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Shop Talk

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"Shop Talk" is a collection of ten previously published interviews, essays and recollections by Philip Roth. The pieces originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. There is nothing really new in this collection, some of the interviews going back nearly thirty years and addressing literary matters that are now of no more than historical interest.

Apart from his own writing, Roth has been involved over the years in publishing the work of Eastern European authors. I think, especially, of the numerous books published by Penguin, with Roth's imprimatur, in the "Writers from the Other Europe" series. I also think of Roth's active support (through PEN and otherwise) of those writers who were, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet monolith, writing under the repression of Eastern Bloc governments. Accordingly, and not surprisingly, the most interesting of the pieces in "Shop Talk" are the contrapuntal interviews with the Czech authors, Ivan Klima (interviewed in 1990) and Milan Kundera (interviewed in 1980). While these two interviews are, alas, somewhat dated, they do provide interesting insights into the literary-historical struggle that marked writing from that country over the past several decades.

"Shop Talk" also contains interviews with the late Primo Levi (from 1986) and Aharon Appelfeld (from 1988) that provide useful, albeit well-known, insights into the biographical peculiarities that have informed their writing. There are also shorter interviews with the late Isaac Bashevis Singer (from 1976) on the topic of Bruno Schulz (another Eastern European writer) and the Irish writer Edna O'Brien.

In addition to the interviews, there are three other pieces. One is a short vignette of Roth's relationship with Bernard Malamud, published shortly after Malamud's death in March of 1986. The second is a similar piece on the artist Philip Guston, who became a friend of Roth's while both lived in Woodstock, New York, in the 1970s. The article contains several whimsical illustrations that Guston gave Roth depicting Roth's character, David Kepesh, the professor who turned into a female breast in Roth's novel "The Breast." Last, there is a discussion of the works of Saul Bellow, the most recent of the pieces in this collection (published in The New Yorker in 2000). It is a discussion that can be fully appreciated only if you've read Bellow's works.

"Shop Talk" is, in short, a useful compendium of previous published pieces, albeit a compendium which provides nothing new. It would have benefited, perhaps, from an introductory essay from Roth to place these pieces in perspective.

"Shop Talk" is a collection of ten previously published interviews, essays and recollections by Philip Roth. The pieces originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. There is nothing really new in this collection, some of the interviews going back nearly thirty years and addressing literary matters that are now of no more than historical interest.

Apart from his own writing, Roth has been involved over the years in publishing the work of Eastern European authors. I think, especially, of the numerous books published by Penguin, with Roth's imprimatur, in the "Writers from the Other Europe" series. I also think of Roth's active support (through PEN and otherwise) of those writers who were, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet monolith, writing under the repression of Eastern Bloc governments. Accordingly, and not surprisingly, the most interesting of the pieces in "Shop Talk" are the contrapuntal interviews with the Czech authors, Ivan Klima (interviewed in 1990) and Milan Kundera (interviewed in 1980). While these two interviews are, alas, somewhat dated, they do provide interesting insights into the literary-historical struggle that marked writing from that country over the past several decades.

"Shop Talk" also contains interviews with the late Primo Levi (from 1986) and Aharon Appelfeld (from 1988) that provide useful, albeit well-known, insights into the biographical peculiarities that have informed their writing. There are also shorter interviews with the late Isaac Bashevis Singer (from 1976) on the topic of Bruno Schulz (another Eastern European writer) and the Irish writer Edna O'Brien.

In addition to the interviews, there are three other pieces. One is a short vignette of Roth's relationship with Bernard Malamud, published shortly after Malamud's death in March of 1986. The second is a similar piece on the artist Philip Guston, who became a friend of Roth's while both lived in Woodstock, New York, in the 1970s. The article contains several whimsical illustrations that Guston gave Roth depicting Roth's character, David Kepesh, the professor who turned into a female breast in Roth's novel "The Breast." Last, there is a discussion of the works of Saul Bellow, the most recent of the pieces in this collection (published in The New Yorker in 2000). It is a discussion that can be fully appreciated only if you've read Bellow's works.

"Shop Talk" is, in short, a useful compendium of previous published pieces, albeit a compendium which provides nothing new. It would have benefited, perhaps, from an introductory essay from Roth to place these pieces in perspective.

Roth writes more about other writers here than he does about himself. He played a significant role in helping Eastern European writers from lands of repression break the silence imposed by the Iron Curtain. Here he talks with two of the best of them, Milan Kundera and Ivan Klima.

He also has conversations with two of the most important writers about the 'Holocaust', Primo Levi and Aharon Applefeld.

There is a short interview with I.B. Singer in which he asks about Bruno Schultz.

Roth is not simply a very careful and considered craftsman, he is one who has learned much from studying the writing of others.

In this work we see his capacity to let 'the other' have the floor.

An outstanding small work, which also tells us something about the tastes and values of one of America's great writers, Philip Roth.

When the conversation turns to Philip Roth, it is usually about him, his novels or his autobiographical works, Paternity and The Facts. No one seems to be talking about Shop Talk, his collection of ten interviews with or essays about other writers, and that's a shame because it is freighted with insights about the international scene of literature, largely in the late 1980s. Although the individual pieces, written variously for The New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review and the New Yorker, ranged from 1976 to 2000, it is as if Roth and his subjects are in the same room together, having a remarkable dialogue about influences.

Primo Levi speaks of being imprisoned by the Nazis, the subject of more than one of his books, but also how the fact that he remained a chemist in a paint factory for most of his working life influenced his style. Aharon Appelfeld, who as a child escaped a Nazi camp and lived in the wild until the end of the war and later became an Israeli citizen speaks of being an outsider in a land comprised of immigrants. Ivan Klima chose not to flee Czechoslovakia and survived in the underground publishing culture there. Isaac Bashevis Singer discusses reading Bruno Schultz as well as being a Yiddish writer who settled in America far from the strife of Eastern Europe. Unlike Klima, Milan Kundera left Czechoslovakia for France. Edna O'Brien lives graciously in London but writes with immediacy of the brutal rural Ireland of her youth. In an exchange of letters, Roth and Mary McCarthy debate how he portrays anti-Semitic characters in his novel, The Counterlife. He offers portraits of his late friends Bernard Malamud and artist Philip Guston. A rereading of Saul Bellow's novels finishes the collection.

None of these writers existed in an ivory tower; they are all products of their ethnic, social and political environments and as such provide testimony to how the creative process is shaped by them. It is an extraordinary lesson in how attention to the specific can yield universal revelations. It is also a unique history lesson of the 20th century's legacy of Hitler, Communism and the dissolution of Communism. Roth states that writers can be divided into two groups, those who listen and those who do not. He listens. And he writes and shapes this book like all of his bibliography, with a reverence for the perfect word and intolerance for fatty or unnecessary language.

I first bought this book because I was doing research on Philip Roth. I did find it interesting at times. I thought he should have mentioned that Primo Levi committed suicide later on. I enjoy him with other writers. I think we writers are a strange bunch of creatures. After all, the process of writing can be long, complicated, distracted, frightening, and even procrastinated by the writers themselves. Let's face it, writers like Roth, Levi, Singer, and others are always going to be mysterious to those who don't write. Believe me, it takes years to be good at anything and then you second guess yourself. If you're not your worst critic, than you will still put out stuff to please the audiences. I thought it was fascinating that Roth traveled to Turin to meet with Levi who survived the Holocaust and returned to his Italian home. I thought it was fascinating that he spent time with Malamud and Singer, other Jewish writers. No matter what your ethnicity or religion, writers are all strange creatures, myself included.