Interview with Philip Roth (Part 1)

This guy is a massive legend.

Time + reverence

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)

blow me

@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)

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

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".

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.

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.)

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