Philip Roth And Irving Roth: Using Negative Stereotypes Of The Holocaust

A Jewish writer like Philip Roth commonly receives pressure from other Jewish people against using negative stereotypes of his race. In one case, this pressure took form as an argument between Roth and Irving Howe where the latter argued against Roth attacking Jewish life. But how much do these criticisms benefit? I find that such heavy-handed criticism scares new writers into restricting what they write. Maybe it is simply better to dial down the criticism and allow the Jewish writers let their own Jewish identity dictate what they add to the story or maybe the present has already approached the former idea with the use of the Internet.

To begin our analysis of the criticism, we must first reconstruct what I’m going to refer to (for the sake of simplicity) as the original argument. The original argument on attacking Jewish life is best framed by the indirect exchange between Philip Roth and Irving Howe. Roth’s opinion on the matter is summed through dialogue from The Ghost Writer and from his article, “Writing About Jews.” From the article, Roth believes that they can’t live on

While Howe makes some good points, piling onto somebody who had no intent to deceitfully smear other Jews is punishing the wrong person. The anti-Semites should be held responsible for what they use his work for. We can’t blame an author if his enemy holds the author’s work hostage. It is understandable, however, for people to take offense at Roth’s work considering the time it was made in. During the 1970’s, the Holocaust was still fresh in the minds of some Jewish scholars. So when the same Jewish scholars saw a man attack their way of life while using characters that furthered some negative stereotypes, they decided to criticize his work despite knowing that Roth had meant no harm to their