As writers go, Philip Roth sits fairly high up on the food chain. He is a National Book Award and Pulitzer winner, a mainstay of the north-eastern intellectual scene and regularly referred to as one of the most important and eminent men in American letters. It came as a surprise to everyone, then, when the news hit that he was going to appear on Colbert.
So, when the news came that Roth would appear this July for a feature-length book club interview on hyperactive satirist Stephen Colbert’s new show, the press were taken aback. After all, this is far from the platform that we’d expect the academically renowned and rather pretentious author to take. This is a man so pessimistic about the state of average American life that he declared the reading of novels set to become a “cultist” activity within the next two decades.
Beneath the surface, though, is it really that surprising? Let’s not forget how and where Roth started out. His early works were, after all, known for their humour. His first collection, Goodbye, Columbus, was a comical portrait of American jews adjusting to the progress of their lives. This was followed by Roth’s most infamous novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, a cringing, graphic and hilarious portrayal of a young man’s frustrated sexual rampage through adolescence. This, if not a calculated move towards fame, was certainly an expression of Roth’s own stylistic outlook. It was years later that he became known for the introspective, theme-heavy, wise and rather stuffy works that would win him almost every major American literary award and a tremendous amount of acclaim from the old guard.
Perhaps, then, at age 81, mostly retired and looking back on a successful but rather lonely career, Roth is simply reconnecting with his roots. Maybe after the “cultist” interview, he wants people to know that he’s not a stuffy old academic who thinks we’re all a bit dim. Bear in mind too that, despite his track record of satirical broadcasting, Colbert’s book club has already covered Hemingway and Salinger with due reverence. Whatever the case, after a few moments’ thought, the news isn’t really all that surprising after all.