This author frequently set his work in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey. While considered to be largely auto-biographical, his work blended aspects of non-fiction and fiction and was considered '"provocative" in how it raised questions about American Identity. Roth received the National Book award twice, along with The National Book Critics Circle Award, the Faulkner Award and perhaps most notably, a Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral.
Roth's parents where second-generation Jewish immigrants and many characters in his writing are also Jewish.
American Pastoral by
American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall - of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. Seymour "Swede" Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even the most private, well-intentioned citizen, it seems, gets to sidestep the sweep of history. With vigorous realism, Roth takes us back to the conflicts and violent transitions of the 1960s. This is a book about loving - and hating - America. It's a book about wanting to belong - and refusing to belong - to America. It sets the desire for an American pastoral - a respectable life of space, calm, order, optimism, and achievement - against the indigenous American Berserk.
Playful and Serious by
Few contemporary American writers have stirred the minds and emotions of their readers as Philip Roth has done. Even fewer writers have excelled in various forms of the comic as Roth has for over a half-century. Playful and Serious assembles a group of outstanding Roth scholars and critics who focus their attention on the different ways Roth brings his comic tendencies to bear on essentially serious topics. The term "comic" is used in the broadest sense to include humor, irony, satire, comedy, black comedy, and their variations. As co-editor Ben Siegel points out, Roth's special humor often appears to grow "more surrealistic and obsessive, as in each new fiction he tries not merely to surpass the daily news but to touch what is deeply private and dark in the modern psyche." In the process, he targets "his society's most deeply embedded pieties and hypocrisies, enthusiasms, and lunacies."
Another Newark native, Weinberg discovered his love of music at an early age. Starting at age 6, he began playing drums and was playing Bar Mitzvahs by the age of 7. While he did initially intend on becoming a lawyer, he remained very interested and invested in music during that time in his life. He fully deviated from his plans when he began playing in the E Street Band for Bruce Springsteen. He has also been associated with Bonnie Tyler, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Jim Steinman and Meatloaf.
In his personal life, Weinberg does not seem like the rock and roll sort. He credits his Jewish background with his philosophy on drumming, and how it serves the band's music.
He is also the father to Jay Weinberg, the drummer for Slipknot.
Here are some places in located in New Jersey that are important to Jewish-American history, state history and national history. Some sites are closed to the public and can only be viewed from outside.