New Jersey: Philip Roth’s Book Collection and the Newark Public Library

From The NY Times:

In Philip Roth’s novella “Goodbye, Columbus,” the Newark Public Library is where Neil Krugman spends a summer working with a colleague whose “breath smells of hair oil and hair oil of breath” and mooning over the rich and sexy Brenda Patimkin. In real life, Mr. Roth has designated the library, which he has called his home away from home, as the repository for his own book collection, a bequest that will be announced here on Thursday evening at the inaugural Philip Roth Lecture, to be delivered by Zadie Smith.
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Mr. Roth’s library, some 4,000 volumes, is now stored mostly at his house in northwest Connecticut, where it has more or less taken over the premises.
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The books will be shelved in Newark exactly as they are in Connecticut — not a window into Mr. Roth’s mind exactly, but physical evidence of the eclectic writers who helped shape it: Salinger, Bellow, Malamud, Kafka, Bruno Schulz.

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Filed under: Lecture, Libraries, News, Open Access, Public Libraries