Thanks, Sharon. American Pastoral is great, but I believe it came out after that book I mentioned was published, too late to make the cut.

That's a perceptive question, though, because one of the critics I read as background for this said Roth may have been the last heavyweight of that old boxing-match school. He really was trying to knock out Updike, Mailer, etc.

I had him in an early draft and hope to write about him someday. My father was born in Newark, I know Roth's area reasonably well, and I also admire Goodbye, Columbus and some of his other books well.