“At the end of his life, the boxer Joe Louis said, ‘I did the best I could with what I had.’ It’s exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had.”

--Novelist Philip Roth, annoucing his retirement from writing at the age of 79.

My recommendations from the Roth oeuvre: ”Goodbye, Columbus,“ ”Portnoy's Complaint,“ ”Reading Myself and Others,“ ”The Ghost Writer,“ ”Zuckerman Unbound,“ ”The Anatomy Lesson,“ ”Patrimony.“ I think his best is ”The Ghost Writer." His novels in the '90s won numerous awards but I was not a fan. All the same, he was the right fielder of my starting nine of the literary world. 

Philip Roth Unbound