Philip Roth: Reading will be dead in 25 years. Or less.

From Melville House:

 

"But especially given his recent, rather sweet comments about the impact of his own early books — I’m thinking of his comments about trying to prep his parents for the furor he expected upon the release of a sex-romp called Portnoy’s Complaint — the comment that stand out from this brief snippet of his talk with Brown is the forlorn comment that the book “can’t measure up” against screens, be they movie, television, computer, or Kindle screens. People won’t be reading books in 25 years, he says — and when he said that, he tells Brown, “I was being optimistic.”

 

 

 

Yes? No? Maybe?

 

Comments

[Bluestalking]

I've only read Portnoy and I despised it. Icky. I plan to read more, though. His comment that "if you take more than two weeks to read a novel you haven't read it" is total crap. What, should I read 'Ulysses' in under two weeks? A bit of an over-generalization.

[Andi @ Estella's Revenge]

He's such a crank old shit, but I do love his books. He may be right about the more cult-like book following. We're pretty cultish already.