Roth and Trauma The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995-2010) [Paperback]

Roth and Trauma: The Problem of History in the Later Works (1995-2010)moves beyond a critical reception of Philip Roth's recent fiction that has focused primarily on an interest in post WWII America. By contrast, Aimee Pozorski argues that these novels grapple more comprehensively with US history in their fascination with America's traumatic beginnings and the legacy of the American Revolution. Drawing on close readings and trauma theory,Roth and Traumareveals the problem of history in Roth's later works to be the unexpected and repeated appearance of historical trauma that links the still-unfinished American dream with the nightmarish quality of our recent history.

With an engaging combination of personal warmth and scholarly comprehensiveness, as well as an ear attuned to the poetics of prose, Aimee Pozorski expands the horizons of critical discourse by reading the masterpieces of Philip Roth's late period as excavations of 'the darker secrets of American identity,' going back as far as the Revolutionary War. A sophisticated grasp of the temporality of traumatic experience sustains Pozorski as she bears witness to the cultural wounds laid bare in Roth's work. Peter L. Rudnytsky, Professor of English, University of Florida, USA, and author of Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud and Other Essays in Re-Vision (2011)

In a superb reappraisal of Philip Roth's later works, Aimee Pozorski argues in Roth and Trauma that, since 1995, the novels have conveyed a deeply historical view of the United States. Roth and Trauma sweeps away narrow readings focused on Roth as a Jew, as a self-contemplating postmodernist, and as an American preoccupied solely with the anxieties of the late twentieth century. Through lively, astute close readings of Roth's novels, and informed by the insights of trauma theory, Pozorski uncovers compelling evidence that Roth's preoccupation with the unforeseen in the later fiction bears witness to how past Amerl+