Here's more on Philip Roth and the novel. In a recent interview in the Financial Times, Roth has said:
I've stopped reading fiction. I don't read it at all. I read other things: history, biography. I don't have the same interest in fiction that I once did.
When asked why this is, he replied: 'I don't know. I wised up...' Taking off from his comment, Laura Miller at Salon writes a piece in which she explores whether there's something more general at work here; for, she notes, Roth isn't the only writer to have lost a taste for reading fiction on getting older.
As I see it, Miller should have saved herself the trouble. Some people read and enjoy fiction. Others don't; they prefer non-fiction. And then there are people whose reading patterns change over a lifetime - they might read more fiction at one period and less, or none, at a later period; or vice versa. There is no more reason to think general forces are at work in turning a reader away from fiction as they get older than there is to think that reading fiction is - in general - a less appealing activity than reading non-fiction is. The two types of reading just grab different people, or the same people at different times, or grab people in different doses or combinations. Miller will no doubt be able to find many, many older readers of fiction, and even some who read more fiction than they did when they were younger.
Moreover, I don't believe Philip Roth. What I mean is, I don't believe that the reason he's no longer reading fiction is the one implied by what he says when he says, 'I wised up'. That goes beyond the statement that he no longer enjoys or finds interest in fiction; it says that reading fiction is unwise. Now, if he really thought that, why would he have in mind - as he lately confided to Mark Lawson on 'Front Row' - writing another novel himself?
