Philip Roth

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

His latest novel is The Humbling.

From his Q & A with the Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:

Any new writers that you would recommend?

I don't follow what's going on with modern fiction.

Who do you consider your peers?

I have quite a few peers. Don DeLillo. Ed Doctorow. Reynolds Price. Joyce Carol Oates. Toni Morrison. It's a pretty good generation. We just lost three giants in the last couple of years. Saul Bellow. Norman Mailer. And John Updike. American literature is a powerful literature. These people are all of the first rank.

Is there something wrong with American literature today?

American literature today is the strongest literature in the world.

Are you online, and if so, what sites do you visit?

Yes, ...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue