Philip Roth may have retired, but that doesn’t mean he’s done giving interviews. The author recently sat down with the editor of a Swedish newspaper, who talked with him about misogyny, Sabbath’s Theater and the need for “obstinacy” in a writer. (Related: our own Hannah Gersen reviewed Roth Unbound.) (h/t The Paris Review)
“Anything but the perfect external man”
Tuesday New Release Day: Patchett, Stein, Brandon
The big literary new release this week is Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Also recently out is Gertrude Stein's long-lost oddity for children, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. New in paperback is John Brandon's Citrus County.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Congratulations to Millions contributor Edan Lepucki who received the 2009 James D. Phelan Award for her novel manuscript, Days of Insignificance and Evil. The award is given by the Intersection for the Arts and sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. She'll be reading, along with Page McBee and Youmna Chlala, at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco on Monday, November 16th at 7:30.
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From Chernobyl
Recommended Reading: An excerpt from Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster at n+1. Read more about Alexievich at The Millions.
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Inflight Reading
A German airline has teamed up with a local press for a new campaign that allows each passenger to travel with an extra two pounds just for books. Pair with this Millions piece on the weight of moving books.
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All She Can Ever Know
"I am writing a book my father will never see. Not in its entirety, not out in the world." For Longreads, Nicole Chung writes about adoption, family, writing, and finishing her upcoming memoir, All You Can Ever Know, in the wake of her father's sudden death. Pair with: Julie Buntin's Year in Reading entry which feature's Chung's memoir.
Poems on Poems
“Of course, his word-pictures don’t define the art of poetry—nor are they meant to. In part they exemplify it; in part provide a warning that such an art eludes straightforward setting out in words.” On Horace’s and Archibald MacLeish’s Ars Poetica.
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The Nervous Breakdown
If you haven't already, be sure to check out the new books and culture website The Nervous Breakdown. They've already got a great interview with Millions favorite Dan Chaon, as well as some interesting essays that I'm looking forward to digging into. I also like their "self-interview" series--where writers ask, and answer, their own questions.
While I admire Philip Roth work, I can’t avoid thinking that his need to read his own work, and then to grace us with his revelation upon doing so is hopelessly narcissistic and arrogant. Reading these “revelations” is like listening to a parent go on and on about her children.
Ultimately, it’s how the world judges your children that matters. Not you. Is Roth’s work misogynist? I don’t think so. But a lot of people do. Too bad, Mr. Roth. That question will have to sort itself out over time. We might as well listen to Shakespeare defend himself against accusations of antisemitism in the Merchant of Venice. The play will engage us, if not forever, for a long time. But for all his monumental influence, the great bard doesn’t get a vote in defining what his work means. The same goes for Philip Roth, or any writer.
Let it go, Roth! Get a life! Indulge the retirement you promised yourself and the world. If there is rhetoric in your fiction, that’s there for others to sort out. Your clever logic in interviews after you chose to set your work on its way, disabuses the reading public of none of its illusions.