Philip Roth: The Novel is a Dying Animal

[TheCaptinLove]

"The book can't compete with the movie screen"

I guess he's somehow never heard the phrase "the book was better". That phrase always comes up when talking about a movie based on one. If anything I think movies based on books (as almost all of the good ones are) will drive all but the intellectually lazy toward reading. Some of the first books I read without being forced to where the Lord of the Rings books because I was so blown away by first Peter Jackson movie.

[80Cetbal08]

The Harry Potter and Twilight series did the novel a huge favour. They taught a new generation of HI-tech kids about the pleasures of reading. Those kids are not going to continue wanting to read about fantasy dragons and sparkly Vampires, but WILL probably still be interested in reading novels...

WIN WIN.

[Paglia444]

Roth is a narcissist. Notice how the novel's death seems to coincide with his own death. Get a life, Philip.

Roth's own Portnoy's Complaint was the best-selling novel in 1969 but only sold 418,000 copies in hardcover. By contrast, Toni Morrison's Paradise sold over 1 million hardcovers in 1998 and only ranked #9 on the list in 1998. Kathryn Stockett's The Help sold over 5 million hardcovers. The numbers simply do not bear out Philip's assertions.

[SuperIlluminaughty]

Video wins, brain functions will change. I love old books by the way.

[dogman652]

Lets say the average american reads 3 novels a year. That's 900,000,000 novels per year in this country alone. I love Roth, but the novel is far from dead.

[Wordgot]

My eyes are getting old. That's the only reason I'm reading less and applauding the rise of the audio book and the podcast. They might be slower, but they don't hurt.

[Itwaswritten1029]

Richard Powers, William Vollmann, David Mitchell, Mark. Danielwski, Jonathan Franzen, Neal Stephenson, Jonathan Lethem, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Hilary Mantel, Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joshua Cohen the novel isn't dead I will continue to read these writers and I WILL NEVER BUY A KINDLE

[Byorin]

I write for a living and I sort of agree with Roth. Most people just don't have the interest anymore, let alone the fact that much of the world is illiterate. I've worked in offices with dozens of people and none of them read more than one novel every couple of years. Citing Twilight or Harry Potter as an example of the popularity of books is not a strong argument. Those are exceptions, by no means are they the norm. Newspapers are also dying, with most headed to an online format.

[SuperAntiZionist]

Phillip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint is one sick book. If that is at all autobiographical then that makes him a sadist of peculiar gravity.

[crt1477]

Philip Roth is one on my favorite authors, but he is dead wrong. I think in 25-years paper books will be rare, but people will still be reading novels on their e-book readers and listening to audiobooks on their MP3 players.

[DMenase24]

Really? If you read a novel in more than two weeks you're not really reading the novel? I couldn't disagree more with his views on this topic. I like what my main man Paul Auster has to say on this issue.

[pleaseoceancloud]

Well... I'll keep reading. :)

[KINKSTA55]

depressing 

[rhett1583]

he hasn't used a tablet yet?

[mjbucher10]

@Metalgod89 That's absolutely false

[harhol]

100 million kids are reading 700-page Twilight novels. The novel isn't going anywhere. People are buying more books than ever. People are writing more books than ever. If anything the current market is oversaturated with shelves full of awful fiction and writers who are obsessed with yearly income & the bourgeois status of being a writer rather than being obsessed with how to make their work great (something Susan Sontag was complaing about in the 60s).

[Metalgod89]

@harhol I just learned recently that Ohio State University has now added Twilight as required reading for students.

[sarahchambers100]

@harhol Better kids are reading anything at all than out selling drugs.

[molloyxx1]

As much as I love Roth his analysis is ful of holes. He cites the movie screen [ bringing us back to the early 1900's], the television screen [ 50's] and computer screen [ who cares] as a combination of forces that have had a vampyric effect on the novel and general readership. My sense is that great fiction almost always finds its primary audience, and that audience is often comprised of artists who eventually contribute to the body of good fiction or stand by its virtues. The rest are slobs.

[Ferrari312pb]

I find I'm far less willing to commit to reading a novel than I was twenty years ago, but maybe that's what comes from studying literature at university for three years... .

[gomezz]

Roth is wrong about this.

[urizen2000]

uhhh. Meinfus, my mistake. Roth was talking about how in modern life, people aren't willing to focus on something like a novel for too long. BTW, it's not my 'theory' that taking longer to read is better. I was speaking from my own experience in which students are bombarded, so it's the extreme opposite of the spectrum; where one is force-fed books, instead of discovering them in their own time. To call it ridiculous is to make a large assumption yourself on personal experience. BOOOO

[Meinfus]

A childish and pedantic response. You apparently admit now that it was obvious that Roth said that if you're reading a novel in more than two weeks you're not reading it so I'm glad we made that clear.

[Meinfus]

I'll simply state again that your theory or opinion or whatever the fuck word you wanna use for it of it being bad to read a book in a week is plainly preposterous. How can this even be discussed? Force-fed? A book must be experienced as a whole, not as a disjointed, forgotten mess in your mind. If you want to take forever to read a book that's preference but to say it's somehow generally worse to read a book in less than a week than it is to do so is outrageous.

[urizen2000]

Hm. Aggressive, aren't we? U obviously weren't reading my comments properly. BTW I wasn't admitting, but realizing that I had misinterpreted Mr. Roth's comments. You're putting words in my mouth, but anyway. I'm letting the matter lie because I could care less for arguing over finer points. I think I'll just go read a book and LEER over every page lovingly and slooooowly.

[Meinfus]

Oh no need to argue over the finer points and details friendo, just address the main point regarding your theory. But I suppose you've realized it was an arrogant and stupid thing to say by now anyways. It's typical for people who've been beaten in an argument on the internet to cut and run and say this argument is beneath them one way or another.

You're free to read your books slowly, as I said, it's entirely up to the person how fast he reads. But reading a book in a week is not bad.

[Meinfus]

Jesus Christ I keep pressing the Post Comment button before I'm finished.

[Meinfus]

The last thing I wanted to say in this obviously crappy place to say anything was that if it was you who thumbed down my comment that is immensely pathetic. The equivalent of saying "You're wrong" and running away.

[apexxxx10]

This is a intimate well photographed interview.

Merci - DailyBeat & YouTube

Dr John

CarSanook (dot com)

Bangkok

[niamhino]

what a pile of crap.

[eslgurucalif]

Sure, hardcover books may go away. But written narrative and reading itself??? After roughly 3,000 years? Why? More people than ever are reading on the Internet.

[urizen2000]

I think he meant 'if you read the novel in LESS than two weeks' you're not really reading the novel. This makes sense if you think of how most university courses are designed with reading lists that require the student (of Literature mostly) to average, a book a week. This is preposterous if one thinks about the amount of time it first of all takes to read a book closely, then to absorb it and let it sit with the reader. Novels don't only occupy space on a page, they occupy space in a life.

[polymath7]

What does this say of Harold Bloom, who claims that in his youth he would read at the rate of a thousand pages an hour?

If true, this would mean he could finish 'Clarissa' before lunch. 'In Search of Lost Time' before dinner.

The thought makes me quite envious. I spent a month on 'Don Quixote' and twice that on 'War and Peace'.

[urizen2000]

@polymath7 Well, to be fair, I think Bloom is one of few exceptions to the voracity and speed of reading. Mind you, he often reads books he likes twice. Usually, when I read, I just...read. Then, if I haven't put it in the trash by page 40, I'll come back and read it again more closely for a second time. In the case of Lord of The Rings, I'm sure I'm not the only one who reads a book they like over and over again!

[Meinfus]

Ridiculous. He meant if you're reading it in more than two weeks you're not reading it. That's what he said, you're presuming he misspoke and I know he's old but I'm fairly sure he'd have realized if he had and I think your theory about it being good to take a long time to read a book is ridiculous. If you read something in more than two weeks what you read previously is too far gone in your memory.