As he stood at the Miller Theater podium following a tribute to his own achievements, literary legend Philip Roth couldn’t help poking fun at an afternoon of near-eulogizing.
“I’m glad to be reminded that it’s not a funeral,” Roth joked. “I did have my doubts.”

A crowd of eager bookworms stood Friday afternoon in a line stretching half a block up Broadway in order to get a seat at the event, which marked Roth’s 75th birthday. The celebration—organized by, among others, the Library of America and the Columbia American studies department—honored Roth’s almost half a century of literary work, which has earned him acclaim from critics and readers alike. Roth’s work, hailed for its cutting wit and provocative insights into American life, has won him a Pulitzer Prize, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, and two National Book Awards.

A “living literary Legend,” as described by biographer Hermione Lee, Roth was hailed by two panels of writers—one group of younger fiction writers who spoke on the personal impact of Roth’s novels, followed by a more formal, analytical panel of academics and biographers.

Authors Jonathan Lethem, Nathan Englander, and Charles D’Ambrosio recalled discovering Roth’s novels in their youth and finding an escape from the trials of their adolescence in his portrayal of relationships, masculinity, and living as a Jewish-American.

“It’s like a guide,” Englander said. “This is exactly how I ruin my life.”

“I’ve mouthed off plenty about Roth, but usually he’s not in the room,” D’Ambrosio joked.

“It [Roth’s writing] takes my breath away,” Lee said, citing Roth’s novel The Ghost Writer as a particularly noteworthy portrait of Jews living in America.

With a voice “as indelible as Hemingway’s or Faulkner’s,” according to Max Rudin, a publisher at the Library of America who introduced the event, Roth has seen an unprecedented “creative renewal,” completing 23 works of fiction and five works of nonfiction. His books include American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America.

Lee described him as a “narrative factory.”

“I just go to the books ... just to take the sustenance from those sentences,” Lethem said.

“There’s this simplicity,” Englander said of Roth’s writing. “It’s so deceptively simple, but it’s hyper-complicated.”

Roth punctuated his speech with anecdotes of a post-war youth, such as writing his first story under the decidedly more white-bred pen name of “Eric Duncan.”

“Time runs out at a terrifying speed,” Roth said. “Let’s do it [the celebration] again in 25 years.”

Roth received a standing ovation and audience calls for an encore, to which he responded, “Shall I read my speech over again?”

alix.pianin@columbiaspectator.com