I TRIED TO BUY PHILIP ROTH'S DVD COLLECTION

The great American novelist died and I wanted his physical media.

“Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.” - Philip Roth - The Human Stain

The novelist Philip Roth died in May of 2018. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he turned suburban Jewish life into high art, wielding neurotic self-awareness and acidic wit. Roth’s books mined and excavated the messiness of identity, desire, lust and mortality, often blurring the line between autobiography and fiction so thoroughly you weren’t sure if you were reading a novel or eavesdropping on his therapy sessions.

His work veered from the sexually charged chaos of Portnoy’s Complaint to the tragic sweep of American Pastoral, or pitch-black late period masterpieces like Sabbath’s Theatre. Across his 50-year career and 32 novels, he somehow managed to be both revered and reviled at the same time. Feminists called him a misogynist; critics called him a genius. He was the literary equivalent of that friend who always said the most shocking thing at the dinner table but was somehow still invited back. Roth’s legacy is complicated, messy, and, in true Roth fashion, uncomfortably human.

Upon his passing an auction house posted a lineup of over 100 items owned by the Pulitzer-winning author. The sale consisted of items from Roth’s 18th-century farmhouse. The Newark public library would receive Roth’s massive book collection. The estate sale was kind of mundane, Roth had a simple and classic taste, it was lots of wood furniture, typewriters and old leather armchairs that looked like they had soaked up decades of existential despair.

I kept browsing the online auction, mostly out of morbid curiosity, when I stumbled upon the holy grail (at least for us) - Roth’s personal movie collection. Yes, the famously cantankerous literary titan, who loathed adaptations of his work and spoke disdainfully of Hollywood, had a stack of DVDs.