Philip Roth’s Creative Surge & the Death of the Novel

Philip Roth, now 77 years old, keeps pub­lish­ing with a cer­tain urgency. Every­man in 2006, Exit Ghost in 2007, Indig­na­tion 2008, The Hum­bling last year, and next comes Neme­sis, due to be released in ear­ly Octo­ber. After The Hum­bling hit the shelves, mag­a­zine edi­tor Tina Brown con­duct­ed a rare video inter­view with Roth, and they cov­ered a fair amount of ground in 14 min­utes: his cre­ative surge, how he approach­es writ­ing sex scenes, Oba­ma’s lit­er­ary tal­ents, the com­ing extinc­tion of the nov­el and whether the Kin­dle can make any bit of dif­fer­ence, etc. You can watch the video above, or read a tran­script here.

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