Reading Myself and Others by Philip Roth May 8
“Reading Myself and Others” compiles interviews, essays and articles written by Philip Roth over a quarter of a century. It was first published in 1975, when Roth had published his first 8 books of narrative, among them “Portnoy’s Complaint” (1969) and “My Life as a Man” (1974).
“Reading Myself and Others” is a book about the art of writing fiction. The long interview with The Paris Review and the essay “Writing American Fiction” are the best of this collection, and are usually studied with all seriousness. It seems to me that society has a hard time understanding what exactly novelist do. At times, novelists are expected to be critical. But if novelist become too critical, society dislikes it and tries to censor them.
The interviews and essays are full of insightful and hilarious observations about the predicament facing a novelist. For example: “What is the moral of the story? Simply this: that the American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality” (p. 167).Roth had an amazing start as a novelist, but I think that when these interviews were carried out, his best writing was yet to come. His late style probably was a consequence of his ability to analyze fiction, his own work included, with relentless precision. These interviews and essays offer us an insight to the privileged mind of one the best novelist alive, reflection on his craft, the challange of fiction, and the society that breeds it.
Unfortunately, no similar compilation of interviews and essays account for the latter part of Roth’s career, which should include reflection on his outstanding novels, such as “American Pastoral” (1997) or “The Human Stain” (2000). Maybe in the near future…