Roth's metafiction exercise in this work once again showcases his genius both in ideas and form.

It is an incredibly amazing book. Everything is intertwined in real history and fiction, especially in the last chapter.

It is yet another great book by one of the greatest writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The way he weaves the story, blurring the lines between the real and the fictional, is truly masterful.

Readers are taken on a journey that challenges their perception of truth and reality.

The book not only entertains but also makes one think deeply about the nature of storytelling and the power of imagination.

It is a must-read for anyone who appreciates great literature and wants to explore the boundaries of fiction.

Overall, it is a remarkable achievement that solidifies Roth's place as a literary giant.

An innocuous enough account of key periods in the author’s life. It seems so on the surface, almost. The chapters regarding his college years and his subsequent rift with the Jewish Community, ironically caused by stories in his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, especially “Defender of the Faith” - which is by far the most accomplished story in the collection - are of great interest to a reader whose curiosity is piqued by Roth. However, the author’s inability to come to terms with his disastrous first marriage stains The Facts just as thoroughly as his fictional narrative of his dead wife in My Life as a Man is marred by the voice of the malevolent, grudge-baring author. My Life as a Man is as awful as the alleged autobiographical facts of the marriage that irrevocably transform The Facts into a narrative of a man desperately in need of therapy to get over his deceased wife. To make matters even worse, the final chapter is penned by one of Roth’s alter egos, Nathan Zuckerman, who points out the weaknesses in Roth’s account of women in his life. It’s as if the reader requires this Rothian counter narrative to make sense of the facts or The Facts themselves. Never is Roth as disposable as a writer as when he nitpicks about his exes and attempts to justify his misery.

This is my first Roth book, and I read it with intense and growing curiosity.

The impression I got was that of an empirical autobiographical description of the facts (perhaps even deliberately self-censored), without being subject to interpretations or analyses by the author.

The last chapter is brilliant, and without it, the book would not have the same meaning.

Roth's writing style is engaging and draws the reader in from the very beginning.

The characters are well-developed and the story unfolds in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Overall, I found this book to be a fascinating read and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature or autobiographies.

It offers a unique perspective on the author's life and experiences, and it makes you think about your own life and the choices you have made.

I look forward to reading more of Roth's work in the future.

I rotated back to Philip Roth after being away for years. The reason is that he has a connection to my father. My father grew up in the same Weequahic neighborhood of Newark and attended the same high school as Roth, although he was nine years younger. I recall that maybe thirty years ago, my father was reading Roth's work and exclaimed that Roth was describing events and sandlot games that he remembered watching as a five-year-old when Roth was fourteen. Since my father never really described his neighborhood or talked much about growing up in Newark in the '40s and '50s, I've always welcomed Roth as a top-notch parental supplement. He is like an ideal relative of sorts, avuncular, but way more randy and verbose than my dad ever was.

I generally enjoyed this book, particularly the descriptions of the old neighborhood. The kids in the predominately Jewish neighborhood were totally assimilated Americans, an experience my father also relayed. They were not so much repulsed by religion but were just way more interested in Saturday morning sandlot baseball than synagogue. I also welcomed the typical Rothian flourishes about his understanding of the era's gentiles and anti-Semitism, his escape to Bucknell and then Chicago and then NYC. It was interesting to read how he could've worked at FSG or the New Yorker but returned to Chicago to teach, which he thought would allow him the most possible time to write.

However, everything about his marriage to Josie seemed less interesting, or even meaner. And toward the end, I was reminded that there's an excessive aspect to Roth's mode of flowing analyses that can get kinda old or close up as he drills deeper down to the heart of a matter. His syntax and sentences, after a while, reveal themselves as almost rote. It feels like every sentence is twenty-five to thirty words long. He excels when the sentences open up a little and get longer, but there are very few short sentences or fragments in play. Also, I didn't find the discussions about the nature of fiction and non-fiction all that interesting since for Roth it's all about reader manipulation to a degree. Writing as manipulation of appearances and reputations seems sort of sullied and base, if not totally off-base, or maybe it's just typical Rothian cynicism?
The Zuckerman frame seemed only vaguely interesting on a formal, self-analytical level, but also seemed kinda cheap and toward the end some long meaty self-questioning swashbuckling started to seem almost impenetrable. With that said, it's still a solid four stars for me thanks to the typical galloping language and insight. I have a handful of what I've always considered "lesser" Roth books all set to go (not counting this one, I've read exactly eight books by him, all the biggies etc) and look forward to them but also expect to a degree to appreciate them with reservations.

Also, this bit about the Jews in his neighborhood never talking about the old country really hit home. I said aloud "exactly" and turned the page down: "We knew very well that our grandparents had not torn themselves away from their shtetl families, had not left behind parents who they would never see again, because back home everyone had gone around the village singing show tunes that brought tears to your eyes. They'd left because life was awful; so awful, in fact, so menacing or impoverished or hopelessly obstructed, that it was best forgotten. The willful amnesia that I generally came up against whenever I tried as a child to establish the details of our pre-American existence was not unique to our family." (p 123)
My father hardly even was able to say where his grandfather (great-grandfather?) had come from in the 1880s. It just wasn't talked about. He once said Lithuania, so I've always claimed Lithuania, imagined life in and around Vilnius, read the excellent The Avengers: A Jewish War Story because it's about Jewish resistance of Nazis in Lithuania. But Roth herein says his family is from the historical region Galicia (centered around what's currently Lviv in Ukraine), including southeastern Poland (where my mother's Catholic side is from), apparently part of what was called the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. So it's possible my father's relatives came from the same area as Roth's family. Update: via 23andme, I recently learned that my father's side is most likely from western Ukraine (aka Eastern Galicia), so most likely the same area as Roth's family.
Pretty sure I acquired this one (and The Counterlife, which I also still haven't read) after a recommendation from a respected editor friend who first used the term "autofiction" in my presence.