Roth
I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Fairytale talk. As soon as you generalise, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there’s no bridge between the two.
Philip Roth, interviewed, though he didn’t
want to answer the usual questions
[x]#1598 fan vrijdag 16 december 2005 @ 00:13:35
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2 kommentaren
stina op 22 december 2005 @ 20:16:14
isnt it amazing how this interviewer who asks quite banal questions – let’s face it – gets this old tosser to speak?
yeah, Roth wrote some great literature – but what a poor man he is, who never learned to deal with criticism. yes, if i want to read one of his books i prefer not to read reviews, so that no prejudices can grow, before i even saw the first page.
But what, if there would not exist critics? i would not even know THAT Roth IS a writer whom i would be interested in.
having read the whole interview, i feel so so sorry for this poor lonesome man, who has nothing but his cynism and the courage (is it? or is it just fucking bad manner?) to not once smile to his conversation partners…
eliane op 17 december 2005 @ 05:10:41
Nou, critics moeten anders ook eten hoor. Stel je voor, anders moeten ze nog aan de Hemabammen.