Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "ON THE FRIDAY in September 1986 that I arrived in Turin to renew a conversation with Primo Levi that we had begun one afternoon in..." (more)
Key Phrases: Augie March, New York, Seize the Day (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Roth continues to be feverishly productive after American Pastoral vaulted him back onto the novelists' A-list in the late '90s, and last year's The Human Stain kept hiim there. This book is a grab bag of conversations and exchanges of letters with other writers, and essays, which originally appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Among his correspondents are Primo Levi and novelists Aharon Appelfeld, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edna O'Brien and Milan Kundera. In none of these conversations does the reader get a clear picture of both parties, since Roth's overlong questions and self-referential statements rarely turn the spotlight away from himself, and most of the chatter is about writers' status and career, rather than artistry or real "shop talk." Czech novelist Ivan Klima is coarsely described as resembling "a highly intellectually evolved Ringo Starr." There is an abstruse and cryptic pair of letters exchanged with Mary McCarthy, and a merciless memoir of novelist Bernard Malamud, who when dying read aloud the beginning of a new novel written with immense difficulty, only to have Roth pick holes in the work: "Trying to be constructive, I suggested that the narrative opened too slowly and that he might better begin further along.... " Collections and individual readers would do better to buy copies of the novels from decades ago that established this writer's fame than look here for unplumbed depths. (Sept.)Forecast: This book should get mileage out of the names of Roth and his high-profile interlocutors, but even browsers will pick up on its miscellaneous quality, and most of the pieces will be familiar to readers of smart set periodicals.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Roth, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has also twice won National Book Critics Circle and National Book awards for his fiction, here presents conversations with and essays on contemporary writers (plus the artist Philip Guston). The interviews with Ivan Kl!ma and Milan Kundera give fascinating insight into the difficult history and political struggles of the former Czechoslovakia. The writers also discuss the dangers of the West's commercial and entertainment cultures, V clav Havel's place in political action, and the nature of totalitarianism. Roth's discussions on Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bruno Schulz illuminate the cultural history of Poland in the Thirties, while his essays on Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow examine their art, religious heritage, and literary importance. Interviews with Primo Levi and Aharon Appelfeld give insight into different writers' attempts to come to grips with the destruction of the European Jews. Finally, an interview with Edna O'Brien focuses on the importance of place in the life of a writer. Especially interesting is the insight into Roth's own literary concerns of narration, authenticity, and politics. Recommended for all literature collections.
- Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (September 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618153144
• ISBN-13: 978-0618153145
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,325,484 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Useful, But Unremarkable, Collection of Rothiana, April 21, 2002

By	"botatoe" (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews

"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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A small but excellent Rothian miscellany , April 13, 2006

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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.