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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Useful, But Unremarkable, Collection of Rothiana, November 16, 2001
By A Customer
"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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Useful, But Unremarkable, Collection of Rothiana, April 21, 2002
"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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A small but excellent Rothian miscellany, April 13, 2006
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.
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