Philip Roth's latest honour

Philip Roth's latest honor was as much for what he has done for other writers as for his own work.

Roth received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award Tuesday night. He was cited for such novels as "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral," but also for his advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s for writers in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. PEN, in the midst of a weeklong "World Voices Festival," is an international writers' organization that defends human rights.