USA: Writers; 8; Philip Roth

philip roth's first major work goodbye columbus appeared in nineteen fifty nine the critic irving howe has set of rough what many writers spend a lifetime searching for a unique voice to secure rhythm a distinctive subject seemed to come to philip roth totally and immediately goodbye columbus won the national book award in nineteen fifty nine and his novel letting go published in nineteen sixty one received both great adulation and great abuse from literary critics is now completing another major work of fiction first class of services division was open it appears says when you as we spoke it was that's the reason that i would understand is a that i wouldn't understand it is it was the language of secrecy know language of those surprises and chagrin and so i learned very light and pay much attention to say when i heard i was in was english not the other exchanges i heard the kind of

english that i think was spoken by a second generation people in what was essentially a very tight clothes jewish neighborhood in newark on my knowledge of yiddish as first line and people say things on what that violence spilling into what i do in that way some of the critics of get the impression that you know regular village for example i remember one critic who attended a great meaning to the fact that you had to call the main character and goodbye columbus new gluten now but he knows a lot of yiddish jesse hand out much more than i do other than clinton was just the island economy and it was recognizably jewish home but on that was an ordinary wasn't conventionally jewish one hundred jewellers sounds or not the deepest reaches of my unconscious i might've been aware of its leadership or the jury follow cohen joseph landis on the subject in an article called the sadness of philip roth he said that clinton and

has two minutes if you say clinton and clever fellow that if his six movement it means the mourners said yes and he talks about the fact that you are struck with sadness when you when you see what has happened to her this is a cool name universities no i don't know that kind of speculation about the meanings of names and their vision and does it really a concern and very much when i wrote those stories and to try to be clever in many ways charlie leader responses to my responses to americans henderson's fault the kind of yiddish euro jewish name all in fact you know when the book came out and seemed to the kind of criticism that didn't kind of attention it did

i was very surprised and spreads into innocent but nevertheless i was very surprised by the way it wasn't receives a kind of regional a book a book about a particular group of navigation insisted on syria the stories were so much about the breakdowns in the american jewish community some critics say yes we are talking about the fact that you are portraying the people whose values were breaking down because they were joining the mainstream middle class america which was in this swamp land of prosperity and so one of the expressions that value of a nice expression a member well in his review of the chicken commentary talked about the tensions between characters in goodbye columbus and that was where the spirit in which the book was written you know i had an eye on a

sociologist and my categories were and sociological a comedy of the thing about the comedy of this particular kind of jewish chaplains owned the comedy jewish predicaments i think of the book really taken all together even though it has a kind of sadness or melancholy edge to it as a comic book and the situations as funny when you say of the book union also include the short stories that go with goodbye columbus or deported i talk about specifically made i mean the whole thing it's not it lends during the comic sometimes at the expense of this kid and sell sometimes at the expense of the other people but the company really doesn't derive from any satire director of the characters you know the bizarre nature needs there is also i think a certain kind of comedy comes out of the fact that there's a bizarre experience in a kind of recognizable setting setting

recognizable all about what those people say nothing that story i suppose it's hardly a comic without being serious at the same time though you can't help but venture a seriousness that i was thinking for example of the story you live a fanatic which assassin pretty serious things that one of the things it's a symphony is something that you normally is keep saying in various different ways throw in your writing that it's expressed a dialogue between you as wife and eli and she says you don't do anything in moderation that's how people destroy themselves and he says i do everything matters moderation management trouble you know that's a good bit of dialogue to go into it and remember it but that problem how ford ago how far to go especially when large a personal ambitions a large moral aspirations our forty and go with them in a way that's not so much the subject of the novella goodbye columbus as it is say how do you know that story about a

man who's the driving decided create write and the situation to create kind of good order minister elect defender of the faith where you good sergeant marx whose apart by the behavior of this soldier and doesn't know how far to go to stop him now is very hesitant to be a savage is very hesitant to be held openly cruel he really can't deal with his cruelty is an unnecessary is and also of course what happens next story is it conflicts with this sense of bitterness of london it may be that his sense of civilization is a narrow are mistaking i'm it's the thing that i picked up an annex letting go in the novel the fall of the vitamins auden way i see letting go coming out of a not directly no he's really coming out a defender of the faith and you live

in the central problem is really how fortune go out forty penetrate into the suffering and the year aarons states say you know the lines and soon found the hero of that with good knowledge and even the american owners are both the battling between her maintaining some kind of not authentic self certain in some sense of detachment because it was recently one can do what the problem is how much can do what want to do and what is necessary to hear yourself lonely lunches fully human influence of laws that manly so altogether inland from those two heroes face and letting go back you see at say in most history should mention that bike lance as far as a novella didn't see it and that they will also give some dude from within them and they are more broadly what that person and the work and life

of course is very impressive to me and the reviews that you excited reviews that it received pretty much deserved to leave the place i found great compassion or creepy more compassionate writer of comedy usually has life on it so the tough minded philosophy and in any kind of a tough minded prose it was very direct there are many things about it that struck me as as having roots in in august russian literature this is why i was interested in in your background because i kept thinking of a dusty ask a believe it or not and the goal goal of course was leader and the scenes for goodbye columbus you know there really weren't any on to speak up gag about the speaking of his kind of responsive as a kind of just the way that instantly and immediately dealing with the my experience

of the writers i had read writers who began to interest me literature first as a reader and then as a writer the first one was unanimously fourteen or fifteen his howard fast there's a moral passion that and then later on thomas wilkins arrives i had read since been to open and then at the time i was writing goodbye columbus i think i was teaching english at university of chicago so just reading all kinds of people that were really attached teeny teeny book was published when you're twenty six years old but you know he probably started to write it i would say what i suppose when you're twenty two or twenty three pianists first what what what struck me was you're a complete understanding of the years swimming pools certain at the same time of these people who did seem to come from shauna like i'm in a certain sense but the two hardly ever go together in other words of the same writers didn't understand these two different kinds of pain yeah well the swimming pool

serving as a citizen to be a common way of describing those people because the comedy really drives in fact been not the swimming pool so in effect behind among people who were not the swimming pool so that the whole country club culture is something that is that was foreign to the jewish experience in europe are even foreign to the jewish experience here and fact the country club set is the very thing i think that makes me certain germs very nervous when i got here i think that in a way which you touched upon is the center of the the joke and goodbye columbus what creates well i was but when i when i first read goodbye columbus a reading a whole book i can help wondering of course which had come first which story you wrote for it which we're merely stories when you're progression did dr jonathan did the novella come along well there are other stories here that i wrote and i was very southern food while you know you begin to write a sort of lash out early to copy something

and i write in very own southern story that had nothing to do with me or my voice or oh my concerns about literature and literature reading at the time but the first story that group that i wrote i wrote in the army and i was about twenty one or trying to announce the conversion of jews it's not a stirring i'm terribly fond of now in fact very next fall modern library to much to my delight is known to bring up about columbus's modern library book i had occasion to read the book over four months ago and even given i was given the opportunity or i asked if i had to revise some of the stories to change that because they were ribbons and first there was a phone i pretty much i would choose investors who i sat down with a pencil and went through them and then it was hopeless because i was making great changes and the conversion of jews particularly but i wasn't one with the spirit of the story any longer i wasn't one of the ideas that he visited cosby to be

written so that the best thing to do is just let me go go yes when you're letting go is published the depth and mixed reviews he got very enthusiastic reviews ever but even the writers who said that this bonus establish your position is a major american the novel has found fault with it they found it too long one of the incidents provence a and they found it great deal to criticize about the ending did you won't did you get anything constructive for your bat survey receive more criticism that has more articles of the very soft for our articles written about your work than most writers ever do and i wondered whether you you found as you were benefiting from some of the observations made the night and benefit to save the maiden various essays and i know our soup official army reduced can be very superficial or less intelligent reviewer of the book was by stanley enter hyman to review the book and a new leader and he's saying to me and why he didn't like the book particularly liked aspects

but that is the director's attention to work to matters that were crucial to me to at the center of the book for me for years as a criticism of the ending i mean there's something so is few people mentioned that to many other people criticize the hero people infected the very pious moralistic about him for instance and other critics are another novelists serving his time as a critic and saul bellow encounter criticize letting go and he said damn that the hero and it had no law to have no love for iran in men or any place and any a handgun to be sure neither ports will go abroad as much love for any man as moses such as for himself but that's hard to do you know and really dealing with others are either there's one more allies and you're like yep and that rather than understanding that the problems pursuing life of pushing his way into

being drawn by the mystery of pain suffering and deprivation staking her that that was truly problematic you know i was a jazz and finding out the size of the problem really what it means to endure life and what needs to be detached my own feelings about that here which are still unsettled are these inventive than many ways you would have been unwise to win more detached in a way that these men in the book have an understanding of the what might be called the courage of detachment they nothing they would suffer and not support the book is about about the discovering that there's something zimmerman was on a little island that's the beginning of the book is about and remember at the end of the book did wallop europe wealthy attractive man about town attractive and energetic young man is driven by the frustrations reason he's

been through in your life take the baby and wildfires she aces down to gary indiana and then comes across a man who doesn't understand that or want to her it begins how it begins and on what good comes up instantly and as someone who can't be moved by his intelligence lies money buys persuasiveness by small colored by the fact that baby that's a good one a present in which is the human factor so there and the indians and various a siri to me i would defend against that actually you know because for her but it derives from my sense of what the problem was i wanted to come up against the end of the book so that it was indeed larger than an abandoned building more intelligent or i don't know make more charitable efforts maybe you know perhaps you were presenting imminent charitable like by having an

engage in an act of fanaticism was an assertion which i think is something that i find in in your other stories belie the phonetic is unknown but feels he has to do something that does something that seems matter everyone else but he does it with a sense of well a book of doing any of them performing a moral right right exactly the notion that it is as if i were to describe what can syrian open minded and moral fanaticism comes to be can seem to be concerned know it was until i wrote that happens in the book i'm working on now say that the system is similarity of fame in this book summer of letting go some money that goes back to defend the faith but there it is again to kind of investigation of

moral force moral ambition are in this book what happens is that the book i'm working on now a gay character why was it's a woman girl oh no way resembles gave wallach importance because for all the more passion and all the sins that was finally created as a person bye waved and moral interests but nevertheless as a kind of moral themes there is a deep in essence these people asking me did innocence about the young nature of the low expectation of a billionaire as a mix of sudan and ray arnett and fifty that they hurl themselves against the wall breaking down what happens however insane letting go the images comes to mind of a richer kids fighting playground and so they get held back by their

friends in there carrots and incentives as let go of them and they come together really like that so much once they're in and the same thing happens in the game all of these working like hell to intensify his life and so he gets it and as a surprise now the character in the book i'm writing nancy young girl full of more beans never really backs away it's going going going and tuition who destroys herself as a story of applies school might call a house in which you get a character driven by more passion was british which the world can't contain really about destroying what about to rubio mike the other books that is more of a social realist and i hate that but it's a fairly descriptive or will be opening more fantastic well that is the place it doesn't take place in a jewish milieu

it takes place in the middle west middle america and a low cal is not definitely stay together and write a book about iowa minnesota or wisconsin and write about an area a region reviewer certain ideas controlled people live there for a reason that is perhaps not ideas that have come over from europe journalist i read on clearance section titled suggestion for myself really an article one section o beautiful for spacious skies about ambition in the middle america and the point i was making was that well it has to ask you about the mood in this book whether it was realistic about the treatment of the characters or whether you were going into a fantasy as you suggest that you can do certainly in some of the short stories to speak of fantasy there's a kind of nightmarish driven quality about

the narrative that's really kind of horror story it's a very grim story of unplug my finish writing it really yet somehow is imbedded in a realistic setting and i visit an esoteric image to the book is a real thing and meaning of mixing of moves and the success of the book i think will depend upon this kind of i'm mixing the problem for me has been and determining can put my attitude toward the experience really is whether i am proud to think it's ridiculous or whether i think it's horrible and that was the stories together to be more satirical than there were no security no no no i think it's a sector that's my look beautiful for spacious skies which is the title of the book no i don't think it's as the character actually just as a strange nightmarish quality and want more i can say about this is quite a bit answering what about to play writing lullaby know that you're

engaged in this year i've read a number of reviews written by you about the broadway plays an off broadway plays out do you have any intention of writing for theater you have a great sense of dialogue finder well i wrote a play last year i took some time away from the novel and wrote a play along play into short plays just trying to get away from the book for a time and it takes more than a sense of the audience it's more than a year in fact i found my ears although i got to work and play because the flow problems became so great but as the problems of revealing to letting the reader know what's happened to the educators what's going on or the thing you do it stylistically in the novel or you do by a circle kinds of now and manipulation and how quick to do that and play but i really get back to that there are scenes in the play and terribly funny and i think a very funny and as soon as i finished this novel someday i want to

try to finish long pointed to one actually which by the way are totally fantastic and there i did find a different writing experiences i found the former absorbed the fantastic material and a pleasing way for the film a fantasy seemed to come together we were able to work with an actor's company as you set out to do but i was lucky i was at that time i had some for foundation money too indulge is simply writing interest and at the american plays theatre here in new york plays that did a lot of those planes needed non remains play and they out did a reading just for me and directions among people of placentia as to hear it and that was the really confused and what's happened now some forgetting reading it was awfully good but i'm forgetting it because you get the sound of the actors' voices in your ear and you get a sense of the director the director of what he thinks the play is about and turn and somehow confused

confused anyone which we did because there's so many questions i want to ask you for example when i'm constantly a surprise that you are grouped with the mahmoud and a bottle or so much older than you i think they're eighteen and nineteen years difference there is nothing i know but somehow i gather here a kind of a local literary father son relationship but only by that that you send go on father's day gifts i don't mean that at all but there is a certain similarity for example a hard sell itself to cuddle her to immediately reminded me of paul kurtz that is kind of an extension of it and the as i record so i couldn't help feeling that i was writing a sequel to letting go so i feel over is truly vessel those were from a great admirer of setting you consider most important writer in america today and i also stream our moments were getting ballot was an important

important to me personally appointing lot of other writers for several reasons one was he laid claim upon certain areas of experience that no jewish writer had before i don't have a certain attitude towards this experience that is that he really knocked off the reverend's in the pie and it was a great relief that you can re examine this material injury like a novelist rather than like a public relations man that that other writers have done that before and then if you think a gun in his mouth and if you extend but not to the same extent they know what the accomplishment sadness and accomplishment in those malls also there's a kind of linguistic your own freedom and now needs to say there's a very good comparison between the style and my books and style and bellows it isn't that was directly influence directly tanks from the other it lightens you know he likens you about possibilities and your own experience emotions human possibilities in literature i think that many jewish writers to

you expressing it to piously really but apart from that freedom that spirit that way it affected you to be funny in a certain way and funny about certain departure from margarine morning senator mcconnell calls it marjorie morning sickness can't talk no well it was as we should have from philip roth's apartment in greenwich village new york national educational television has been privileged to bring you a conversation between mr roth and jerry man jiang yu are

we ms bee this is at the national educational television network is big