Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Stolen Philip Roth interview

Charles McGrath interviewed the writer Philip Roth by email recently. When you're ill with a bad prognosis, certain things jump out at you, of course. 
I've always liked Roth, though I haven't read everything he's written. Here's a part of the interview that was published on the New York Times' website Jan. 16, 2018. The rest is at least as interesting.

Charles McGrath In a few months you’ll turn 85. Do you feel like an elder? What has growing old been like?

Philip Roth Yes, in just a matter of months I’ll depart old age to enter deep old age—easing ever deeper daily into the redoubtable Valley of the Shadow. Right now it is astonishing to find myself still here at the end of each day. Getting into bed at night I smile and think, “I lived another day.” And then it’s astonishing again to awaken eight hours later and to see that it is morning of the next day and that I continue to be here. “I survived another night,” which thought causes me to smile once more. I go to sleep smiling and I wake up smiling. I’m very pleased that I’m still alive. Moreover, when this happens, as it has, week after week and month after month since I began drawing Social Security, it produces the illusion that this thing is just never going to end, though of course I know that it can stop on a dime. It’s something like playing a game, day in and day out, a high-stakes game that for now, even against the odds, I just keep winning. We will see how long my luck holds out.
Philip Roth
Philip Roth.

1 comment:

  1. In my 20s I read quite a bit of Roth (ending with Sabbath's Theater and then later I only read Everyman) so I bookmarked this....it was on the back burner because I was reading through your archive. ... so there you go....

    Finally read this tonight though.  Agree with the comment that it was a correspondence, not an interview, but anyway..... was surprised at the degree of gushing.

    -r

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