Roth retires

A few thoughts on Philip Roth's public announcement that he has finished writing fiction and that his Sunday NYT interview will be his last: Very few if any writers have ever done this, announce publicly that they are retiring from writing fiction. Some have just plain stopped, but most continue as long as they are physically and mentally able. Roth's two most notable contemporaries, Updike and Bellow, wrote fiction right up till their deaths - Updike I think moving mostly to poetry in his last year, as he was dying of lung cancer, and Bellow working in the less mentally demanding for of the novella. Roth I think mentioned Koufax in his interview, which is very apt - both for the Jewish all-star connection and for the sense that only Koufax retired while he was still pitching at a Hall of Fame level. I'm really glad that Roth's final book, Nemesis, was one of his best and was a reflection back on the world of Newark in the 1940s that was the marrow of Roth's literary contribution. Roth told the NYT that he recently re=read all of his fiction, in reverse order, stopping after Portnoy - and he ended with apride in what he's accomplished. He should - his work, in its various phases, is among the greatest of our time - From Goodbye, Columbus to Portnoy to the Zuckerman novels to the great works of his late phase, in particular The Counterlife, American Pastoral, Plot Against America, Nemesis, and even - which the NYT mentions - the unlovely Sabbath's Theater if for nothing else the scenes on the Jersey shore. I hope that Roth will still win the Nobel that he deserves and that was denied inexplicably to Updike. I also hope he'll continue to write in some manner - would love to read more of his literary criticism and reviews, and I wonder if he's every seriously thought of writing prefaces to new editions of his works, as did Conrad, James, Hardy, et al. Roth has brought pleasure and understanding to millions of readers and has been a friend to a great many writers as well - a life of contribution to arts and letters, and writing life that I hope is not yet quite completed.