Philip Roth in front of a map of Newark, his hometown.

Author Philip Roth gave his hometown Newark, New Jersey’s Weequahic High School’s 50th anniversary graduates a thrill the other day when he stepped onto the bus that was taking the alumni on a “Philip Roth’s Newark” tour, according to a report in the Newark Star Ledger.

“Omigod, are we excited!” Marsha Weinstein told the Ledger. “If I had known, I would have brought my books for him to sign. I have all his books.” Roth, shaking hands with his fellow alums, worked his way down the bus, establishing who knew whom and who was whose kid brother. “Say hello to them for me,” Roth repeated as he greeted everyone, said the Ledger.

The 76-year-old Roth, a Connecticut resident, has been a frequent visitor to his hometown over the past decade. He told the Ledger, “As you get older, you get closer to home.”

“Liz Del Tufo, the venerable Newark historian and cheerleader, decided to launch the Newark ‘Philip Roth Tour’ a few years ago and yesterday’s was the fourth,” according to the Ledger, “On the first tour, he was honored at his childhood home at 81 Summit Street, where the block was ceremoniously named Philip Roth Plaza and a marker unveiled on the house.”

“He was very touched,” Del Tufo told the newspaper. “He said, ‘Newark is my Stockholm and that plaque is my prize’ referring to the Nobel Prize he should have won by now.”

Newark has been central to much of Roth’s fiction. The “Roth Tour” is based on Newark buildings and neighborhoods described in his books.

At one point, the Ledger reports, bus riders broke out into a Weequahic High chant Roth replicated in Portnoy’s Complaint: “Ikey, Mikey, Jake and Sam. We are the boys who eat no ham. We play football, we play soccer — We keep matzohs in our locker, Aye aye aye, Weequahic High!’”

“All joined in,” according to the Ledger. “After the laughter died down, the group began singing the Weequahic High alma mater, and Philip Roth, one of the nation’s greatest writers, sang right along.”