which sickens. Milk, the breast's incorruptible...