Philip Roth made a name for himself with novels like "The Plot Against America," "The Human Stain" and "Portnoy's Complaint," but decided to end it all by retiring from writing in 2012. On Monday he turns 85.
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He doesn't miss writing much, Philip Roth recently told The New York Times in an extensive interview. His 2012 announcement, that he planed to retire from the field that had made him famous, shocked the literary world.
To mark the occasion, Roth taped a Post-it note to his computer with the phrase: "The struggle with writing is over." In an interview at the time, he described it as a personal affirmation. "I look at that note every morning, and it gives me such strength," he told the NYT.
It has been six years since Roth, who turns 85 on March 19, officially left writing behind. And he regrets nothing. "That's because the conditions that prompted me to stop writing fiction…haven't changed," he told the NYT. At the time, Roth realized his most creative years were over. "I was by this time no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the verbal energy or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack on any duration on a complex structure as demanding as a novel…Every talent has its terms — its nature, its scope, its force; also its term, a tenure, a life span."
In 2011, Roth was awarded the National Humanities Medal by former President Barack ObamaImage: picture-alliance/AP Photo/P. M. Monsivais
Trump: '21st-century catastrophe'
Roth lives in New York's trendy Upper West Side, but still spends some of his time at a summer home in Connecticut. After retiring from writing, he now has more time for other things, especially for reading — mainly nonfiction. He also enjoys meeting with friends, attending concerts and going to the movies. But he still has time for literary pursuits, working on a novella with the young daughter of a former girlfriend and writing notes for a biography with US author Blake Bailey.
David Simon, creator of acclaimed TV series "The Wire," is adapting Roth's prize-winning 2004 novel "The Plot Against America" into a six-part miniseries. The book is set in an alternate universe in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh, leading to a treaty with Nazi Germany and rising anti-Semitism in the US.
Roth keeps abreast of current political developments. In the NYT, he admits he never thought a politician like Donald Trump could be elected in the US. "No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today," he said. "[Almost] no one … could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the US, the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell'arte figure of the boastful buffoon."
The German version of "Nemesis" Image: Hanser Verlag
Prolific and creative
The much acclaimed author, that many critics thought might one day win the Nobel Prize for literature, was born in 1933 in the working class Newark district of Weequahic into a family of Jewish immigrants.
Roth has written almost three dozen books in the course of his career; some are full of humor and sarcasm, while others are rather melancholic.
Many of his novels are set in Newark at the time of his youth. Among his best-sellers are the Zuckerman Bound trilogy, which consists of "The Ghost Writer", "Zuckerman Unbound" and "The Anatomy Lesson." Other best-sellers are "Sabbath's Theater," "American Pastoral," "I Married a Communist," "The Human Stain," "Deception" and "Exit Ghost." His latest work, "Nemesis," was published in 2010 and is likely to remain his last.
9 must-read books to face the Trump era
US President Donald Trump has made booksellers' dreams come true. North American magazines and blogs have been listing a range of must-read books, in an attempt to understand the new president's behavior.
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'1984'
George Orwell's "1984" pops up repeatedly on lists, with the literary classic opening a window into authoritarian regimes. The dystopian novel delves into what it means to live in a state of tyranny, including omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. Pictured here is a film still from the 1956 movie adaptation of the novel.
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'The Origins of Totalitarianism'
Hannah Arendt's essay "The Origins of Totalitarianism," originally published in English in 1951, has also garnered considerable attention. Arendt (1906-1975), who fled Nazi Germany, was one of the first political theorists to analyze how totalitarian political movements rose in the early 20th century. A few weeks ago, online bookseller Amazon briefly ran out of the work.
Image: Leo Baeck Institute
'Brave New World'
What college student, or high school student for that matter, hasn't read Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World"? The 1932 novel looks at how society is kept in line through psychological manipulation and conditioning.
Image: Chatto & Windus
'The Handmaid's Tale'
Margaret Atwood's feminist dystopia "The Handmaid's Tale" has resurfaced on the nightstands of women participating in political protests, such as at the massive Women's March in Washington in January. The 1985 novel, set in a futuristic New England, looks at the oppression of women in a totalitarian theocracy after the overthrow of the US government. Natasha Richardson starred in a 1990 film.
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'The Man in the High Castle'
In 1962, Philip K. Dick's novel "The Man in the High Castle" envisioned how life could have looked in the United States under totalitarian rule by the victorious Nazi Reich and Japanese Empire. A TV series loosely based on the novel was released in 2015. As part of its advertising campaign, a New York subway was controversially covered in the imagery of the show, seen here.
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'The United States of Fear'
Tom Engelhardt's "The United States of Fear," published in 2011, looks at how fear has fueled massive US investment in the military and national security, only to ultimately gridlock the country.
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'Things That Can and Cannot Be Said'
"Things That Can and Cannot Be Said" is a collection of essays and conversations by Arundhati Roy and John Cusack, who reflect on their talks with NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Moscow in 2014. Surveillance and the nature of the state take center stage in these dialogues and texts, as well as the role of symbols, such as flags, amid patriotism.
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'The Power of the Powerless'
Vaclav Havel's 1978 essay "The Power of the Powerless" offers a compelling alternative to the current gloom-and-doom outlook. The Czech writer and former president expands on methods of resistance among ordinary citizens and how totalitarian regimes can give birth to dissidents.
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'The Captive Mind'
Polish poet and Nobel Prize laureate Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) became an American citizen in 1970. His non-fiction "The Captive Mind" drew on his experiences as a dissident writer in the Eastern Bloc. It is an intellectual reckoning with the allure of Stalinism and the deadening of the mind through Western consumerism.
