Conversation: Philip Roth

[ionvkch]

why do the anchor and the journalist asking the questions look like satanists, or at least like people who would eat children.. you can't tell me they do not look thoroughly evil lol

[donquixotion]

rip Philip Roth you will be missed.

[AhmadiyyatCentenary]

@donquixotion He's not dead.

[pawsoned]

Roth is overrated and his writing is either boring or offensive. He achieved fame by provoking a scandal - what a cheap trick. His writing became better (but not great) in the 90s. He is overrated as far as I'm concerned.

[CastleRockFan]

@pawsoned Two words, my friend: Sabbath's Theater.

Your argument is invalid.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no American writer alive today, save perhaps for Pynchon, or maybe Cormac McCarthy, worthy of the kind of praise Roth has received. He deserves the Nobel, I think.

Just my opinion, though.

[pawsoned]

Ok, I admit. This one book I haven't read because I couldn't get hold of it. But my opinion is based on reading a substantial number of his works. And as far as I'm concerned he wrote only few 'good or worthwhile books', especially in the later stage of his career. I think your praise is somewhat overblown because his characters are just clones obsessed with erotomania and the books that I've read do not cut the mustard, so to speak. So it beats me why do some people praise his mediocre novels.

[orevla]

Hemingway wrote standing up as well

[jimberkt]

@orevla a lot of older writers do. This is because you spend so much of your youth sitting writing that you develop haemorrhoids and have to write standing up.

[andersbarca]

Today, at 1300 hours CET, the Nobel prize in literarure should go to Philip Roth.

[Rasscoco]

He has a great view about writing as concept. I like his idea which could be appealing to any not-yet great artist. This means if you work for yourself and believe in what you do profoundly your work would surely end-up being successful and good.

[unclejunglebass]

far more compelling than the novel? like what, halo 3? i just finished goodbye, columbus, and i will definitely be reading roth in 30 years.

[tryingtobeNaboo]

typing standing up, what a loser. I'm reading the Counterlife right now, it's kind of slow, but the whole beginning was bad ass. His brother Henry, a family man, is plagued with impotence at 45 and he's really not ok because of it. I'm trying hard to finish this book.

[emilywilco]

@tryingtobeNaboo you better finish it. It's my favorite book by Roth. Enjoy the craziness :)

[spd13062]

Roth is an American icon and an anomaly....he gets better as he gets older. How many writers can say the same?  His creative output is astounding. And he writes standing up? Who does that? Thanks for all the great fiction..you have "done your bit".

[molloyxx1]

@spd13062 Well said [ and BTW, Nabokovs practice was to write standing up, at a lectern, on 3x 5 index cards] And he certainly does get better as he gets older and no one has written more incisively and eloquently and.....brutishly about the failure of the body [ the ultimate and universal terror] than Roth.

[MrPessoa79]

I love Mr Roth's work. What a great writer.

[RyanZakMusic]

A beautiful man. Great interview!

[thornbird7556]

I doubt if it's true that people stop reading. The most avid readers I know are my 11-year-old brother and his schoolmates.

[TheOdderOne]

@thornbird7556 I think Roth, in his brilliance, greatly underestimates us, the reader.

[floofyfloofy]

Sean Fitts...The New Jersey Literature Examiner for Examiner. Check out his articles online.

[newnameism]

Has he released anymore on how much of Operation Shylock is fiction?

He's the main character of his book, he's taking part in research for hague trials, he has a nervous breakdown, his identity is stolen and he's running around the Palestinian area's and the people who are using his identity are foreign nationals as well including another American who looks stunningly like him and is also an American.

[molloyxx1]

Your point?

[MySilentDawn]

"what I ate for breakfast do you mean?"

lol

[krtina455]

Time to update that computer, Philip.

[thatsmypeanuts]

Lol.

[ccv707]

LOL hilarious I actually imagined him working on a old Royal typewriter, like Harlan Ellison.

[KreamKat]

@krtina455 yeah you really need a most powerful computer availaible to write text.

[ewmeiss]

Excellent writer and awesome person... I only hope he's wrong in that novels are a dying art... if only so people continue enjoying his work...!

[molloyx]

The tireless old master has just recently produced another offering that is soon to be in wide release and I will race to Powells to pick up the hard-copy. As for his comment about the fate of the novel I write it off as a brief surge of despair he might likely retract in the future.

[BahmanG]

Interestingly enough, V.S. Naipaul has said the same thing: Novels are a dying art.

[molloyx]

Some were saying the novel was on its way to extinction after Becketts trilogy; before Roth began his brilliant career.

[LucyLucifera]

Sabbath's Theater is his best book! Funny and profound, as powerful as writing can be.

[molloyx]

Agreed. As scathing and dark and beautifully unhinged as it was I found the closing section so moving it was all I could to finish it.

[CabasseAlbatros]

Greatest living writer !!!

[septip123]

Human Stain is my favorite book of all time.

[jennifersawyer]

I love Philip Roth's work. I just read The Plot Against America. It was brilliant and mesmerizing.

[Moviesman08]

Philip Roth's work is of high quality. In fact, it's rich in language, and it's use. Wonderful stuff. Try 'American Pastoral' and you'll see

[travelwarren]

welli ve read 2 books from him.ok,he s not so good as you allsay,imean some of you.he s good writer.nothing more.i think...

[postalsock]

I believe Philip Roth is a good writer, but he does not write with the same quality as Hemingway and Faulkner etc...

[ijoan]

It is great to see in person this great writer who has fed my mind in so many ways for so many years!

[NewTet]

I've read several of Roth's novels and short stories. They all intrigued, entertained and illuminated me in some way. I admire him as I would a giant of American literature. But I disagree with him that his stuff or any of the other greats' like Faulkner, Hemingway, etc., will not be read 50 years from now.

[molloyx]

. His best work has come in the past 15 years [ after his 60th birthday I believe] and nothing indicates he is losing his power. There is no one more fearless or astute when it comes to the ugly little matter of being trapped inside the physical body. And I agree that his estimation of future literature and future audiences is a bit grim. Art depends on talent, not episodic cultural seizures. Check out Denis Johnson, whose ANGELS is a perfect 'little monster'

[Prezedont]

anyone else think th einterviewer is a prick

[yeastpowder7]

He is fantastic !

So finally get HIM the Nobel prize.

Angelika

[Biochips1]

2-3 years to write a novel? But just because he writes pretty intellectual stuff. Other writers make a novel within six months.

[dirtycelinefrenchman]

Joyce Carol Oates does, and she's an intellectual writing intellectual books.

[geniuschristie]

"Theres a lot of brilliance locked up in all those books in the library"

thanks for posting this

[molloyx]

Also, for the sheer joy of heroic, hallucinogenic prose and narrative drive I recommend Robert Stone's 'Dog Soldiers' and Denis Johnsons 'Already Dead', distinctly masculine enterprises that are likely to singe the delicate sensibilities of your mild professors.

[molloyx]

NG. There is alive in American academia a distinctly Stalinist strain [ ha ha, the Human Strain]of imported logic that enjoys the fantasy of reducing all creative output to the corporate urge of the boo-jwah-zee. It is patent nonsense, a grim theory promoted by failed artists with the souls of bitter lab technicians. Roth is the ideal anti-dote, read him and you feel the post - mod toxins leaving your blood.

[NGS712]

molloy: Yes but you're not really explaining what makes these 'toxins' different from an author like Roth.

[molloyx]

NGS. Check out SIGNS OF THE TIMES [ Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man]by David Lehman. It is strong garlic re the depraved vampires haunting the corridors of American colleges and universities. Lehman does a bang up job of exposing all the major trends of post-mod, imported lit-crit theory. And....be brave, as you will take a regular beating for having the gall to posit that the author is Undead.

[NGS712]

molloy: Are you referring to the 'Author is dead' notion?

I read about that online.

[molloyx]

NGS. Yep. In part. An underneath this lunar notion lurks all kinds of grim Frankfurt School Marxist theory that suggests that the...respective typist is simply channeling the collective brain-pan of the boojwahzee and that the purpose of this enterprise is to distract us all from the greater Project. The plain truth is this; American academia has been held hostage by bitter, tenured lab technicians for decades.

[molloyx]

And more than that I mean it in stark contrast to Roths stubborn, heroic project...his insistence that it matters to live in the world and, futhermore, that the strangeness of this real experinece is worthy of close inspection and a dedicated response. A far cry from the glib,nihilistic proscriptions of the amatuer post mods.

[dinnerbucket9]

Absolutely. And the good people at the local bookstore still have a dozen I havent read and it pleases me that I actually send money into his pocket and that he seems finally to be steadily gaining the recognition he deserves. That said, I doubt that young writers are paying as much attention as they should as American academia is still punch-drunk in love with dime store post-modernists. Oh, well.

[dropkickmurphy9]

Here here

[NGS712]

dinner: What do you mean by 'dime store post-modernists'?

[molloyx]

NGS712. I suppose I used the term loosely to describe a certain brand of trailer park neo-realism [ the Ivy league graduate who inhabits the tiny soul of the Paula Jones Family] and the lazy minded goo produced by David Foster Wallace and his..brethren. I did not really mean Calvino or Barth but I do mean those who 1] cannot begin to tell a story 2] substitute irony for oxygen.

[NGS712]

molloy: I see. I haven't been a hard-core reader, but within the last year I've become interested in Post-Mod. literature and the concepts/ideas/and so on it uses.

I've read Vonnegut, am reading Pynchon, and I'd really like to read Roth soon.

[molloyx]

NG. Pynchon and Vonnegut mattered long before the imported [ French] virus of Post Mod Lit Crit began to suck the air out of creativity on American campuses. The same is true for Barth and Barthelme and Hawkes, Ashbery and Koch. I will stake my life on their importance and singularity. The post mod purists explain these people away as functions of the dominant culture. Beware.

[NGS712]

molloy: You're not 'beating' me over the head. Actually I like to talk about literature, since not alot of people I know are big readers.

What is the difference between the 'purists' and the 'trash'?

I want to know 'cause I'm interested in writing and do not want to end up as such. ;)

[molloyx]

Not to beat you over the head, but Roths 'The Human Stain' takes these post mod creeps on directly and manages to be a great recent American novel entirely because of its guts and beauty.

[jazzmanEE]

...the first who deserves it rather :)

[jazzmanEE]

That elusive Nobel Prize can't be far away indeed. Of all of today's writers Roth should be the first to receive it.

[dinnerbucket9]

RRH8. And please do not think I blame Beckett for some of the alarmist noise that followed. His trilogy [ Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unameable], at least the first two thirds of it, changed my life as a writer.

[dinnerbucket9]

RRH8.Roths late career, which is astonishing re volume and quality [ his best work forged in his 60's], provides me with some measure of hope re the future of the novel [ pronounced dead a thousand times since Beckett]. That you have found him at 18 increases said hope.

[dinnerbucket9]

6700. Great to find a fellow Roth enthusiast out 'here'. I paid no attention for years, being a snot-nosed fan of the post-modernist types. I have binged on Roth recently and just begun the GHOSTWRITER/ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND/ANATOMY LESSON/PRAGUE ORGY quartet. GHOSTWRITER seems absolutely pivotal re all later work.

[rrh8]

when he says the days of the novel have come and gone i cant help but feel a little sadness and a slight amount of annoyance. being an 18 years old and really only beginning my journey into literary tradition and seeing some of these fantastic authors, such as roth, for what they truely are, its bad to think that in 20 years or so people will have stopped appreciating the novel. i really hope this isnt the case people prove roth wrong.

[dinnerbucket9]

I would like to, I will, add Denis Johnson to the mix even though his raw production is no where near Roth and Co. Still, he is a rough and talented beast, part Mailer, part Robert Stone at his best.

[dinnerbucket9]

Roth is the most accomplished novelist still breathing, his output in the past 15 years absolutely singular. [ I challenge anyone to suggest an author who comes close, novel by novel by novel]. He writes to live, a fact his work does nothing to disguise.

[heavydeathmetalwaits]

For me, Cormac Mccarthy has done a pretty good job. In the last 15 years he's published The Road, No Country For Old Men, Cities of the Plain, and The Crossing. I've read all of these, and most of recent Roth, and I have to say it's hard to decide between the two.

[dinnerbucket9]

Harold Bloom certainly has your back on this and I have no platform to stand on as I am one of those who makes quick decisions at the book store based on the quality of the first paragraph and have always found McCarthy too enamored of his own voice, still channeling LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL but...this is thin gruel.

[wanchope6700]

Dinner, I couldn't agre with you more. My PhD thesis (still in progress) deals with Philip Roth's Zuckerman novels and, in the last decade or so, Roth has climbed right to the top of the literary tree. That elusive Nobel Prize can't be far away now.

[rrh8]

im interested, and this sound a little daft, but what does a PhD thesis entail? do you choose an area of literature to look at and develop a question based around that area?

[wanchope6700]

Yes, that's the approach I've adopted,rrh8. I've also found that the area of research you choose tends to narrow and become more focussed as the thesis develops. I'm looking at the impact Zuckerman's filial neuroses has on the American trilogy narratives.

[metal134]

"I can't worry about the reader"

This is the way a true artist should think. To hell with what the fan wants; create what you feel is right.

[billthestinker]

thanks for posting this just finished reading Everyman, it is a must read.

[leafinthehouse]

He's impossible not to listen to. I've never seen a soft spoken person so firmly assert their beliefs like this. If he is this much of a thrill to watch I've got to read him.

[vergeharget]

Where is part 1? I him believe when he says he does not care about the reader. I don't believe him when he says he is naive, even if less than he used to be.

Different from Mailer as to the utility of art.

Stupid interview questions, reminds me of a fawning Charlie Rose.

Itzik Basman

[tomwetmore]

what is stupid about the questions? please be specific.

[vergeharget]

It's been awhile since I listened to this and would have to listen again to give you specifics, but my overall recollection is of a series of general vapid questions.

No?

Itzik Basman

[decreasetherisk]

What questions would you rather have him asked?

[vergeharget]

I'd be interested in for example specific questionas about his growing up, his education, his early experiences in writing, his influences, his views of other writers, specific questions about works he admires, his views on the state of literary criticism and on book reviews, how he works, specific questions on his themes, changes in style and so on.

Itzik Basman

[xiliki]

"I'll keep doing it.. I'll keep doing it stubbornly.."

Respect Philip Roth.-

[Guedingen]

Many thanks.