The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988, ISBN 0-679-74905-5) is a book by Philip Roth that traces his life from his childhood in Newark, New Jersey to becoming a successful, widely respected novelist. The autobiographical section is bookended by two letters, one from Roth to his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, the other from Zuckerman himself, telling Roth what he sees as problems with the book.

Roth interlaces the present with the past and remote past. The book is divided into six chapters:

  1. "Prologue" (About his father)
  2. "Safe at Home" (Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood)
  3. "Joe College" (College life, first love)
  4. "Girl of My Dreams" (Chicago years, the woman who became his first wife)
  5. "All in the Family" (Defending himself against Jewish community attacks on his writing)
  6. "Now Vee May Perhaps to Begin" (His divorce and death of his first wife)

This book is included in the fifth volume of Philip Roth's collected works Novels and Other Narratives 1986–1991, published by the Library of America.

Works by Philip Roth
Fiction
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Letting Go
  • When She Was Good
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • Our Gang
  • The Great American Novel
  • My Life As a Man
  • Sabbath's Theater
Kepesh Novels
  • The Breast
  • The Professor of Desire
  • The Dying Animal
Zuckerman Novels
  • The Ghost Writer
  • Zuckerman Unbound
  • The Anatomy Lesson
  • The Prague Orgy
  • The Counterlife
  • American Pastoral
  • I Married a Communist
  • The Human Stain
  • Exit Ghost
Roth Novels
  • Deception
  • Operation Shylock
  • The Plot Against America
Nemeses: Short Novels
  • Everyman
  • Indignation
  • The Humbling
  • Nemesis
Short Stories
  • "The Conversion of the Jews"
  • "Defender of the Faith"
  • "The Kind of Person I am"
  • "Epstein"
  • "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings"
  • "Eli, the Fanatic"
  • "Philosophy, or Something Like That"
  • "The Box of Truths"
  • "The Fence"
  • "Armando and the Frauds"
  • "The Final Delivery of Mr. Thorn"
  • "The Day It Snowed"
  • "The Contest for Aaron Gold"
  • "Heard Melodies Are Sweeter"
  • "Expect the Vandals"
  • "The Love Vessel"
  • "The Good Girl"
  • "The Mistaken"
  • "Novotny's Pain"
  • "Psychoanalytic Special"
  • "An Actor's Life for Me"
  • "On the Air"
  • "His Mistress's Voice"
  • "Smart Money"
  • "The Ultimatum"
  • "Drenka's Men"
  • "Communist"
Collections
  • Zuckerman Bound
  • A Philip Roth Reader
  • Library of America series
Non-fiction
Memoirs
  • The Facts
  • Patrimony
On Writing
  • Reading Myself and Others
  • Shop Talk
Adaptations
Films
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • The Human Stain
  • Elegy
Philip Roth bibliography

Famous quotes containing the word novelist:

    “The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.”
    —Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)