Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933. He is the author of eight books of fiction: Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Letting Go (1962), When She Was Good (1967), Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Our Gang (1971), The Breast (1972), The Great American Novel (1973), and My Life as a Man (1974). Since 1965 he has been on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches literature one semester of each year. In 1970 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.