"Safer explores the relation of humor to theme, form, and narration in ways that are consistently intelligent, illuminating, and interesting. She draws easily and gracefully on contemporary and nineteenth-century American fiction, on the wide critical response to Roth's work, and on other historical and philosophical texts that explain Roth's texts and methods."

Elaine B. Safer is Professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of The Contemporary American Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey.