Philip Roth... what am i missing?

I'm not familiar with the titles you cite. Try early works like "Goodbye Columbus" or "Portnoy's Complaint." "Portnoy's Complaint" is definitely a great comic novel, full of brilliantly funny prose, though I sometimes think you have to be Jewish in order to truly appreciate it (I'm Jewish.) For more serious work, try "The Ghost Writer," "American Pastoral," or "The Human Stain."