I was being optimistic about 25 years really. I think it's going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them but it will be a small group of people. Maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range... To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don't read the novel really. So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by — it's hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities[.][22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Roth
Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933)[1] is an American novelist.
He first gained attention with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of American-Jewish life for which he received the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction,[2][3] Roth's fiction, regularly set in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "supple, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity.[4] His profile rose significantly in 1969 after the publication of the controversial Portnoy's Complaint, the humorous and sexually explicit psychoanalytical monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor", filled with "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language".[3][5]
Roth is one of the most awarded U.S. writers of his generation: his books have twice received the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, which featured one of his best-known characters, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roth's novels. The Human Stain (2000), another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize and, in 2012, he received Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.
影評
菲利普·羅斯是他筆下種種面具的總和
報道 2013年03月19日
Bob Peterson
紀錄片《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》中羅斯的一幅肖像。
菲利普·羅斯(Philip
Roth)日前已宣布封筆退休，儘管並非所有人都完全相信這個消息。下周，羅斯將迎來80歲生日，屆時，慶祝活動，告別演說，必已列入議事日程。去紐瓦克
(Newark)的遊客，可乘坐觀光巴士，途經羅斯以前的高中，停車薩米特大道(Summit Avenue)與科爾大道(Keer
Avenue)交匯路口——這裡如今被命名為“菲利普·羅斯廣場”——在瑞典文學院振作精神拿出行動之前，這項榮譽足夠羅斯受用了。
與此同時，《紐約》雜誌正式辦了個聚會，結果卻搞的像是大學裡的文學愛好者兄弟會，很尷尬。受邀前來的年輕作家幾乎都是男性，他們儘管並不一定夠資 格，也統統張揚宣告各自對羅斯先生的無比欽佩，藉以含蓄表達他們對自己的敬意。毫無疑問，稱頌一位作家的最好方式是讀他的作品；但是，那種孤獨的消遣，雖 然復現並回報了作者自身付出的寂寞勞動，卻缺乏一種隆重感。因此，或許你可以考慮轉而去看場電影。
羅斯先生小說改編的電影，我不建議你去找來看（雖然並不全都慘不忍睹，但統統欠缺了羅斯小說獨特表達方式中的，至關重要且不可比擬的實質）。話雖如 此，我倒想推薦你下個星期去“電影論壇”劇院(Film Forum)看看：威廉·卡雷爾(William Karel)和利維婭·馬內拉(Livia Manera)新拍的紀錄片，《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》(Philip Roth: Unmasked)，正在上映——免費——這要感謝奧斯特洛夫斯基家族基金(Ostrovsky Family Fund)的慷慨贊助。
這部電影屬於PBS電視台紮實專營的“美國大師”(American Masters)系列，與該系列大多數作品一樣，恭敬、嚴肅、引人入勝，而且正好90分鐘長。片中，少數幾位值得信賴的作家——小說家妮可·克勞斯 (Nicole Krauss)、喬納森·弗蘭岑(Jonathan Franzen)，以及評論家兼記者克勞迪婭·羅斯·皮爾龐特(Claudia Roth Pierpont)——提供了他們對羅斯先生的看法，其中不乏頗有見地的觀察。老朋友們——米亞·法羅(Mia Farrow)、馬丁·格博斯(Martin Garbus)，以及自巴克內爾大學(Bucknell)本科生時期就熟識羅斯先生的簡·布朗·瑪斯(Jane Brown Maas)——深情發言大讚羅斯，同時亦小心翼翼，不透露任何不能說的秘密。
考慮到羅斯最重大的寫作主題向來是他自己，所以熒幕上佔主導地位的還是他本人，這樣的安排恰如其分。電影製作人卡雷爾與馬內拉，在紐約以及羅斯位於 西康涅狄格州的家中，與羅斯共度了10天，將他“服侍”得自在舒心。因此，影片90分鐘里的羅斯是個絕妙的好夥伴——豪爽、風趣、大方、坦誠。
不過，羅斯並沒有過分展露自己。弗蘭岑讚揚他“展露了此前從未示人的一部分自我”，不過當然，這些“部分”，從技術上講，屬於艾歷克斯‧波特諾伊 (Alexander Portnoy)、內森·祖克曼(Nathan Zuckerman)，屬於《再見吧，哥倫布》(Goodbye, Columbus)中的尼爾·克盧格曼(Neil Klugman)，以及羅斯其他許多面的個性。羅斯先生將其稱之為複數的“替身”；書面講法叫做“人物角色”(personae)——這個詞是拉丁語中 “面具”的意思。因此，在電影中，作家的“面具”被“褪去”；從這層意義上講，我們在片中看到的，不是他筆下的人物，甚至不是《遺產》 (Patrimony)、《事實》(The Facts)，或小說《夏洛克在行動》(Operation Shylock)與《反美陰謀》(The Plot Against America)中那個名叫“菲利普·羅斯”的人——而是執筆的作家本人。
片中，他的私人生活，大部分都繼續保持私人；其中約略提及他的第一段婚姻，稱之為“殘忍無情、駭人聽聞”。對羅斯男女關係感興趣的讀者，只能等布萊 克·貝利(Blake Bailey)的授權傳記出版了，或也可以屈服於將小說當成可靠源材料的惡習——這習慣極不靠譜，卻又令人無法抵抗。
有關羅斯“厭女症”的關鍵問題——這個棘手而有趣的話題，至少有一位《紐約》雜誌撰稿人，基思·格森(Keith Gessen)，曾災難性地摸索過——在本片中則幾乎避而未談。或許是因為法羅、克勞斯以及皮爾龐特靠着她們的能言善辯以及滿腔熱誠，含蓄地打了圓場。
其他爭議性話題，則在片中得到更為廣泛地大肆宣揚，尤其是20世紀50年代，羅斯先生第一批短篇小說在《紐約》雜誌甫一刊載，後又收入《再見吧，哥 倫布》出版，並因此而迎來的種族喧囂。然後，隨着《波特諾伊的怨訴》(Portnoy's Complaint)出版，他再次被責難為反猶太主義者、一個自我仇恨的猶太人。可面對這些“指控”，他卻並沒有太過反駁，而更多的是自我超越，化干戈為 機遇，繼而登上想像力的航班，平步青雲。
卡雷爾是一位法國電影製片人，馬內拉是一位意大利記者。兩人的優勢，在於其置身雜亂的美國文學觀之外；而且，他們各自的祖國對作家總是推崇有加，為 其塑像，為其出版標準版文集，為其發行紀念郵票，間或將其關進監獄什麼的。我們見不着二位的面，聽不到他們提出的問題；然而，通過影片顯而易見，他們對於 所拍攝的人物禮數足盡，對其作品所表現出的興趣與熟悉度，亦使得羅斯先生投桃報李，在片中對自己作品的來源與含義做了反思與回映。
如此交出的答卷，是一篇極度令人滿意的自我批評散文，一段尋根的深度挖掘之旅，以及一部筆耕編年史。我們從片中了解到，原來羅斯平時站着創作，完成 的手稿還會分發給周圍的朋友，將他們的反應和回饋錄音、謄寫下來，用以參考並修訂手稿。這種做法顯示了他非凡開闊的心胸以及卓爾不群的自信，其中所暗示的 一些作家特質，與通常歸因於敝帚自珍或閉門造車的神經質與自戀截然不同。
同時，若將羅斯比作一位自我肖像畫家，一直以來展現着非同尋常的坦率，以及獨出心裁的創意，那麼其實他亦在廣袤而複雜的畫布上，繪寫了除自我肖像之 外的一切。一般可能認為，菲利普·羅斯寫作生涯的主要階段，即最傑出時期，始於其1986年的《反生活》(The Counterlife)，還包括後來的《安息日劇場》(Sabbath's Theater)和《美國牧歌》(American Pastoral)——後兩者堪列近25年來最優秀小說名單，當仁不讓。《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》尤其着墨於這段時期，表現格外搶眼。
菲利普·羅斯迄今已有31部作品問世，聆聽作者反思這些作品，誠然令人愉悅；然而，《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》最大的作用在於，它提醒觀眾注意到這些作品的存在，並且鼓勵你去閱讀、去探索發現。一個獻身於創作的作家，最終是他筆下種種面具的總和。
與此同時，《紐約》雜誌正式辦了個聚會，結果卻搞的像是大學裡的文學愛好者兄弟會，很尷尬。受邀前來的年輕作家幾乎都是男性，他們儘管並不一定夠資 格，也統統張揚宣告各自對羅斯先生的無比欽佩，藉以含蓄表達他們對自己的敬意。毫無疑問，稱頌一位作家的最好方式是讀他的作品；但是，那種孤獨的消遣，雖 然復現並回報了作者自身付出的寂寞勞動，卻缺乏一種隆重感。因此，或許你可以考慮轉而去看場電影。
羅斯先生小說改編的電影，我不建議你去找來看（雖然並不全都慘不忍睹，但統統欠缺了羅斯小說獨特表達方式中的，至關重要且不可比擬的實質）。話雖如 此，我倒想推薦你下個星期去“電影論壇”劇院(Film Forum)看看：威廉·卡雷爾(William Karel)和利維婭·馬內拉(Livia Manera)新拍的紀錄片，《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》(Philip Roth: Unmasked)，正在上映——免費——這要感謝奧斯特洛夫斯基家族基金(Ostrovsky Family Fund)的慷慨贊助。
這部電影屬於PBS電視台紮實專營的“美國大師”(American Masters)系列，與該系列大多數作品一樣，恭敬、嚴肅、引人入勝，而且正好90分鐘長。片中，少數幾位值得信賴的作家——小說家妮可·克勞斯 (Nicole Krauss)、喬納森·弗蘭岑(Jonathan Franzen)，以及評論家兼記者克勞迪婭·羅斯·皮爾龐特(Claudia Roth Pierpont)——提供了他們對羅斯先生的看法，其中不乏頗有見地的觀察。老朋友們——米亞·法羅(Mia Farrow)、馬丁·格博斯(Martin Garbus)，以及自巴克內爾大學(Bucknell)本科生時期就熟識羅斯先生的簡·布朗·瑪斯(Jane Brown Maas)——深情發言大讚羅斯，同時亦小心翼翼，不透露任何不能說的秘密。
考慮到羅斯最重大的寫作主題向來是他自己，所以熒幕上佔主導地位的還是他本人，這樣的安排恰如其分。電影製作人卡雷爾與馬內拉，在紐約以及羅斯位於 西康涅狄格州的家中，與羅斯共度了10天，將他“服侍”得自在舒心。因此，影片90分鐘里的羅斯是個絕妙的好夥伴——豪爽、風趣、大方、坦誠。
不過，羅斯並沒有過分展露自己。弗蘭岑讚揚他“展露了此前從未示人的一部分自我”，不過當然，這些“部分”，從技術上講，屬於艾歷克斯‧波特諾伊 (Alexander Portnoy)、內森·祖克曼(Nathan Zuckerman)，屬於《再見吧，哥倫布》(Goodbye, Columbus)中的尼爾·克盧格曼(Neil Klugman)，以及羅斯其他許多面的個性。羅斯先生將其稱之為複數的“替身”；書面講法叫做“人物角色”(personae)——這個詞是拉丁語中 “面具”的意思。因此，在電影中，作家的“面具”被“褪去”；從這層意義上講，我們在片中看到的，不是他筆下的人物，甚至不是《遺產》 (Patrimony)、《事實》(The Facts)，或小說《夏洛克在行動》(Operation Shylock)與《反美陰謀》(The Plot Against America)中那個名叫“菲利普·羅斯”的人——而是執筆的作家本人。
片中，他的私人生活，大部分都繼續保持私人；其中約略提及他的第一段婚姻，稱之為“殘忍無情、駭人聽聞”。對羅斯男女關係感興趣的讀者，只能等布萊 克·貝利(Blake Bailey)的授權傳記出版了，或也可以屈服於將小說當成可靠源材料的惡習——這習慣極不靠譜，卻又令人無法抵抗。
有關羅斯“厭女症”的關鍵問題——這個棘手而有趣的話題，至少有一位《紐約》雜誌撰稿人，基思·格森(Keith Gessen)，曾災難性地摸索過——在本片中則幾乎避而未談。或許是因為法羅、克勞斯以及皮爾龐特靠着她們的能言善辯以及滿腔熱誠，含蓄地打了圓場。
其他爭議性話題，則在片中得到更為廣泛地大肆宣揚，尤其是20世紀50年代，羅斯先生第一批短篇小說在《紐約》雜誌甫一刊載，後又收入《再見吧，哥 倫布》出版，並因此而迎來的種族喧囂。然後，隨着《波特諾伊的怨訴》(Portnoy's Complaint)出版，他再次被責難為反猶太主義者、一個自我仇恨的猶太人。可面對這些“指控”，他卻並沒有太過反駁，而更多的是自我超越，化干戈為 機遇，繼而登上想像力的航班，平步青雲。
卡雷爾是一位法國電影製片人，馬內拉是一位意大利記者。兩人的優勢，在於其置身雜亂的美國文學觀之外；而且，他們各自的祖國對作家總是推崇有加，為 其塑像，為其出版標準版文集，為其發行紀念郵票，間或將其關進監獄什麼的。我們見不着二位的面，聽不到他們提出的問題；然而，通過影片顯而易見，他們對於 所拍攝的人物禮數足盡，對其作品所表現出的興趣與熟悉度，亦使得羅斯先生投桃報李，在片中對自己作品的來源與含義做了反思與回映。
如此交出的答卷，是一篇極度令人滿意的自我批評散文，一段尋根的深度挖掘之旅，以及一部筆耕編年史。我們從片中了解到，原來羅斯平時站着創作，完成 的手稿還會分發給周圍的朋友，將他們的反應和回饋錄音、謄寫下來，用以參考並修訂手稿。這種做法顯示了他非凡開闊的心胸以及卓爾不群的自信，其中所暗示的 一些作家特質，與通常歸因於敝帚自珍或閉門造車的神經質與自戀截然不同。
同時，若將羅斯比作一位自我肖像畫家，一直以來展現着非同尋常的坦率，以及獨出心裁的創意，那麼其實他亦在廣袤而複雜的畫布上，繪寫了除自我肖像之 外的一切。一般可能認為，菲利普·羅斯寫作生涯的主要階段，即最傑出時期，始於其1986年的《反生活》(The Counterlife)，還包括後來的《安息日劇場》(Sabbath's Theater)和《美國牧歌》(American Pastoral)——後兩者堪列近25年來最優秀小說名單，當仁不讓。《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》尤其着墨於這段時期，表現格外搶眼。
菲利普·羅斯迄今已有31部作品問世，聆聽作者反思這些作品，誠然令人愉悅；然而，《菲利普·羅斯：褪去面具》最大的作用在於，它提醒觀眾注意到這些作品的存在，並且鼓勵你去閱讀、去探索發現。一個獻身於創作的作家，最終是他筆下種種面具的總和。
本文最初發表於2013年3月13日。
翻譯：江烈農
Philip Roth, having recently announced his retirement from writing — news that not everyone takes entirely at face value — turns 80 next week. Celebration, and maybe valediction, are certainly the order of the day. Visitors to Newark can take a bus tour past his old high school and pause at the intersection of Summit and Keer Avenues, now designated Philip Roth Plaza, an honor that will have to suffice until the Swedish Academy gets its act together.
New York magazine, meanwhile, convened what amounted to an awkward literary frat party, at which younger writers, almost all of them men, were invited to pay implicit tribute to themselves by professing their great, not always unqualified, admiration for Mr. Roth. The best way to celebrate a writer, of course, is to read his work, but that solitary pursuit, which replicates and requites the writer’s own lonely labor, lacks a sense of occasion. So you might go to the movies instead.
While I wouldn’t recommend seeking out the film adaptations of Mr. Roth’s novels (which, while not all terrible, lack the crucial, inimitable fact of his voice), I can point you in the direction of Film Forum, where William Karel and Livia Manera’s new documentary, “Philip Roth: Unmasked,” is being shown — free, thanks to the beneficence of the Ostrovsky Family Fund — for the next week.
The film is part of the sturdy “American Masters” franchise on PBS (which will broadcast it nationally on March 29), and like most of the other entries in the series, it is respectful, serious, absorbing and exactly 90 minutes long. A handful of creditable writers — the novelists Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Franzen, the critic and journalist Claudia Roth Pierpont — offer their thoughts on Mr. Roth, and some of their observations are insightful. Friends of long standing (Mia Farrow, Martin Garbus and Jane Brown Maas, who has known Mr. Roth since his undergraduate days at Bucknell) speak fondly of him and carefully refrain from betraying any confidences.
But fittingly enough, given that his great subject has always been himself, it is Mr. Roth who dominates the screen. Mr. Karel and Ms. Manera spent 10 days in his company, in New York and at his house in western Connecticut, and succeeded in putting him at ease. He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.
Though not unduly self-revealing. Mr. Franzen commends him for “exposing parts of himself that no one had ever exposed before,” but of course those parts technically belonged to Alexander Portnoy, Neil Klugman (of “Goodbye, Columbus”), Nathan Zuckerman and other alter egos. Mr. Roth calls them “stand-ins”; the literary term is personae, which is Latin for masks. So the writer is “unmasked” in the movie in the sense that he, rather than any of his characters — including the one called, in the memoirs “Patrimony” and “The Facts,” as well as in fiction like “Operation Shylock” and “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth — is the person we see.
His private life is, for the most part, kept that way. Passing mention is made of a “brutal, lurid” first marriage, but those interested in Mr. Roth’s relationships with women will have to await Blake Bailey’s authorized biography or else succumb to the irresponsible, irresistible vice of treating novels as source material.
The related critical question of Mr. Roth’s misogyny — a thorny and interesting matter catastrophically fumbled by at least one of the New York magazine symposiasts, Keith Gessen — is mostly sidestepped here, and perhaps implicitly defused by the eloquence and enthusiasm of Ms. Farrow, Ms. Krauss and Ms. Pierpont.
Other controversies are aired more extensively, notably the tribal uproar that greeted Mr. Roth’s first stories when they were published, in magazines and then in “Goodbye, Columbus” in the late 1950s. Then, and again with the publication of “Portnoy’s Complaint,” he was arraigned as an anti-Semite and a self-hating Jew, charges he did not so much refute as transcend, turning the drama into grist for subsequent imaginative flights.
Mr. Karel, a French filmmaker, and Ms. Manera, an Italian journalist, have the advantages of standing outside the scrum of American literary politics and also of coming from countries that have venerated their writers with statues, standard editions, postage stamps and occasional prison time. We do not see their faces or hear their questions, but it is clear that they paid their subject the courtesy of being interested in, and familiar with, his work and that he repaid them by reflecting on its sources and meanings.
The result is an inordinately satisfying essay in self-criticism, an excavation of roots followed by a chronicle of labor. We learn that Mr. Roth composes standing up and that he sends finished manuscripts around to a few friends, whose reactions he then tape records and transcribes as part of the revising process. This practice shows remarkable openness and self-confidence, and it suggests something very different from the neurosis and narcissism so often ascribed to writers who draw from the reservoir of the self.
And if Mr. Roth has been an unusually frank and inventive self-portraitist, he has also painted vast and intricate canvases of everything else. “Philip Roth: Unmasked” is especially strong when it reaches what might be thought of as his major phase, the extraordinary period that began with “The Counterlife” (1986) and that includes “Sabbath’s Theater” and “American Pastoral,” surely two of the finest novels of the past quarter-century.
Pleasurable as it is to hear the author reflect on those and other books — he has written 31 in all — the greatest service “Philip Roth: Unmasked” performs is to remind you of their existence and encourage rereading or discovery. A writer, in the end, is the sum of the masks he has devoted his life to making.
翻譯：江烈農
Movie Review
Looking Past the Alter Egos to the Novelist
March 19, 2013
Philip Roth, having recently announced his retirement from writing — news that not everyone takes entirely at face value — turns 80 next week. Celebration, and maybe valediction, are certainly the order of the day. Visitors to Newark can take a bus tour past his old high school and pause at the intersection of Summit and Keer Avenues, now designated Philip Roth Plaza, an honor that will have to suffice until the Swedish Academy gets its act together.
New York magazine, meanwhile, convened what amounted to an awkward literary frat party, at which younger writers, almost all of them men, were invited to pay implicit tribute to themselves by professing their great, not always unqualified, admiration for Mr. Roth. The best way to celebrate a writer, of course, is to read his work, but that solitary pursuit, which replicates and requites the writer’s own lonely labor, lacks a sense of occasion. So you might go to the movies instead.
While I wouldn’t recommend seeking out the film adaptations of Mr. Roth’s novels (which, while not all terrible, lack the crucial, inimitable fact of his voice), I can point you in the direction of Film Forum, where William Karel and Livia Manera’s new documentary, “Philip Roth: Unmasked,” is being shown — free, thanks to the beneficence of the Ostrovsky Family Fund — for the next week.
The film is part of the sturdy “American Masters” franchise on PBS (which will broadcast it nationally on March 29), and like most of the other entries in the series, it is respectful, serious, absorbing and exactly 90 minutes long. A handful of creditable writers — the novelists Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Franzen, the critic and journalist Claudia Roth Pierpont — offer their thoughts on Mr. Roth, and some of their observations are insightful. Friends of long standing (Mia Farrow, Martin Garbus and Jane Brown Maas, who has known Mr. Roth since his undergraduate days at Bucknell) speak fondly of him and carefully refrain from betraying any confidences.
But fittingly enough, given that his great subject has always been himself, it is Mr. Roth who dominates the screen. Mr. Karel and Ms. Manera spent 10 days in his company, in New York and at his house in western Connecticut, and succeeded in putting him at ease. He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.
Though not unduly self-revealing. Mr. Franzen commends him for “exposing parts of himself that no one had ever exposed before,” but of course those parts technically belonged to Alexander Portnoy, Neil Klugman (of “Goodbye, Columbus”), Nathan Zuckerman and other alter egos. Mr. Roth calls them “stand-ins”; the literary term is personae, which is Latin for masks. So the writer is “unmasked” in the movie in the sense that he, rather than any of his characters — including the one called, in the memoirs “Patrimony” and “The Facts,” as well as in fiction like “Operation Shylock” and “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth — is the person we see.
His private life is, for the most part, kept that way. Passing mention is made of a “brutal, lurid” first marriage, but those interested in Mr. Roth’s relationships with women will have to await Blake Bailey’s authorized biography or else succumb to the irresponsible, irresistible vice of treating novels as source material.
The related critical question of Mr. Roth’s misogyny — a thorny and interesting matter catastrophically fumbled by at least one of the New York magazine symposiasts, Keith Gessen — is mostly sidestepped here, and perhaps implicitly defused by the eloquence and enthusiasm of Ms. Farrow, Ms. Krauss and Ms. Pierpont.
Other controversies are aired more extensively, notably the tribal uproar that greeted Mr. Roth’s first stories when they were published, in magazines and then in “Goodbye, Columbus” in the late 1950s. Then, and again with the publication of “Portnoy’s Complaint,” he was arraigned as an anti-Semite and a self-hating Jew, charges he did not so much refute as transcend, turning the drama into grist for subsequent imaginative flights.
Mr. Karel, a French filmmaker, and Ms. Manera, an Italian journalist, have the advantages of standing outside the scrum of American literary politics and also of coming from countries that have venerated their writers with statues, standard editions, postage stamps and occasional prison time. We do not see their faces or hear their questions, but it is clear that they paid their subject the courtesy of being interested in, and familiar with, his work and that he repaid them by reflecting on its sources and meanings.
The result is an inordinately satisfying essay in self-criticism, an excavation of roots followed by a chronicle of labor. We learn that Mr. Roth composes standing up and that he sends finished manuscripts around to a few friends, whose reactions he then tape records and transcribes as part of the revising process. This practice shows remarkable openness and self-confidence, and it suggests something very different from the neurosis and narcissism so often ascribed to writers who draw from the reservoir of the self.
And if Mr. Roth has been an unusually frank and inventive self-portraitist, he has also painted vast and intricate canvases of everything else. “Philip Roth: Unmasked” is especially strong when it reaches what might be thought of as his major phase, the extraordinary period that began with “The Counterlife” (1986) and that includes “Sabbath’s Theater” and “American Pastoral,” surely two of the finest novels of the past quarter-century.
Pleasurable as it is to hear the author reflect on those and other books — he has written 31 in all — the greatest service “Philip Roth: Unmasked” performs is to remind you of their existence and encourage rereading or discovery. A writer, in the end, is the sum of the masks he has devoted his life to making.
Bye-bye ... Philip Roth talks of fame, sex and growing old in last interview
Great US novelist insists he is quitting public life as he reflects on his many literary identities
Alan Yentob, left, with Philip Roth during the interview for Imagine.
When Philip Roth told the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles in November 2012 that he was quitting the field – "To tell you the truth, I'm done"
– there was widespread disbelief.
Surely a novelist who had devoted himself as singlemindedly to his art as Roth could not be serious? Was it possible that Nemesis, his 24th novel, would be his last? Well, yes, it was.
This week, in a BBC interview, Roth will not only reaffirm his literary retirement, he will also, with gleeful finality, guarantee to the camera that "this is my last appearance on television, my absolutely last appearance on any stage anywhere".
Roth's last word that, quoting American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, he had "done the best he could with what he had", has been typically smart and self-conscious. It's a good retirement. Literary lives often end badly with poor health, rejection and neglect and it's all about Roth – how could it not be? He has devoted his long and distinguished literary career to reinventing himself in countless teasing ways. Now, at 81, he continues to tantalise his audience.
On Tuesday the BBC will broadcast his "last interview", a valedictory two-part conversation with Alan Yentob, shot at his Manhattan home in a film for Imagine, directed by Sarah Aspinall.
This latest episode in Roth's long goodbye shows the novelist, whom some consider to be America's greatest living writer, in a mood of playful relaxation, conceding that, hitherto, he had not wanted to "talk, talk, talk, talk, talk". Now, he says, "now that I don't write, I just want to chatter away". Inevitably, with his eye on his readers, Roth's chatter is all about the polyvalent character of his career. He has lived many literary lives. First, there was the wunderkind author of Goodbye, Columbus (1959), a landmark postwar debut. Next came the enfant terrible of Portnoy's Complaint (1969), the late-60s comic sensation, dubbed "a wild blue shocker" by Life magazine. "I got literary fame," he recalls. "I got sexual fame and I also got mad man fame. I got hundreds of letters, 100 a week, some of them letters with pictures of girls in bikinis. I had lots of opportunity to ruin my life."
So then he began to retreat into a kind of rancour, and became the experimental satirist of Our Gang (1971) and The Breast (1972). Next, in young middle age, Roth continued the exploration of his turbulent self in My Life as a Man (1974) and The Professor of Desire (1977). Later, he nurtured a more secure literary alter ego in his Zuckerman novels. The best was to come. In 1997, in his mid-60s, Roth embarked on a sequence of novels, well-wrought reinventions of America's recent past, that were hailed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain, The Dying Animal and The Plot Against America was a vigorous refutation of Fitzgerald's bitter aside that "there are no second acts in American lives".
No writer in living memory has had such an extraordinary late-season surge. Roth's own account of this switch from the personal to the public is that, as he puts it, "in the beginning, it's about [Roth] coming of age, developing as a writer. Then it's not about him. He's the ear, the voice, he's the observer, he's the eye." Before his retirement, Roth's mood became valedictory (Exit Ghost, 2007) but still defiant (Indignation, 2008).
He reports that, in old age, "the last thing I wanted to do was to make myself more visible then I already was. The visibility unnerved me. And so I moved to the country." Roth retreated to an isolated farmhouse in Connecticut. He describes, almost for the first time, the conditions under which he wrote the sequence of novels that followed American Pastoral. "I find it very congenial to live in the natural beauty of the place I have in Connecticut. I work during the day, do some exercise late in the day" – he swims regularly – "and so I haven't lost contact with what I've been doing all day."
This, for many years, was standing for hours at his writing desk, to spare his back, "day in and day out. Then if I'm stuck, and I often am stuck, I walk out the door and I'm in the woods. I walk around for 10 minutes, and I come back and try again." Roth quotes his own character, Zuckerman, to explain this monk-like dedication: "I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we're reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it ?"
In 1976, Roth moved to London to live with actress Claire Bloom. But he didn't feel at home. "I couldn't write a feature-length book about London," he says now. "England made a Jew of me in only eight weeks."Here, Roth's conversation covers much contentious territory, including the repeated accusations of the novelist's alleged misogyny. But one tantalising detail is omitted. According to Yentob, when Roth attended a 70th birthday party for conductor Leonard Bernstein, he was seated next to Ava Gardner, who had been living in seclusion in London for several years. Gardner, who had been married to Frank Sinatra, joked to Roth, "I used to go out with a boy from Hoboken", and the pair spent the evening in intense conversation. In the course of his interview with the BBC, Roth occasionally challenges Yentob with "Go on, ask me about Ava Gardner", but discretion appears to have prevailed.
"We will leave that to Blake Bailey [Roth's biographer]," says Yentob coyly.
Roth has never seemed so relaxed or content. Usually, a cocktail of vanity, optimism, and defiance, spiked with raw economic necessity, keeps old writers in the game long after they should have bowed out. Roth has beaten the odds. When challenged with his 2004 statement that he "could not conceive of a life without writing", he replies: "I was wrong. I had reached the end. There was nothing more for me to write about." With a flash of candour, he adds: "I was fearful that I'd have nothing to do. I was terrified in fact, but I knew there was no sense continuing. I was not going to get any better. And why get worse ? And so …
"I set out upon the great task of doing nothing. I've had a very good time over the last three or four years." Much of this has been devoted – in another reinvention – to assisting Bailey, who says he will complete his biography in 2022. To this, Roth jokes: "I'll do my best to stay alive 'til 2020, but don't push me. Now that I don't write, I just want to chatter away. Bye, bye."
Surely a novelist who had devoted himself as singlemindedly to his art as Roth could not be serious? Was it possible that Nemesis, his 24th novel, would be his last? Well, yes, it was.
This week, in a BBC interview, Roth will not only reaffirm his literary retirement, he will also, with gleeful finality, guarantee to the camera that "this is my last appearance on television, my absolutely last appearance on any stage anywhere".
Roth's last word that, quoting American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, he had "done the best he could with what he had", has been typically smart and self-conscious. It's a good retirement. Literary lives often end badly with poor health, rejection and neglect and it's all about Roth – how could it not be? He has devoted his long and distinguished literary career to reinventing himself in countless teasing ways. Now, at 81, he continues to tantalise his audience.
On Tuesday the BBC will broadcast his "last interview", a valedictory two-part conversation with Alan Yentob, shot at his Manhattan home in a film for Imagine, directed by Sarah Aspinall.
This latest episode in Roth's long goodbye shows the novelist, whom some consider to be America's greatest living writer, in a mood of playful relaxation, conceding that, hitherto, he had not wanted to "talk, talk, talk, talk, talk". Now, he says, "now that I don't write, I just want to chatter away". Inevitably, with his eye on his readers, Roth's chatter is all about the polyvalent character of his career. He has lived many literary lives. First, there was the wunderkind author of Goodbye, Columbus (1959), a landmark postwar debut. Next came the enfant terrible of Portnoy's Complaint (1969), the late-60s comic sensation, dubbed "a wild blue shocker" by Life magazine. "I got literary fame," he recalls. "I got sexual fame and I also got mad man fame. I got hundreds of letters, 100 a week, some of them letters with pictures of girls in bikinis. I had lots of opportunity to ruin my life."
So then he began to retreat into a kind of rancour, and became the experimental satirist of Our Gang (1971) and The Breast (1972). Next, in young middle age, Roth continued the exploration of his turbulent self in My Life as a Man (1974) and The Professor of Desire (1977). Later, he nurtured a more secure literary alter ego in his Zuckerman novels. The best was to come. In 1997, in his mid-60s, Roth embarked on a sequence of novels, well-wrought reinventions of America's recent past, that were hailed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain, The Dying Animal and The Plot Against America was a vigorous refutation of Fitzgerald's bitter aside that "there are no second acts in American lives".
No writer in living memory has had such an extraordinary late-season surge. Roth's own account of this switch from the personal to the public is that, as he puts it, "in the beginning, it's about [Roth] coming of age, developing as a writer. Then it's not about him. He's the ear, the voice, he's the observer, he's the eye." Before his retirement, Roth's mood became valedictory (Exit Ghost, 2007) but still defiant (Indignation, 2008).
He reports that, in old age, "the last thing I wanted to do was to make myself more visible then I already was. The visibility unnerved me. And so I moved to the country." Roth retreated to an isolated farmhouse in Connecticut. He describes, almost for the first time, the conditions under which he wrote the sequence of novels that followed American Pastoral. "I find it very congenial to live in the natural beauty of the place I have in Connecticut. I work during the day, do some exercise late in the day" – he swims regularly – "and so I haven't lost contact with what I've been doing all day."
This, for many years, was standing for hours at his writing desk, to spare his back, "day in and day out. Then if I'm stuck, and I often am stuck, I walk out the door and I'm in the woods. I walk around for 10 minutes, and I come back and try again." Roth quotes his own character, Zuckerman, to explain this monk-like dedication: "I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we're reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it ?"
In 1976, Roth moved to London to live with actress Claire Bloom. But he didn't feel at home. "I couldn't write a feature-length book about London," he says now. "England made a Jew of me in only eight weeks."Here, Roth's conversation covers much contentious territory, including the repeated accusations of the novelist's alleged misogyny. But one tantalising detail is omitted. According to Yentob, when Roth attended a 70th birthday party for conductor Leonard Bernstein, he was seated next to Ava Gardner, who had been living in seclusion in London for several years. Gardner, who had been married to Frank Sinatra, joked to Roth, "I used to go out with a boy from Hoboken", and the pair spent the evening in intense conversation. In the course of his interview with the BBC, Roth occasionally challenges Yentob with "Go on, ask me about Ava Gardner", but discretion appears to have prevailed.
"We will leave that to Blake Bailey [Roth's biographer]," says Yentob coyly.
Roth has never seemed so relaxed or content. Usually, a cocktail of vanity, optimism, and defiance, spiked with raw economic necessity, keeps old writers in the game long after they should have bowed out. Roth has beaten the odds. When challenged with his 2004 statement that he "could not conceive of a life without writing", he replies: "I was wrong. I had reached the end. There was nothing more for me to write about." With a flash of candour, he adds: "I was fearful that I'd have nothing to do. I was terrified in fact, but I knew there was no sense continuing. I was not going to get any better. And why get worse ? And so …
"I set out upon the great task of doing nothing. I've had a very good time over the last three or four years." Much of this has been devoted – in another reinvention – to assisting Bailey, who says he will complete his biography in 2022. To this, Roth jokes: "I'll do my best to stay alive 'til 2020, but don't push me. Now that I don't write, I just want to chatter away. Bye, bye."
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