Twice in his career Roth has oriented his readers by interpreting and evaluating his work to date - first through "Reading Myself and Others" and then through "A Philip Roth Reader," selected and edited by Roth himself. More recently, Roth seems to have re-read and reassessed his work suggesting on the first pages of his latest books his own categorization of his literary work. Assuming that Roth did not know then where his career was heading or how it might acquire a different, or fuller, shape, I intend to revise our understanding of the early Roth, as interpreted by Roth himself, in the...