I’m starting to believe that Philip Roth is serious about his retirement from writing novels. Of course, he’s spoken recently about how he feels the novel itself is “retiring.” It’s kind of difficult to argue based on the evidence, based on how much storytelling has changed, how much more it will likely soon change. I still hold out hope, still think words will be everywhere. Maybe careers won’t be literary anymore, but I believe there will still be literature of high quality. The opening of Alison Flood’s new Guardian piece about the great novelist in (at least) repose:

A happily retired Philip Roth is spending his days swimming, watching baseball and nature-spotting, revelling in the fact that ‘there’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction,’ according to a new interview.

Reiterating his bleak view about the future of literature – that ‘two decades on the size of the audience for the literary novel will be about the size of the group who read Latin poetry’ – the 80-year-old Roth told Stanford scholar Cynthia Haven that his disengagement from the world of writing is still very much in evidence. Asked by Haven if he really believes his talent – which has won him the Man Booker International prize and made him a perennial contender for the Nobel – will ‘let [him] quit’ writing, Roth responded: ‘You better believe me, because I haven’t written a word of fiction since 2009.’

‘I have no desire to write fiction,’ said the Pulitzer prize-winning literary giant. ‘I did what I did and it’s done. There’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.’

Instead: ‘I swim, I follow baseball, look at the scenery, watch a few movies, listen to music, eat well and see friends. In the country I am keen on nature.’

He is also studying 19-century American history.•