Philip Roth, 78, in the Financial Times, June 24:
“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.” How so? “I don’t know. I wised up.”
Booker winner John Banville, 65, in the Irish Times, June 4:
“I find I have no use for fiction any more,” he says. “Indeed, I write far more fiction than I read these days. I think it is one of the great losses of age. And yet I did not know what other riches awaited me. Now I read histories, letters, biographies, poetry, philosophy, which offers a rich cleansing of the mind. But I don’t seem to need stories the way I used to."
Meanwhile, Salman Rushdie, 64, is, for the first time in his adult life, not working on a novel. Instead, he's writing a sci-fi tv series for Showtime called The Next People.
I was shocked when I saw this on my Shelf Awareness this morning. Hey Phil, there's still wonderful fiction being written. I had to defend him to my British friends who were upset when he won his award. Then he doesn't even go to the ceremony. And I love Roth.
Posted by: Cynthia | June 28, 2011 at 03:04 PM