Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth, who died Tuesday at 85, was probably best known for his then-controversial 1969 book "Portnoy's Complaint" in which he chronicled his Jewish experience, male lust and American politics, Newsweek magazine reported.
CNN reported that Roth, one of America's most prolific and celebrated authors, died of congestive heart failure surrounded by close friends and family, according to his friend Judith Thurman.
"He was an incredibly generous person," Thurman told CNN. "Always very exigent, and he held you to a very high standard -- and he held himself to an even higher standard. He was, in my opinion, a very great writer and a very great man."
Roth published his first novel, "Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories" in 1959, which was celebrated in the literary world.
He gained wide attention 10 years later for "Portnoy's Complaint," Newsweek said. That book documented its main character's struggle with being raised in a strict Jewish home and his "outrageous" sexual exploits.
He later penned "The Plot Against America," "Everyman," "The Human Stain," and "I Married a Communist," among many other books.
"It's hard to give up something you've been doing for 55 years, which has been at the center of your life, where you spend sometimes six, eight, 10 hours a day," Roth told National Public Radio's program "Fresh Air" in 2010 when his book "Nemesis" was released.
"I always have worked every day, and I'm kind of a maniac. How could a maniac give up what he does? ... You sit alone, decade after decade, and you try to imagine something out of nothing. Not just imagine it, but, again, make a work of art out of it. And you do it so long, that in a certain way you can't do anything else." Roth continued.
Roth wrote 24 books during his career, according to Read It Forward.com, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for "American Pastoral." He won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1960 for "Goodbye, Columbus" and 1995 for "Sabbath's Theater."
"Nemesis" was his last book, with Roth saying in 2012 that he "no longer feel this dedication to write what I have experienced my whole life," CNN said
"He was such a driven perfectionist, so when he felt his power ebbing, he wanted to quit at the top of his game, and he did," Thurman told CNN.
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