Interview with Philip Roth (Part 1)

[DrMerkwuerdichliebe]

sound quality/synchronicity sucks majorly.

[bapyou]

I urge all Roth fans to seek out Greil Marcus's essay on Roth which appears in Marcus's book 'The Shape of Things to Come.' It's brilliant.

[molloyxx1]

Anyone who has read Roth extensively well understands his deep attachment to his heritage, his abiding respect for his parents and the struggles they endured precisely because of their beliefs, his horror at the prospect of a return to the right wing lunacy of the McCarthy era and his brilliant depiction of the convulsions of his era. No living writer is his equal.

[Mdriver1981]

I feel Roth does not understand the worldwide threat against the Semitic race. I don't think he cares.

[MrViTopol]

@Mdriver1981 his only goal in life he declared was to get as much gentile pussy as humanly possible... he became a writer to get rich which would get him full access to shiksas...

[Michael333]

I've been reading everyman and I've found it reflective and insightful in peculiar ways. I've also viewed it as cheesy as cliche.

The sex passages are badly written. This is unless Roth is trying to make the character seem pathetic and nerdy. Dick through his fly hole? Alluding to anal sex? It seemed childish. I have to say most of the book was very powerful and strong and I enjoy it though.

[JustBlaze234]

Im only watching this because I have to do a report on him.....Philip Roth is Gay lollol

[DarkMuj]

This guy is a massive legend.

[Rodrigoandnietzsche]

This legend is a massive guy.

[soml]

I, this year, choose to read Delillo, McCarthy, Pynchon, Roth. I found McCarthy and Pynchon difficult. Roth absorbing. Taste in all the arts is subjective. I am not saying writing should simple but when you have to read a passage 3 to 4 times before you can shape it in your mind, countless times a chapter, then you ask yourself the question "is this good writing".

[molloyx]

This might come down to your preference for a clear narrative line and uncluttered style [ although here I will tell you that Roths work is very much alive with feindishly complex characters]. While I loved 'The Road' I found much of McCarthy's other work suffocatingly over-worked, clotted by a kind of empty preening. Try Denis Johnson, EL Doctrows 'The March' and much of Paul Theroux.

[mattttch]

there are five great living American writers - Roth, Pynchon, Crowley, Delillo, Mccarthy - there is no need to rank them, great writers are great writers

[b2daroox]

Is that you Harold Bloom?

[molloyx]

Does Bloom mention Crowley? He over estimates Pynchon and Delillo and undervalues Roth. I have a very mixed opinion of McCarthy, who sometimes slaughters one with description [ I think he solved this with The Road, which is exquisite in its restraint and purity of style]. Denis Johnson is a brilliant, muscular and undisciplined monster [ no one better captures the psychology of Americas invisibles and 'criminal class'] who still has the time to pull off a full fledged masterpiece.

[b2daroox]

Bloom loves Crowley, and Crowley likes him alot, check wikipedia

[molloyx]

b2. Sometimes, but not always, 'checking wikipedia' is no better than consulting an astrologist. In Novels and Novelists Bloom, working backwards [ extra-patriotically] chronologically, mentions Amy Tan [?} Paul Auster, Pynchon, Delillo, McCarthy, Roth, Toni Morrison [?} Le Guin, Marquez, O'Connor, Baldwin, Mailer, Saramago. Gaddis, Murdoch, Burgess, McCullers, Bellow, Malmaud, Camus, Goldng, Wright, Beckett [ my hero], Warren, Greene, Orwell......but no sign of Crowley whatsoever. Qua?

[b2daroox]

I was half kidding in my wikipedia reference but I appreciate the advice anyways. I do think wikipedia is right in this case though as I checked the link to the village voice and Bloom calls "little big" a "neglected masterpiece".

[molloyx]

Oh well, I guess I was being something of an arrogant fussy bastard to begin with. There is so much great literature I haven't read it pains my head to think about it. Nonetheless, I value Bloom as a worthy Injun guide and a bulwark against the pernicious, soul-killing deconstructionistas.

[theprolixtree]

I do agree that he undervalues Roth, but Pynchon's value in literature is enormous: he's intelligent, funny and perhaps too erudite to be coherent. In the future, I think that Pynchon will come to greater standing as a writer than Roth because Roth is more relevant to the time we live in. The reason Bloom called Pynchon, DeLillo, Roth and McCarthy the greatest living American writers is because they are all original and all different from each other. (Bloom praised Crowley in the Western Canon.)

[roseparade1]

I would argue that Roth is every bit as funny as Pynchon, develops far more dimensional characters [ Pynchons are exquisite cartoons] and while not as wildly original has a tremendous feel for the scope and convulsions and aftershocks of modern American history. And what of Barthelme, who is every bit as delightfully odd as Pynchon? [ And, astonishingly, Bloom has good things to say about Lorrie Moore, which I find monumentally depressing]. Just curious, have you ever read the critic Hugh Kenner

[nubbs]

what makes a great writer a great writer?

[septip123]

Time + reverence

[nubbs]

no, that makes a receptive audience a receptive audience. the audience is independent of any given text and its perceived greatness

plenty of great writers were and/or not revered.

and how much time is needed? how much reverence? how do you measure reverence? your criteria are rather arbitrary (and ultimately elitist, and thus risible)

[septip123]

blow me

[nubbs]

@septip123

wow, it take you 2 months to come up with a come back that witty?

finish high school before trying to hold a conversation with grown ups

ps im guessing you've never actually been blown before, have you kid (though im betting you've tried doing it to yourself)

[nubbs]

btw, reading my previous responses which i had completely forgotten to your inane comments, i struck just how utterly fucking smart i am

must make you pretty jealous. guess that's why you reduced to the playground insults

[queenban]

It is true that, as a non-American, his words maybe don't carry the same weight as they would do if I were. But reading his novels is a pure pleasure, he constructs a sentence in an aesthetic beauty that is extremely pleasurable to read. In my opinion, the greatest living American writer behind Mccarthy.

[CocoCruise]

Agree. I'm having a blissful time writing a dissertation on Roth !

[Ptrgamb]

Roth is a far greater novelist than Pynchon. There is no comparison.

[CocoCruise]

Of course.

[janitwoshoes]

Why would you even try to place either of those two authors on a comparative list? I don't see a point in trying to rank an author, much less two massively different authors. By saying there is no comparison you are comparing the two and I think that is completely missing the point of their respective literary works.

[dennisoneill4]

American Pastoral is brilliant. Roth should have mentioned that politics in America, with the silly dogmas on the left and right, has supplanted religion. Each side has a narrative containing less truth than religion and perhaps even more strictly adhered to than religious beliefs.

[molloyx]

Pastoral is brilliant. An American 'family' tragedy of the highest order. That said, Roth has made no secret of his essential and abiding contempt for the right wing [ The Plot Against America confirms this] and its preturnatural suspicion of American Jews. That he also despises post-modernist cant [ The Human Stain} and aspects of the lunatic left fringe does not nuetralize this central, well informed antagonsim towards the 'conservative' narrative.

[888edward888]

classic, although i stillfeel nal bandian has a better backhand es1

[Scott89119]

Fascinating interview.

[molloyx]

Pynchon has written 3 good novels; The Crying of Lot 49, V. and Gravitys Rainbow. He has produced nothing of value in the past, oh, 35 years. Roth has written at least a dozen novels that are of the highest caliber and the quality of his work in the last 15 years is unrivaled. Anywhere. [ you might want to check out his novella, The Prague Orgy, Mrtv].

[MrtvaPriroda]

Don't get me wrong, I adore Roth, I think he is sensational.After all, who cares of the Nobel.

[MrtvaPriroda]

Roth will get the Nobel never. But that don't mean nothing cause he might not be the same bracket with Pynchon, but he is one exceptional writer.Thou the american for the Nobel good enough these is only Pynchon. And not because he is an american but because he is the greatest living writer never won the Nobel.

[wuz352]

Roth is really a great novelist. The one down turn of his writing is that if you aren't American... well, you won't be able to feel the full grasp of his writings. Great words of Pynchon--one of my favorites as well.

[OscarLevancy]

Portnoy's complaint: awesome!

[yarrr426]

I liked the last 2 mins. especially.

[skutari]

He looks like a rat!! maybe Phlip Rat will be his perfect name??

[BlackProteus]

"He looks like a rat!! maybe Phlip Rat will be his perfect name??"

Yeah, only good-looking people write good books. That's why Tom Cruise recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

[geniuschristie]

Excellent! thanks for posting this!

[jazzmanEE]

in a word roth=genius

[menorca1571]

¡Viva Roth!

[jazzmanEE]

trully one of the greatest authors of our times.

[dinnerbucket9]

That said, you can boast about Ian McEwan long and loud. Atonement, or at least the firt two thirds of it, is the most perfectly measured and structured and....delicatley calibrated novel I have read in ages.

[timboslayer]

I think felt Lawson (who almost idolises Roth) was more pleased to get this interview than ever! Roth doesn't do many interviews anyway - and Lawson is often a bit flippant and jokey with most of his interviewees. This time you can tell he doesn't want to mess it up - no jibes, interruptions. Just listening.

[mkl62]

Happy birthday, Philip. 3-19-08. Sakes alive, 75.

[queenban]

As an Englishman I struggle to identify with the potrait of nationalism a lot of the US greats depict. I'm an avid reader but I'm often left jealous towards the US readers that connect with these amazing novels. (Pynchon, Roth, DeLillo etc.) where is England going? and whose writing this journey now, like the US writers are? What great English writers are there now who write about our country and where it's going? Everything's americanised. Mcewan maybe? but he's scorned upon. What is England?

[painim]

well, your empire's over, right? your literature with those themes vaded with it

[queenban]

Don't be silly. Our literature didn't 'Vade' after the decline of our empire, read Greene or Faulks, or Betjeman or Larkin, I'm not talking about the decline of an empire I'm talking about now. Post war. Not that Sweeden had a lot to do with the liberation of Europe.

[FrenchArmy76]

Moron, what does the literature of America have to do with England? How can the lit of england be americanised? maybe it is because your country england only produces Indian writers and no english ones :p maybe that is where it is going- to India.

[queenban]

No mate, you've missed my point.

I was simply pointing out that a lot of great American writers have constructed their magnum opus' purely on the theme of their country and the direction in which it's headed. English writers, however, don't. I don't know why I feel the need to respond to a frenchman on the subject of national identity through the medium of literature, but you took a mere opinion for succinct scripture. Please don't call me a moron either, we've (thankfully) never met.

[crownofthevalley]

@queenban

You're a tool. Let's throw down, motherfucker, in the ring, just as Hemingway settled such disagreements.

[queenban]

@crownofthevalley

What the hell are you going on about? By shooting ourselves in the mouth?

[Artlitfan]

@queenban Many classic English novels have everything to do with England (Austin's, Dickens' books etc.). Though setting hardly matters in canonical works, ultimately characterization (as in Shakespeare, Twain, Hawthorne, Dickens etc.) remains the key aspect to nearly all great works of literature.

Btw Contemporary English novelists pale to the Americans. You don't have a Roth or Pynchon or Delillo or McCarthy or Crowley or Morrison. It must suck.

[eoinjg]

@Artlitfan It's Austen, not Austin. Haha, take that you arrogant big'ead.

[Artlitfan]

@eoinjg Good call. Doesn't change the fact that British literature is crap nowadays, and that setting means dick in a great book.

[MrShempenman]

@Artlitfan No... But we've had Harold Pinter in the past few years. We've got also Rushdie, who'll win the Nobel before Roth does.

[Artlitfan]

@MrShempenman Rushdie wrote one good novel (Midnight's Children) and will never win the Nobel prize (who cares anyway). Btw I was talking about novelists, Pinter was primarily a playwright (his only novel sucked), and he ripped off Beckett big time.

Face it, you guys had an amazing run, and some of the best stuff came out of England, but you don't produce great artists anymore, your great past haunts you.

[MrShempenman]

@Artlitfan To be honest, I don't get nationalistic about whether our small island still rules Literature. I love American literature more than English lit. England made the language, and had a great part in creating the novel. The USA took over from us in the 20th Century. But in a way, the USA may have had their day for now. Who are your masters now? Franzen? Rushdie may still win the Nobel though. Not that I'd give it him. I just think that one year in the next 20, his time will come.

[Artlitfan]

@MrShempenman I don't care where a book comes from, if it's great it's great. England unfortunately hasn't churned out a great book in forever. America has. But most of the best novels were from long ago anyway (Don Quixote, War&Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, Moby-Dick, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, The Sound and the Fury, Huck Finn etc.) except for a few exceptions (The Road, Underworld, American Pastoral, Mason&Dixon, Infinite Jest, Blindness, some others)

[Artlitfan]

@queenban Many classic English novels have everything to do with England (Austin's, Dickens' books etc.). Though setting hardly matters in canonical works, ultimately characterization (as in Shakespeare, Twain, Hawthorne, Dickens etc.) remains the key aspect to nearly all great works of literature.

Btw Contemporary English novelists pale to the Americans. You don't have a Roth or Pynchon or Delillo or McCarthy or Crowley or Morrison. It must suck.

[timboslayer]

I think I know what you mean. I was reading critics' opinions on the Booker Prize and what it currently represents, and the feeling was that we have LOTS of good writers at the moment but no one really to match the Americans when it comes to national(ist) portrayals. However, there was a theme amongst several of them (and I don't think it was just wishful thinking/romantic yearning) that Britain is on the brink of a surge of new writers - given that we have proportionally more writers than ever.

[dinnerbucket9]

Perhaps tossing an Austrailian into the mix would make things worse? And better. Peter Carey well deserved the Booker Prize for The True History of the Kelly Gang [ ach, the Irish are everywhere and nowhere and usually produce titans like Joyce and Beckett] and remains Undead.

[dinnerbucket9]

Mailer was more a brutish poly-math who never found his lasting balance as a novelist. He was, at times, Capote without the estrogen. Roth is the living master, whose out put in the last 12 years has been extraordinary. Pynchon vanished after the Rainbow. Bellow was always too far above the fray, too clever in the way Nabokov was too clever and imperios.  Denis Johnson, right now, is the shit.

[vergeharget]

Greatest American novelists of the second half of the 20th century?

Bellow, Mailer, Roth, Updike: 3 Jews and a Wasp. Truly the Jews are a superior race.

Itzik Basman

[thefestooner]

Mailer? Updike? I don't think so. I mean really, Mailer? A fine writer, okay, but one of the greatest of the 20th century? No. Not in the second half or any any way you want to divide up the past hundred yrs. Updike is great or, I should say, occasionally great but "greatest"? Again, no. How about Pynchon? William Gaddis? (hard-going for some, I know, but so rewarding)...Malamud (Jew), Ms. Morrison (not Jewish)...Here's a crazy notion: John Hawkes? Even crazier: Gene Wolfe.

[vergeharget]

Mailer with out a doubt, I say.

Malamud is very good but I think ultimately a small writer.

Hawkes and Wolfe--you are right, a "crazy notion"

500 characters here is too limiting.

Itzik Basman

[thefestooner]

Bernard Malamud was a better writer than Norman Mailer. A better stylist and a more trenchant observer of human feeling. In terms of volume of work, variety of subject matter and amount of self-promotion he was "smaller" than Mailer. I'm trying not to come off as a basher but...What NM novel as a work of art is better than BM's The Fixer or The Assistant? And remember The Executoners Song is non-fiction.

[thefestooner]

Ultimately of course its all subjective but discussions like this present the question: What makes a writer great or merely good? I think it depends on what the individual reader asks of a writer's work.

[vergeharget]

...ancient evenings, castle in the forest, harlot's ghost, the gospel according to the son, the naked and the dead,

to distinguish between his supreme armies of the night, nixon in miami and the most supreme executioner's song is to focus on a distinction without a difference betwen fiction and non fiction in the case of mailer...

malamud imho is a superb minor novelist, lacking the breadth and expansiveness to make him a kind of Tolstoy of his time.

Itzik Basman

[thefestooner]

Tolstoy of his time? Really, what does that even mean? Mailer's "expansiveness" was impressive but I'm not sure how truly accomplished it was. You namechecked Harlot's Ghost & GATTS as if the were assured modern classics. The words exhaustive and exhausting come to mind.

[vergeharget]

"Tolstoy of his time" means something along the lines of "breadth and expansiveness." Besides Bellow in his peculiar way and Pynchon (more sizzle than steak) and maybe Tom Wolfe--a really good writer, Bonfire of the Vanities, especially, but ultimately lacking in artistry, who could even begin to approach Mailer in wideness married to great writing in his later novels? And only he could have written such magnificent non-fiction fiction. Mais non?

Itzik Basman

ITZIK bASMAN

[FrenchArmy76]

Shut up-you ruined the entire video for me by bringing up your stupid jewishness :) clearly all the books you read did nothing for you because you sound like a stupid kiddo with no depth.

[waltermarrou]

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[somamesoma]

It is bad vocal dubbing indeed, but it is very stimulating to hear Philip Roth speaking. Great stuff!

[ssjknux]

bad vocal dubbing, but fun to listen to

[dvorah]

Informative, civilized, humurous,outspoken-- just like Roth. Don't miss the second part, too. Dvorah