In an announcement he made in October in an interview to the French media, novelist Philip Roth, now 76 years old, declared he was all finished with writing, effectively making his 2010 novel, Nemesis, his final work of fiction. Perhaps this came as the result of years of pessimism regarding the future of literature (Roth, in 2009, told the Guardian that readers of novels would become a “cultic” minority over the next quarter-century). Before arriving at his decision to stop writing, Roth said he first reviewed all the novels he’d written in his lifetime, assessing his work and gauging his accomplishments.

“I wanted to see if I had wasted my time writing,” he told French news source, Les inRocks. “And I thought it was rather successful…. I did the best I could with what I had. After [reviewing my work], I decided I was done with fiction. I do not want to read, to write more… Enough is enough!”

Philip Roth, since the publication of his first book Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, which won him the first of two National Book Awards, received three PEN/Faulkner awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Man Booker International Prize, and for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, the Pulitzer Prize.

Something else Roth told the Guardian in 2009: “The book can’t compete with the screen.”

Sources A.V. Club, The Guardian

http://www.avclub.com/articles/philip-roth-is-calling-it-quits,88546/