Up to the publication of American Pastoral, Roth made a career largely out of writing about himself - his life, his libido, his neuroses, his Jewishness, his frenzy, in short, his story. And as his high-angst, self-obsessive fiction has often been accused of being fact, it is merely Roth-logic that his autobiography - The Facts - should be seen as fiction. His work is preoccupied with Jewishness, sex and above all with Roth as highly-sexed great writer and misunderstood man pursued by greedy women. In late career, he has almost returned to the lightness of touch and brilliant comedy of this early classic. First published in the US in 1967, it remains the definite account of a furtively over-sexed, smart Jewish son, oppressed by his suffocatingly loving parents, particularly his mother: "She was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise." His first great book, and still one of his very best, it races along on an awesomely sustained tone of "reader I kid you not" exasperation. Hilarious.
