Why Write?, the tenth volume of the Library of America’s conspectus of Philip Roth’s oeuvre, is subtitled Collected Nonfiction 1960–2013, and if there is anything regrettable about it, it is that it could not extend to 2017. Roth has declared that, after thirty-one books, he is through with writing fiction, but can’t he give us more of his valuable nonfiction?
At this point, lest it be overestimated, let me state what connection I have to him. I first met him at dinner chez Robert Brustein, the theater critic, at which he was enormously entertaining, making fun of two hapless female writers for The New York Times. Years later, we collided at the counter of Tower Records, paying for our respective purchases. I was short a nickel, which Philip paid for me. When I wondered about how I would be able to reimburse him, and with how much interest, he had a wonderfully comic rejoinder that I regret forgetting.
Still much later, he phoned me. He was supervising a series of Eastern European writers for Penguin Books, and wondered whether I, as a born Yugoslav, might not have some others to recommend. Sadly, I could come up with only a very obvious one, to which he responded in a tone of flagrant condescension.
Roth evokes his early years without either sentimentality or bitterness.
The new book is divided into three sections, entitled: “Reading Myself and Others,” “Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues
