Philip Roth: 'You Begin Every Book As An Amateur' : NPR

Roth died Tuesday at age 85. He first became known in the late 1950s and '60s for writing a new kind of story of Jewish identity. In books like Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus, he wrote comically about young Jewish men who were alienated from their culture and families. His 1997 novel American Pastoral won a Pulitzer Prize, and he was twice awarded the National Book Award for Fiction. Roth appeared several times on Fresh Air over the years.

We remember him by revisiting excerpts from interviews in 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2006.