Letting Go of Philip Roth

Thoughts On the Retirement Of the Genius Who Immortalized My New Jersey World

I grew up surrounded by Rothschilds (the judge and his wife), Roths (owners of a chain of urban sneaker stores, they made a fortune off many iterations of Air Jordans), Rothmans (an optometrist and a field hockey teammate), and Rothbarts (best known for the wife’s affair with the new cantor at our temple). My last name felt about as not-special to me as the upper-middle-class Northern New Jersey suburbs where my parents were born and raised and where they were raising my brother and me. Our leafy street and its …