Moms Mabley and Philip Roth

It's the birthday of legendary African-American comedian Jackie "Moms" Mabley, born Loretta Mary Aiken in Brevard, North Carolina (1894). Her career as a performer began when she moved to Cleveland at 14 to get away from her tragic past — her parents died in separate accidents, she was raped twice as a teenager resulting in having two children who were taken from her, and she was being forced into a marriage with an older man. In Cleveland, she met the vaudeville team Butterbeans and Susie. She went to New York City and was very successful on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning more than $10,000 a week. In 1939, Mabley was the first female comedian to perform at the Apollo Theater.

She was known for her clever and raunchy humor. In her act, she developed the persona of an old woman clad in a frumpy dress and floppy hat, wryly commenting on sex, race, and social issues.
Mabley said: "A woman's a woman until the day she dies, but a man's only a man as long as he can."

It's the birthday of novelist Philip Roth (books by this author), born in Newark, New Jersey (1933). His father was an insurance salesman, and both his parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He majored in English and taught it, and he became friends with Saul Bellow, who told him that he was talented and should keep writing. In 1959, when he was 26 years old and teaching at the University of Chicago, he published his first book, a novella and short stories titled Goodbye, Columbus,and it won the National Book Award. He wrote two novels, which got mixed reviews, and then for five years, he didn't publish anything at all. Then he published Portnoy's Complaint (1969), which is entirely made up of a monologue delivered by a patient, Alexander Portnoy, to his analyst. It got rave reviews from critics, and its sexual content made it controversial and also extremely popular — it was the best-selling book of 1969.

And Roth has continued to be a prolific and popular novelist.
In 2009, he published The Humbling, only 140 pages. It's the story of Simon Axler, a famous and respected stage actor in his mid-60s, who suddenly finds that his talent is gone.

He published his 31st book, Nemesis, in 2010.
Philip Roth said: "Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life."