In Conversation: Philip Roth (1933 - 2018)

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2018

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From BBC Radio 3's archive, another opportunity to hear an interview with Philip Roth (1933 - 2018), author of books including Portnoy's Complaint & American Pastoral.

Recorded in New York in 2008, Philip Roth talked to Philip Dodd about his life and work and about his 29th book Indignation.

The Pulitzer Prize winning Roth has been called provocative, playful and angry and many of his themes remained consistent since he began writing in the late 1950’s. He and his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, cast an often satirical eye over post World War America, notably with a string of now classic late novels such as I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, The Human Stain and The Plot against America.

The novel Indignation is set in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, and tells the story of the son of a kosher butcher who escapes a crushing New Jersey Jewish environment to attend a conservative College in Ohio. It is a tale about work and careers, about sexual discovery, anti-Semitism, families and the bizarre nature of fate and memory.

In this interview Philip Roth talks about the role of fiction in his life and about his own impact on America. He describes the attraction of mixing fiction with elements of autobiography and about the expectations people have of the writer. He talks about sex, the male body, the ageing process and about his enduring need to write.

Presenter: Philip Dodd

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
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0:32.1	Hello, I'm Philip Dodd and welcome to the Arts and Ideas Discussion Program from BBC Radio 3,
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1:06.2	Hello. During the recent democratic convention, I drove all the way from strutting New York to the peaceful woods of Connecticut to interview the the novelist, Philip Roth,
1:11.1	when I finally found it,
1:12.9	his elegant wooden house was secluded by the surrounding trees,
1:17.3	his writing hut nestling in a capacious garden,
1:20.8	although hot doesn't quite do it justice.
1:23.7	The only problem was that while I was in Connecticut,
1:27.3	Philip Roth was waiting for us in New York,
1:29.9	a breakdown in communication. But why shouldn't he be there, I thought. After all, Manhattan
1:35.3	is close to Newark, New Jersey, the place Roth was born in 1933 and to which his imagination
1:41.6	has been profoundly loyal. So I drove back to the city to meet the man who many believe is America's greatest living writer.
1:50.8	Around 40 years ago, it was all very different.
1:54.5	Portnoy's complaint, his 1969 novel of masturbation and growing up in a Jewish family,
2:00.5	was denounced as dirty, banned in Australia,
	...

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