“There’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction”: Philip Roth

A happily retired Philip Roth is spending his days swimming, watching baseball and nature-spotting, revelling in the fact that “there’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction”, according to a new interview.

Reiterating his bleak view about the future of literature – that “two decades on the size of the audience for the literary novel will be about the size of the group who read Latin poetry” – the 80-year-old Roth told Stanford scholar Cynthia Haven that his disengagement from the world of writing is still very much in evidence. Asked by Haven if he really believes his talent – which has won him the Man Booker International prize and made him a perennial contender for the Nobel – will “let [him] quit” writing, Roth responded: “You better believe me, because I haven’t written a word of fiction since 2009.”