A Lesson from Roth

The main thing that stuck out in my mind when listening to Phillip Roth’s interview was that he had not read Goodbye Columbus is over thirty years and barely remembers the details of the story.  He devotes this mainly to the reason that he would now think the novella was terrible.  This kind of made me pause and think.  The book that he is arguably most famous for, the book that won him the national book award in 1960, the book that was made into a major motion picture, is terrible?  How can this be?

He talks in the interview a lot about the development of voice and how it changes over a writer’s life.  One of my favorite parts of the interview was when he discussed never (and still not) having any idea how to start a novel.  This gives me and should give all of us some hope as most of us venture into our first creative project, as even the acclaimed Phillip Roth struggles with the notion of creating a story.  He also talked about how a writer’s voice can develop.  When he wrote Goodbye Columbus, he said that he was really just trying to develop his voice and figure out writing.  Even though his work was highly critically acclaimed and successful, he was not personally satisfied with the result and today would probably not consider it one of his ten best works.  This is another really interesting thing that I picked up from the interview: that the ultimate critic for a work is always the writer.  I loved when he said how sometimes a writer is working on sometimes and just thinks to himself, “wow, this is a piece of shit!” and completely stops the project.  I think what we can all learn from Roth’s interview is that writing is not a thing of perfection; it is something that can be changed and altered every day, with additions and cuts; it is a ever-changing project.