Philip Roth: The Novel is a Dying Animal

Is the novel a dying animal? In this segment from TheDailyBeast.com's Web series, 'The Beast Bar,' Philip Roth tells Tina Brown it certainly is.

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News & Politics

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• philip roth
• tina brown
• the humbling
• the beast bar
• the daily beast
• Kindle
• literature
• books
• writing

[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).

[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... .

[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.