Philip Roth Predicts the Death of the Novel; Paul Auster Counters

Nov­els — they’re in inevitable decline. They can’t com­pete with the movie screen, the TV screen and now the com­put­er screen. Give things 25 years, and there will be just a small cult of read­ers left. That’s the pre­dic­tion of Amer­i­can author, Philip Roth, who has 27 nov­els to his cred­it. And appar­ent­ly, Roth is per­son­al­ly has­ten­ing the process. Ear­li­er this year, he told a reporter for the Finan­cial Times: “I’ve stopped read­ing fic­tion. I don’t read it at all. I read oth­er things: his­to­ry, biog­ra­phy. I don’t have the same inter­est in fic­tion that I once did.” When asked why, he quipped: “I don’t know. I wised up … ”

For Paul Auster, anoth­er pro­duc­tive nov­el­ist, the reports of the nov­el­’s death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed. Humans hunger for sto­ries. They always will. And, the nov­el, it knows how to adapt and sur­vive. Will it sur­vive with the help of tech­nol­o­gy? Auster might not be the best per­son to ask. He owns nei­ther a com­put­er nor a mobile phone. Lucky man.

Bonus: You can lis­ten to Paul Auster read The Red Note­book, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries pub­lished in 2002, right here. (He starts read­ing at around the 8:30 mark.) We have it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Irv­ing: The Road Ahead for Aspir­ing Nov­el­ists