Philip Roth and David Remnick Getting Personal

Jesse Tisch examines the long, layered relationship between novelist Philip Roth and David Remnick, the New Yorker editor who had admired Roth since discovering Portnoy’s Complaint as a teenager. Their connection joined literary fandom to institutional power: Remnick’s devotion helped restore Roth to the magazine after decades of limited publication, and Roth later relied on Remnick’s pages to praise Saul Bellow and challenge accounts he considered unfair. Their collaboration grew into a substantial body of work, while Remnick’s openness to Roth remained in place through the writer’s death. The relationship also raises questions about how admiration can shape journalism and editorial decisions, and whether a powerful editor’s access for a favorite writer compromises independence.

The two men shared New Jersey Jewish backgrounds, secular but meaningful Jewish identities, liberal politics, and a serious belief in literature, yet differed sharply in temperament and craft. Roth was an intensely individualistic, painstaking writer drawn to disorder and comic extremity; Remnick was fast, adaptable, institutionally skilled, and controlled. Their careers also intersected with the New Yorker’s changing culture. Roth had once been rejected by its genteel editors, though William Shawn later published The Ghost Writer in full. Remnick rose from ambitious Washington Post reporter to editor, then used that authority to publish Roth, including replacing a planned story with an excerpt from I Married a Communist. The account presents their alliance as both a rewarding meeting of writer and admirer and a revealing case of how literary devotion can operate alongside professional influence.