Me and Phil

 For the last hour, when I was not just watching the sun,sky and trees, I was reading the reviews of the books of Philip Roth. I guess he won another Mann-Booker Prize this year so there is more about him being written.  He is quoted in the NYT today saying that he no longer reads any fiction.  He said "he wised-up."

 He has written 53 books now. I have read four. He is now eighty, about thirteen years older than I am. He grew up and often writes about the area about five miles from where I went to high school. Some of the streets he mentioned in many of his stories are a block away from where I lived. Mr Roth is a bit more intense than I am, but many of his themes are the same that I deal with every day I'm in my office: family, the lasting effects of parents, sex, trying to determine the right thing, trying and failing to do the right thing, feeling guilty about not doing the right thing. sex,  struggling with relationships, struggling with religion over and over again, struggling aging, and struggling the crazy politics of America.

Reading Mr. Roth has always intrigued me and annoyed me.  I guess because our backgrounds are similar in some ways, and what he thinks about overlaps so much with what I see, and think about.  But he is soooo self-absorbed, and so pedantic that I find myself telling him to just shut up and cope. 
also, the thirteen years difference puts him in a different generation.  His views are shaped more by the depression, war and Holocaust than mine are. But he is so often correct,as  I can see even now as a scan several of his books through the graces of Amazon and Google.  I would not have this easy access to all these writings  even seven years ago, and now I can read it anywhere at any time.

Given that the world works that way now, with everything immediately available, everyone immediately visible, and much too much immediate knowledge, perhaps he's right.  Who needs the creations of a fiction writer when reality is constantly available, in all of it's complexity.

I guess there are still many who want to see the world in terms of good and evil, good guys and bad guys, right and wrong.  That is the fiction.