Book Q&A: Writing on Philip Roth
Claudia Roth Pierpont is the author of the forthcoming Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books, a study of the novelist Philip Roth, who is no relation. A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, she also is the author of Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World, a collection of essays. She lives in New York City.
Q: Why did you decide to write about Philip Roth?
A: The simple answer is that I think he’s a great writer, one of the greatest novelists of the century. I was working on a collection of pieces about American figures that was published in The New Yorker. I wanted it to end with him.
I met him, and he was accommodating and easy to talk to; I thought, This is the chance of a lifetime! It seemed like an opportunity I’d be mad to pass up....
