Talk on novels of Philip Roth set March 23

4:36 p.m., March 16, 2006--Elaine B. Safer, English professor and author of Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth, published by SUNY Press, will give a lecture and sign copies of her book at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, March 23, in 111 Memorial Hall. The event, sponsored by the 20th-Century Colloquium Group and the Department of English, is free and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase at a special publisher's price.

Mocking the Age explores the comic devices Roth used to satirize his times, the Jewish community and himself and is the first comprehensive assessment of Roth's later novels. Safer explores how Roth's approach to the comic incorporates the self-deprecating humor of Jewish comedians, as well as the humor of 19th-Century Eastern European Jewish storytellers and 20th-Century writers, such as Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow.

According to Daniel Walden, editor of 20th-Century American-Jewish Fiction Writers, “Safer's treatment is a reflection of her deep and meticulously researched involvement with Roth and her obvious desire to do justice to him. This book will stand for years to come as the definitive work on the later novels of Philip Roth.”

Safer, who received her master's and doctoral degrees from Case Western Reserve University, is co-editor with Ben Siegel of Saul Bellow as Comic Writer, The Contemporary America Comic Epic; The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis and Kesey; and co-editor with Thomas Erskine of John Milton: L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. She served as a distinguished professor at Lyon III during winter sessions for several years and served as president of the American Humor Studies Association of the Modern Language Association, and as president of the Saul Bellow Society of the American Literature Association. She has received UD's Excellence in Teaching Award and was a fellow in UD's Center for Advanced Studies.

For more information, contact Rachel Mayrer at [rmayrer@udel.edu].

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