Home : Book details : Book description

Description of  Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work

In Philip Roth’s intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics, and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer’s highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life. Milan Kundera and Czechoslovakia, Primo Levi and Auschwitz, Edna O’Brien and Ireland, Aharon Appelfeld and Bukovina, Ivan Klima and Prague, Isaac Singer and Warsaw, Bruno Schulz and Poland — what is the intricate transaction between the susceptible writer and the provocative time and place? Roth’s questions go to the original conditions that stimulate the narrative impulse, and he puts them to writers who are as attuned to the subtleties of literature as to the influence of the surrounding society. Also included here are appreciative portraits of two of Roth’s late friends, each transfixed till the end by his artistic vocation — the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston — as well as several cartoons drawn by Guston, a gift to Roth to illustrate his novella THE BREAST and printed here for the first time. SHOP TALK concludes with Roth’s essay “Rereading Saul Bellow,” a vivid presentation of Bellow’s achievement and, in the spirit of this collection, very much a colleague’s readingThe legendary authors essays and interviews explore how fellow writers from Milan Kundera to Edna OBrien are influenced by time, place, and politics. Writers are often deeply influenced by the time and place in which they live and write. In Shop Talk, Philip Roth, winner of a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and numerous other literary honors, explores the intimate relationship a writers experience has with his or her work. In a series of essays, Roth recounts his intellectual encounters with writers, discussing with them the diverse regions from which they hail and pondering the influence of locale, politics, and history on their work. Featuring luminaries such as Milan Kundera discussing Czechoslovakia Primo Levi talking about Auschwitz Edna OBrien reflecting on Ireland Isaac Bashevis Singer tackling Warsaw Aharon Appelfeld on Bukovina and Ivan Klma on Prague, Roths conversations touch on the conditions that inspire great art, with artists as attuned to the subtleties of their societies as they are the nuances of words. Also including a portrait of Bernard Malamud, a written exchange with Mary McCarthy about Roths The Counterlife, and the essay Rereading Saul Bellow, Shop Talk is a fascinating [glimpse] of some of the deans of postwar literature (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Enjoy Subscribe