This is a special book written about a very special writer.  Pierpoint, a New Yorker staff writer for more than 20 years, has had unusual access to Roth as a friend and a reader of his works in progress. Using that access to talk to him over the years, she combines the biographical details with a close reading of his books and presents them together chronologically, book by book, marriage by marriage, death by death to provide a full and incisive portrait of this All-American writer who is also Jewish, a Newark native, a man who has chosen ‘work’ over ‘love and life’, a winner of National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, and White House honors, not to mention being only the third living person honored with a Library of America volume (in this case 9).  From Goodbye Columbus in 1959 at the age of 25, to Nemesis at the age of 76, Roth has turned out 31 novels, mostly using Nathan Zuckerman as his narrator and alter ego.  Influenced by Bellow, Malamud, Chekhov, Gide, Camus, and James, by his Newark Jewish roots, by his solitude in CT, by his love of NYC and its music, life, and close rubbing, by his disastrous two marriages, by his time in Czechoslovakia, London,  and Israel,  and by his love of the US and writing, Roth is a giant.  His relationships with writers (Updike, Levi, Kundera, Pinter) are interestingly explored.  A bit overwhelming, the book succeeds in the title’s goal by painting the inextricable binding of a writer’s life and his books.