An intimate account of Roth the writer and thinker and funny guy

FSG weekly news blast includes some great excerpts from Claudia Roth Pierpont's book of interviews w and observations of Philip Roth. Of particular interest are Roth's thoughts about his own writing and literature in general. Roth said he considers as I lay dying one of the greatest works of american lit (will have to re-read that!) and found absalom, absolutely! Almost impenetrable over first 50 pp (completely agree!), cited among Hemingway' greatest works Farewell to arms (naturally) but also islands in the stream and the posthumous publications (surprisingly - and no mention of the short stories); notes he prefer H to Fitzgerald , whose style he finds over-wrought (disagree there but see where Roth is coming from - H when you think about it is actually the more Rothian. Asked the best line in literature he came up w a line from crime and punishment- "this changes everything" (after a character pulls a gun on the speaker ) and from Ulysses as Bloom observes (I think) a former lover on the beach: still at it.  Both quotes are quite Rothian, in humor and pith, and not exactly typical of their respective authors. On his own work, Roth laments some early gaffes (as he sees them), notably setting goodbye Columbus in short hills at a time when no Jews lived there (true); readers from New Jersey will note that the Patinkin family (Brenda is based on the young Maxine Groffsky, who became a prominent lit agent) "actually" live in west orange where there still exists a neighborhood where streets , as roth wryly notes, based on parentAlmaspiration: Dartmouth road, oxford place, and Yale terrace specifically. Finally Pierpont accompanies Roth to a concert where has has several shrewd observations about the program esp beethoven's astounding quartet 130 w the gros fugue - i was surprise during to see how observant he was about music. In a recent post I noted that he wrote little about music tho friend AW informed me that music is important in roth's the dying animal - book I've read but don't well remember. definitely worth reading this excerpt nad probably the whole book - if the novel asymmetry gave us a look at a Roth avatar this book gives us an intimate portrait of Roth the man and the writer.