Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
My Life as a Man
Unavailable
My Life as a Man
Unavailable
My Life as a Man
Audiobook12 hours

My Life as a Man

Written by Philip Roth

Narrated by Dan John Miller

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying-and failing-to write his way free of it. Out of desperate inventions and cauterizing truths, acts of weakness, tenderheartedness, and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a work worthy of Strinberg-a fierce tragedy of sexual need and blindness.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 15, 2010
ISBN9781441805430
Unavailable
My Life as a Man
Author

Philip Roth

PHILIP ROTH (1933–2018) won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004” and the W.H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year, making Roth the first writer in the forty-six-year history of the prize to win it twice. In 2005 Roth became the third living American writer to have his works published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2012 he won Spain’s highest honor, the Prince of Asturias Award, and in 2013 he received France’s highest honor, Commander of the Legion of Honor.

More audiobooks from Philip Roth

Related to My Life as a Man

Related audiobooks

Literary Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for My Life as a Man

Rating: 3.7232142857142856 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

112 ratings4 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A little too over the top for me. The meta-fiction works well, but I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, each Philip Roth in this book really hates women."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a crafty, ferocious, angry book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Peter Tarnopol's life as a man is all downhill after he meets Maureen Johnson. He becomes a pathetic captive of this evil woman, marries her and cannot escape even after after her unregretted death. An exceptional piece of writing, hilarity amid the pathos.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't know off hand how many Roth books I've read now, but I suspect it's easily in the two digits. I've also read more essays, reviews and entire books of criticism of Roth than any sane person should. A common criticism of his work is that he portrays women poorly, that he is in fact a misogynist.Maybe it's because I didn't graduate from college and was therefore able to avoid any sort of Gender Studies class, but I never really had a problem with his portrayal of women. He typically has two extreme versions of women in his novels. Woman 1 : Simple, easy to get along with. There to please. Lacking any sort of personality or sense of self.Woman 2 : Bold, articulate, straight forward. Demanding and challenging.In most of his stories, his protagonist will at some point have to decide between these two types of women. They always struggle to choose and the outcome is never the same. While I have considered that it would be nice if he'd occasionally write about a more balanced woman, I don't think that every book I read has to incorporate every type of person ever, so I mostly scoff and roll my eyes at the more feminist criticisms of his work.Then, I read this book.Stop the presses, it's true : Philip Roth hates women. Knowing as much as I do about his background, it is clear to me that this book was a direct attack on his first wife, who died well before the book was written. This novel is the story of their relationship, their downfall and her eventual death. It reads as a bitter, scathing, one-sided and completely unfair assessment of their relationship. The woman is a crazy person, he is perfect. All of their problems were her fault.It was gossipy, hostile and downright unpleasant to read. I will not be reading this again and I'm hoping to soon forget it.That said, the prose was beautiful. He wrote some interesting tidbits about Chicago and the first 1/4 of the book, before he got nasty, was intriguing enough.In summation : Uh, don't read this unless you really, really hate women.

    1 person found this helpful