In 2003, Philip Roth turned 70, a strange age for an enfant terrible. To his early admirers, Roth meant chutzpah, rude energy, sly comic mischief. Slowly, improbably, that changed. Roth’s work deepened. Awards piled up. Respectability—the fate of all successful rebels—followed. By 2003, Roth had come full circle: The rebel was revered; the iconoclast, an icon.
And so, celebrations were planned, tributes drafted. Generally, Roth shunned interviews—he preferred silence, exile, and cunning—but this time, he welcomed a BBC camera crew to his spare, wood-paneled studio (“where I really wish I lived,” he once said). As winter light streamed in, he serenely answered questions from a friendly inquisitor: The New Yorker’s David Remnick.
