SOURCE: Royal, Derek Parker. “Postmodern Jewish Identity in Philip Roth's The Counterlife.” Modern Fiction Studies 48, no. 2 (summer 2002): 422-43.

In the following essay, Royal argues that The Counterlife is Roth's most pivotal novel and marks the starting point for his exploration of a postmodern Jewish identity.

Of all Philip Roth's novels, The Counterlife (1986) is perhaps his most pivotal. Read within the context of his oeuvre, it occupies a curious and highly revealing place in the author's literary trajectory. The novel is significant for several reasons. First, when it was written it was the most intricate and experimental (and postmodern) work Roth had ever created, especially in terms of (re)writing the self. He had attempted something like this in My Life as a Man (1974), but the textual ambitions of this exploration in The Counterlife make the earlier text pale by comparison. Second, it is the novel that temporarily suspends...