Friday, January 18, 2013

Philip Roth picks his best novels


Philip Roth
Philip Roth in 2008. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Any Philip Roth fans hoping that the celebrated American author might change his mind about his retirement from the world of letters, announced in November, look likely to be frustrated: Roth is thoroughly enjoying his life of leisure.

Speaking earlier this week, the novelist said that retirement was "great so far", adding that after working every day of the week during a literary career that ran from 1959 to 2010, he is now taking things a little easier. "I wake up in the morning, get a big glass of orange juice and read for an hour-and-a-half. I've never done that in my life," he said.

Roth was speaking at a Television Critics Association panel for a programme about his life due to air in March, and attended by journalists including David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times and Tim Molloy of The Wrap.

The novelist was adamant that 2010's Nemesis, his 31st book, would be his last. "I found it [inspiration] 31 times. I don't want to find it anymore. I'm tired," he said.


Looking back over his half-century career, The Wrap asked Roth which of his books he considers to be the best-written, and the author picked Sabbath's Theater, "which a lot of people hate", and American Pastoral. "I think it's got a lot of freedom in it," he said of Sabbath's Theater. "That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader."

American Pastoral followed Sabbath's Theater, and in it Roth said he "wanted to write about a conventionally virtuous man. I was sick of Mickey Sabbath and I wanted to go to the other end of the spectrum. I think the book worked, enabled me to write about the most powerful decade of my life, the 60s, and the domestic turbulence of the 60s, and I think I got a lot of that into the book."


Roth also revealed how, when he realised that his 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint was set to become a hit, he took his parents out to lunch to warn them about its explicit content. "I told them that it was not against the law to hang up on a journalist," he said. His parents, however, were not convinced, with his mother deciding, as they returned home, that Roth had "delusions of grandeur". "'He was never that type of boy. He's going to have his heart broken because this is not going to happen.'"


The award-winning author, who has taken the Pulitzer prize, the National Book award twice and the Man Booker International, but not the Nobel, also made a discreet jibe at the Nobel judges who have dismissed American literature as insular in the past, reported the LA Times.

Referring to fellow writers including John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, EL Doctorow and William Styron, Roth said he "ran with some very fast horses … Now, the Nobel prize committee doesn't agree with me. They think we're provincial. But I suspect they're a little bit provincial."

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