It is commencement season in America, when high school and university students gather for graduation ceremonies featuring advice from prominent Americans. This year, at a time of heightened political divisions in the country and accusations of “fake news,” many speakers are featuring political themes and talking about integrity. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
…

From: MeNeedIt

“Star Wars” fans need wait no longer. Another “Star Wars” installment, this one a spinoff about Han Solo’s formative years as a pilot and a fighter, opens on IMAX movie screens the world over. “Solo: A Star Wars Story” also traces the beginnings of the friendship between Han Solo and Chewbacca, the giant hairy wookiee. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke to the more than 2-meter-tall Joonas Suotamo, who plays Chewbacca.
…

From: MeNeedIt

We’re connecting with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending May 26, 2018.

Surprise! We get a Hot Shot Debut in the No. 1 position. Three consecutive champion songs have opened at the top — something that hasn’t happened in 23 years.

No. 5: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”

But let’s start in fifth place, where Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line slip a slot with “Meant To Be.” 

Meanwhile, it tops the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for a 25th week, moving into second place on the all-time list. Sam Hunt owns the record: 34 weeks at the top with “Body Like A Back Road.” Speaking on May 20 at the Billboard Music Awards, Bebe said she would love to work with other country artists and is excited about the June 22 arrival of her first full-length album, “Expectations.”

No. 4: Post Malone & Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”

Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign back it up two slots to fourth place with “Psycho.” That makes it an all-rap Top Four … and that’s a significant chart development. That hasn’t happened since 2009, when the chart featured, in descending order: Flo Rida’s “Right Round”; T.I.’s “Dead And Gone” with Justin Timberlake, Eminem and Dr. Dre; 50 Cent’s “Crack A Bottle”; and Kanye West’s “Heartless.”

No. 3: Drake “God’s Plan”

Drake holds in third place with his former 11-week champion “God’s Plan.” Drake and Migos’ upcoming joint tour is shaping up as one of the hottest tickets in North America this summer. New dates have just been added in Drake’s hometown of Toronto, along with Chicago, New York, Dallas and Los Angeles. The “Aubrey And The Three Amigos” tour kicks off July 26 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

No. 2: Drake “Nice for What”

Drake ends a 15-week run at No. 1, as his second consecutive champion “Nice For What” dips a slot to second place. Speaking on the Rap Radar podcast, the song’s producer, Murda Beatz, said that they were at Drake’s house playing the “NBA 2K” video game when they came up with the idea for the song. They decided to sample “Ex Factor” by Lauryn Hill, wrote the lyrics, made the beat, and finished the whole thing in about 90 minutes.

No. 1: Childish Gambino “This Is America”

For the first time in 15 weeks, we have a Hot 100 champion not named Drake. Childish Gambino opens atop the hit list with “This Is America.”

Propelling this song is the hard-hitting video, which first aired on the May 5 edition of Saturday Night Live. Childish Gambino — the musical alter ego of actor Donald Glover — will go on tour in September with Rae Sremurd and Vince Staples.

We’ll have a new lineup for you next week, so be sure and come back.

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

The FBI warned on Friday that foreign cybercriminals had compromised “hundreds of thousands” of home and small-office router devices around the world which direct traffic on the internet by forwarding data packets between computer networks.

In a public service announcement, the FBI has discovered that the foreign cybercriminals used a VPNFilter malware that can collect peoples’ information, exploit their devices and block network traffic.

The announcement did not provide any details about where the criminals might be based, or what their motivations could be.

“The size and scope of the infrastructure by VPNFilter malware is significant,” the FBI said, adding that it is capable of rendering people’s routers “inoperable.”

It said the malware is hard to detect, due to encryption and other tactics.

The FBI urged people to reboot their devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and help identify infected devices.

People should also consider disabling remote management settings, changing passwords to replace them with more secure ones, and upgrading to the latest firmware.
…

From: MeNeedIt

A Portland, Oregon, family has learned what happens when Amazon.com Inc’s popular voice assistant Alexa is lost in translation.

Amazon on Thursday described an “unlikely … string of events” that made Alexa send an audio recording of the family to one of their contacts randomly. The episode underscored how Alexa can misinterpret conversation as a wake-up call and command.

A local news outlet, KIRO 7, reported that a woman with Amazon devices across her home received a call two weeks ago from her husband’s employee, who said Alexa had recorded the family’s conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to him.

“I felt invaded,” the woman, only identified as Danielle, said in the report. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it.’”

Alexa, which comes with Echo speakers and other gadgets, starts recording after it hears its name or another “wake word” selected by users. This means that an utterance quite like Alexa, even from a TV commercial, can activate a device.

That’s what happened in the incident, Amazon said. “Subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request,” the company said in a statement. “At which point,

Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list.”

Amazon added, “We are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”

Assuring customers of Alexa’s security is crucial to Amazon, which has ambitions for Alexa to be ubiquitous — whether dimming the lights for customers or placing orders for them with the world’s largest online retailer.

University researchers from Berkeley and Georgetown found in a 2016 paper that sounds unintelligible to humans can set off voice assistants in general, which raised concerns of exploitation by attackers. Amazon did not immediately comment on the matter, but it previously told The New York Times that it has taken steps to keep its devices secure.

Millions of Amazon customers have shopped with Alexa. Customers bought tens of millions of Alexa devices last holiday season alone, the company has said. That makes the incident reported Thursday a rare one. But faulty hearing is not.

“Background noise from our television is making it think we said Alexa,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said of his personal experience. “It happens all the time.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to police Friday morning to face the first criminal charges to be filed against him after months of sexual abuse allegations from scores of women that destroyed his career and set off a national reckoning known as the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, 66, stepped from a black SUV and walked slowly into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras. He didn’t answer respond to shouts of his name.

The exact charges against Weinstein still had not been made public early Friday. Two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press the case will include allegations by Lucia Evans, an aspiring actress who has said the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office. She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.

One official said it’s likely the case also will include at least one other victim who has not come forward publicly.

The officials spoke Thursday to the AP on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation.

Weinstein was expected to be charged at least with criminal sexual act, a crime that carries up to 25 years in prison, the officials said.

Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment when first contacted about the charges late Friday, but previously said in court paperwork that the allegations that Weinstein forced himself on women were “entirely without merit” and that he never knowingly broke the law.

Evans confirmed to The New Yorker that she was pressing charges.

“At a certain point, you have to think about the greater good of humanity, of womankind,” she told the magazine.

Evans told The New Yorker in a story published in October that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his New York office in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College.

“I said, over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t,’ “she told the magazine. “I tried to get away, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t want to kick him or fight him.”

Evans, who is now a marketing consultant, didn’t report the encounter to police at the time, telling The New Yorker that she blamed herself for not fighting back.

“It was always my fault for not stopping him,” she said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had been under enormous public pressure to bring a criminal case against Weinstein. Some women’s groups, including the Hollywood activist group Time’s Up, accused the Democrat of being too deferential to Weinstein and too dismissive of his accusers.

A grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for weeks.

In March, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took the extraordinary step of ordering the state’s attorney general to investigate whether Vance acted properly in 2015 when he decided not to prosecute Weinstein over a previous allegation of unwanted groping, made by an Italian model. That investigation is in its preliminary stages.

More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing around the globe. Several actresses and models accused him of criminal sexual assaults, but many of the encounters happened too long ago for any prosecution. Film actress Rose McGowan said Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah, “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra said he raped her in her New York apartment in 1992 and Norwegian actress Natassia Malthe said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008.

McGowan told the AP on Thursday that she is gratified but “still in shock” that Weinstein was expected to surrender.

“The justice system has been something very elusive,” McGowan said. “I hope in this case it works. Because it’s all true. None of this was consensual.”

The statute of limitations for rape and certain other sex crimes in New York was eliminated in 2006, but not for attacks that happened prior to 2001.

New York City police detectives said in early November that they were investigating allegations by another accuser, “Boardwalk Empire” actress Paz de la Huerta, who told police in October that Weinstein raped her twice in 2010. She is not one of the victims in the case on Friday; hers was still pending, officials said.

Authorities in California and London also are investigating assault allegations. Britain has no statute of limits on rape cases; some of the allegations under investigation there date to the 1980s.

Harvey and his brother Bob Weinstein started his now-bankrupt company after leaving Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and which became a powerhouse in ’90s indie film with hits like “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.” The Weinstein Co. found success with Oscar winners “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech.”

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

A jury has decided Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone’s features to lure people into buying its competing products.

The verdict reached Thursday is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011. Apple contends Samsung wouldn’t have emerged as the world’s leading seller of smartphones if it hadn’t ripped off the technology powering the pioneering iPhone in developing a line of similar devices running on Google’s Android software.

Patents infringed

Previous rulings had determined that Samsung infringed on some of Apple’s patents, but the amount of damages owed has been in legal limbo. Another jury convened for a 2012 trial had determined Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh reduced that amount to $548 million.

The issue escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court , which determined in 2016 that a lower court needed to re-examine $399 million of the $548 million. That ruling was based on the concept that the damages shouldn’t be based on all the profits that the South Korean electronics giant rung up from products that copied the iPhone because its infringement may only have violated a few patents.

$1 billion or $28 million?

Apple had argued it was owed more than $1 billon while Samsung contended the $399 million should be slashed to $28 million. The revised damages figure represents a victory for Apple, even though it isn’t as much as the Cupertino, California, company had sought.

“Today’s decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages,” Samsung said in a statement. “We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers.”

An eight-person jury came up with the new amount following a one-week trial and four days of deliberation in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse.

Apple expressed gratitude to the jury for agreeing “that Samsung should pay for copying our products.”

“This case has always been about more than money,” a company statement said. “Apple ignited the smartphone revolution with iPhone and it is a fact that Samsung blatantly copied our design.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman apologized Thursday to anyone he may have offended after reports he sexually harassed women on movie sets.

“Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy,” the 80-year-old actor said in a statement. “I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected. That was never my intent.”

Eight women told CNN television Freeman had engaged in inappropriate behavior on the sets or promotional tours of various films.

A young woman who was a production assistant on 2015’s Going in Style told CNN Freeman touched her, rubbed her lower back and asked if she was wearing underpants as he tried to lift up her dress.

Others accused Freeman of staring at their breasts and quizzing them about sexual harassment.

One woman told CNN she and others on the set of another Freeman film knew “not to wear any top that would show our breasts, not to wear anything that would show our bottoms,” if Freeman was around.

Freeman has been nominated for five Oscars for acting, winning one for Million Dollar Baby in 2005.

He is the latest major media figure to be accused of sexual harassment. Others include journalists Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw; actor Kevin Spacey; and President Donald Trump, who denied all allegations.

Meanwhile, U.S. news reports said film producer Harvey Weinstein would turn himself in to New York police to face criminal charges of sexual misconduct following a long investigation.

Weinstein, once one of the most powerful figures in show business before being forced to step down as head of his production empire, has denied forcing himself on anyone.
…

From: MeNeedIt

When a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted a Latvian software developer last week of running an underground clearinghouse for computer hackers, U.S. prosecutors highlighted it as an example of their commitment to combating cybercrime.

“This verdict demonstrates our commitment to holding such actors accountable,” said acting U.S. Attorney Tracey Doherty-McCormick. “I commend the work of the agents and prosecutors both in the United States and in Latvia, who worked together to bring him to justice.”

Not mentioned was the role played by Trend Micro, a Japanese cybersecurity firm that collaborated with the FBI to hunt down the developer, Ruslans Bondars, and an accomplice, Jurijs Martisevs, who jointly operated Scan4You, a site that helped hackers test their malware.

In a report released after the verdict, Trend Micro offered an inside look at how it identified Scan4You in 2012, took a trove of data about the site to the FBI in 2014, and then worked closely with agents as they built a case against the two men.

Trend Micro says it has supported nearly 20 law enforcement cases around the world.

“In this case, our global threat intelligence network and team of researchers provided an invaluable resource for the FBI as it homed in on this notorious [counter antivirus] service,” said Ed Cabrera, chief security officer for Trend Micro.

The case highlights how the FBI and private cybersecurity firms, once wary of working together, have in recent years started teaming up to combat cybercrime, a problem that costs the world an estimated $600 billion a year. 

“The value that the private sector brings to law enforcement investigations is almost incalculable,” said John Boles, a director at consulting firm Navigant who previously worked as an assistant FBI director and led the bureau’s global cyberoperations.

A decade ago “there was almost hesitation on both sides of the fence to cooperate, but somewhere along the line as the scales have tipped, everybody realized it’s a global issue,” Boles said.

In 2011, the FBI created the Office of the Private Sector within the Cyber Division, making private-sector collaboration a key pillar of its cybercrime-fighting strategy.

Since then, the bureau has made more than a dozen major arrests in cybercrime cases, many with help from the private sector, according to Boles. While cybercrime investigations are often initiated by the bureau, some start with a tip from the private sector.

Unusual activity

That was the case with the Scan4You investigation.

In 2012, Trend Micro researchers, while investigating a hacker group, noticed a flurry of unusual activity on their threat radar: Somebody using Latvia IP addresses kept checking the company’s web reputation system, a program that blocks malicious websites.

That led them to another discovery: regular checks of Scan4You URLs against Trend Micro’s web reputation system emanating from Latvia. The goal: to determine whether Scan4You’s scanning scripts could detect malware.

“By 2014, we had a deeper understanding [of Scan4You] and began that relationship with the FBI,” Cabrera said.

The collaboration would continue for the next three years as Trend Micro researchers and FBI agents gathered evidence about Scan4You, its operators and its users.

Scan4You was an underground service that allowed hackers to upload their malware to see whether it could be detected by more than 35 antivirus engines. At its peak in 2016, Scan4You was the largest service of its kind, boasting more than 30,000 customers.

The service allowed cyber scofflaws to test all manner of malicious software, ranging from so-called crypters, a type of software used to conceal malicious files, to remote access trojans, programs that allow a remote operator backdoor access to a computer.

‘World’s most destructive hackers’

Among Scan4You’s customers were “some of the world’s most destructive hackers,” according Doherty-McCormick, the Virginia prosecutor.

One customer used Scan4You to test malware that was later used to steal about 40 million credit card and debit card numbers, costing one U.S. retailer $292 million, according to court documents.

A Russian hacker used Scan4You to develop Citadel, an infamous botnet used by cybercriminals to steal $500 million from bank accounts. The FBI worked with Microsoft to break up the network.

But Scan4You was not a very lucrative operation. As researchers dug deeper, they discovered that Bondars and Martisevs were affiliated with “some of the longest-running cybercriminal businesses” and “involved with one of the largest and oldest pharmaceutical spam gangs known as Eva Pharmacy,” according to Trend Micro.

Bondars, a longtime Latvian resident of Ukrainian citizenship, designed and maintained the site.

Martisevs, a Russian national living in Latvia, provided customer service and promoted the site on cybercriminal forums.

The pair’s deep involvement in an assortment of criminal activities gave them something that helped with their scanning service: cyber-cred.

“These threat actors gained the respect of many other cybercriminals who trusted them and used their malware scanning service,” the report says.

The end for Scan4You came with the 2017 arrests and extradition of Bondars and Martisevs to the United States. Shortly after their arrest, Scan4You went dark.

In March, Martisevs pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Bondars. Last week, Bondars was convicted of three counts related to his role in Scan4You.

Scan4You’s downfall has taken the biggest service of its kind out of commission, but just how big a blow to cybercrime it represents remains to be seen.

Typically, when a site like Scan4You goes offline, its users flee to copycat sites. That has yet to happen, Cabrera said.

“This is a big blow to cybercrime, helping to disrupt countless threat actors and prove there are consequences to their actions,” he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said he would travel to Russia for the soccer World Cup if France reach the semifinals, turning a deaf ear to calls from human rights groups to boycott the tournament.

Human rights groups calling for the boycott over Russia’s involvement in Syria’s civil war met with Macron’s advisers earlier this week, saying it would send a strong symbolic message if the 40-year-old leader did not attend the World Cup.

“If the French team passes beyond the quarterfinals I will come and support,” Macron said during a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Macron has banked on nurturing relationships with awkward leaders such as Putin, appearing engaged on the world stage but remaining non-committal and trying to mediate among opposing sides without unsettling anyone.

France have been drawn to face Australia, Denmark and Peru in Group C at the World Cup, which runs from June 14 to July 15. The top two in the group will progress to the round of 16. 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Film producer Harvey Weinstein was expected to surrender to New York police on Friday, months after he was toppled from Hollywood’s most powerful ranks by scores of women accusing him of sexual assault, a person familiar with the case said.

Weinstein’s spokesman Juda Engelmayer and Weinstein’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman both declined to comment. The charging of Weinstein, which was first reported by the New York Daily News, follows a months-long investigation, including by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

A person familiar with the case confirmed the report to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The New York Times and other news outlets also reported Weinstein was expected to surrender.

More than 70 women have accused the co-founder of the Miramax studio and The Weinstein Co of sexual misconduct spanning decades, including rape. The allegations, first reported by the New York Times and the New Yorker last year, gave rise to the #MeToo movement in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, government and

entertainment.

Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. Weinstein will be charged over an allegation by at least one accuser, Lucia Evans, a former aspiring actress who told the New Yorker that Weinstein forced her to give him oral sex in 2004, the Times and Daily News reported. The exact nature of the charges being brought by Manhattan prosecutors was unclear on Thursday afternoon.

The New York Police Department and the district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case.

Entertainment industry heavyweights have distanced themselves from Weinstein, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful men, since the accusations became public. The board of the Weinstein Co fired him and the company itself filed for bankruptcy in March. In 2017, he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the Oscars.

A former fixture in the most elite entertainment circles of Manhattan and Los Angeles, Weinstein has since been seen spending time in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the New York Times said he had been seeking treatment for sex addiction.

London’s Metropolitan Police have said they are also investigating an allegation of sexual assault against Weinstein, while prosecutors in Los Angeles said in February they were reviewing three accusations of sexual assault against him.

Weinstein’s lawyer Brafman said in a May court filing that federal prosecutors in New York had opened a separate criminal investigation into the allegations.

Actor Ashley Judd last month sued Weinstein, saying that he cost her a part in 1998 for the film “The Lord of the Rings” after she rejected his sexual advances, charges that Weinstein has denied.

Other prominent actors who have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct include Uma Thurman and Salma Hayek.

Brafman, Weinstein’s lawyer, is known for representing high-profile criminal defendants, including pop star Michael Jackson and Martin Shkreli, the former drug company executive.

In 2011, Brafman represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, over charges, which were eventually dropped, that he sexually assaulted a New York City hotel maid.

Since 2006, there has been no statute of limitations in New York for rape or aggravated sex abuse in the first degree.

Crimes for which the statute had not expired on June 23, 2006, were included when the law changed, meaning crimes as early as 2001 can still be prosecuted.

“New York, which used to have some of the shortest state of limitations for rape cases, caught up with the modern world in 2006,” said former Manhattan prosecutor Marc Scholl. “Sex assailants can no longer escape their crimes because victims were afraid to speak.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Philip Roth, the prize-winning novelist and fearless narrator of sex, death, assimilation and fate, from the comic madness of “Portnoy’s Complaint” to the elegiac lyricism of “American Pastoral,” died Tuesday night at age 85.

Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said that the author died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure.

Author of more than 25 books, Roth was a fierce satirist and uncompromising realist, confronting readers in a bold, direct style that scorned false sentiment or hopes for heavenly reward. He was an atheist who swore allegiance to earthly imagination, whether devising pornographic functions for raw liver or indulging romantic fantasies about Anne Frank. In “The Plot Against America,” published in 2004, he placed his own family under the anti-Semitic reign of President Charles Lindbergh. In 2010, in “Nemesis,” he subjected his native New Jersey to a polio epidemic.

He was among the greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for “American Pastoral.” He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including “The Human Stain” and “Sabbath’s Theater,” a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work.

He identified himself as an American writer, not a Jewish one, but for Roth the American experience and the Jewish experience were often the same. While predecessors such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud wrote of the Jews’ painful adjustment from immigrant life, Roth’s characters represented the next generation. Their first language was English, and they spoke without accents. They observed no rituals and belonged to no synagogues. The American dream, or nightmare, was to become “a Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness.” The reality, more often, was to be regarded as a Jew among gentiles and a gentile among Jews.

In the novel “The Ghost Writer” he quoted one of his heroes, Franz Kafka: “We should only read those books that bite and sting us.” For his critics, his books were to be repelled like a swarm of bees.

Feminists, Jews and one ex-wife attacked him in print, and sometimes in person. Women in his books were at times little more than objects of desire and rage and The Village Voice once put his picture on its cover, condemning him as a misogynist. A panel moderator berated him for his comic portrayals of Jews, asking Roth if he would have written the same books in Nazi Germany. The Jewish scholar Gershom Scholem called “Portnoy’s Complaint” the “book for which all anti-Semites have been praying.” When Roth won the Man Booker International Prize, in 2011, a judge resigned, alleging that the author suffered from terminal solipsism and went “on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book.” In “Sabbath’s Theater,” Roth imagines the inscription for his title character’s headstone: “Sodomist, Abuser of Women, Destroyer of Morals.’’

Ex-wife Claire Bloom wrote a best-selling memoir, “Leaving a Doll’s House,” in which the actress remembered reading the manuscript of his novel “Deception.” With horror, she discovered his characters included a boring middle-aged wife named Claire, married to an adulterous writer named Philip. Bloom also described her ex-husband as cold, manipulative and unstable. (Although, alas, she still loved him). The book was published by Virago Press, whose founder, Carmen Callil, was the same judge who quit years later from the Booker committee.

Roth’s wars also originated from within. He survived a burst appendix in the late 1960s and near-suicidal depression in 1987. After the disappointing reaction to his 1993 novel, “Operation Shylock,” he fell again into severe depression and for years rarely communicated with the media. For all the humor in his work – and, friends would say, in private life – jacket photos usually highlighted the author’s tense, dark-eyed glare. In 2012, he announced that he had stopped writing fiction and would instead dedicate himself to helping biographer Blake Bailey complete his life story, one he openly wished would not come out while he was alive. By 2015, he had retired from public life altogether.

He never promised to be his readers’ friend; writing was its own reward, the narration of “life, in all its shameless impurity.” Until his abrupt retirement, Roth was a dedicated, prolific author who often published a book a year and was generous to writers from other countries.

 Roth began his career in rebellion against the conformity of the 1950s and ended it in defense of the security of the 1940s; he was never warmer than when writing about his childhood, or more sorrowful, and enraged, than when narrating the shock of innocence lost.

Roth was born in 1933 in Newark, New Jersey, a time and place he remembered lovingly in “The Facts,” “American Pastoral” and other works. The scolding, cartoonish parents of his novels were pure fiction. He adored his parents, especially his father, an insurance salesman to whom he paid tribute in the memoir “Patrimony.” Roth would describe his childhood as “intensely secure and protected,” at least at home. He was outgoing and brilliant and, tall and dark-haired, especially attractive to girls. In his teens he presumed he would become a lawyer, a most respectable profession in his family’s world.

But after a year at Newark College of Rutgers University, Roth emulated an early literary hero, James Joyce, and fled his hometown. He transferred to Bucknell College in Pennsylvania and only returned to Newark on paper. By his early 20s, Roth was writing fiction.

After receiving a master’s degree in English from the University of Chicago, he began publishing stories in The Paris Review and elsewhere. Bellow was an early influence, as were Thomas Wolfe, Flaubert, Henry James and Kafka, whose picture Roth hung in his writing room.

Roth insisted writing should express, not sanitize. After two relatively tame novels, “Letting Go” and “When She was Good,” he abandoned his good manners with “Portnoy’s Complaint,” his ode to blasphemy against the “unholy trinity of “father, mother and Jewish son.” Published in 1969, a great year for rebellion, it was an event, a birth, a summation, Roth’s triumph over “the awesome graduate school authority of Henry James,” as if history’s lid had blown open and out erupted a generation of Jewish guilt and desire.
…

From: MeNeedIt