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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