Roth’s Reversal

Philip Roth famously announced last year that he was quitting. Writing in the TLS, Adan Thirlwell suggests that what he’s actually doing is continuing his career in an inverted fashion.

Thirlwell cites a 1984 interview with Hermione Lee, where Roth described his working method: “Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life. There has to be some pleasure in this job, and that’s it. To go around in disguise. To act a character. To pass oneself off as what one is not. To pretend.” 

Since 2012, he adds, “it has become clear that while Rothmay have stopped writing fiction, he’s no less engaged in the project of fact and counter fact: it’s just that now he is doing it inside-out. His new method involves versions of biography. He has given interviews for newspapers and television, including a ninety-minute portrait by the Italian journalist Livia Manera for PBS; he has been writing notes and memos for his official biographer, Blake Bailey; and now there is this book, Roth Unbound, by Claudia Roth Pierpont – a staff writer at the New Yorker, and author of the collection of essays Passionate Minds.”