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.
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| Philip Roth. |
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....
ReplyDeleteFinally 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