Philip Roth: 'You Begin Every Book As An Amateur' / Terry Gross in: NPR

Novelist Philip Roth "discovered" his own books as he wrote them. "I don't know anything in the beginning, which makes it great fun to write ..." he told Fresh Air in 2006. "You begin every book as an amateur. ... Gradually, by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself to you. ... Each and every sentence is a revelation."
Roth died Tuesday at age 85. He first became known in the late 1950s and '60s for writing a new kind of story of Jewish identity. In books like Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus, he wrote comically about young Jewish men who were alienated from their culture and families. His 1997 novel American Pastoral won a Pulitzer Prize, and he was twice awarded the National Book Award for Fiction.
Roth appeared several times on Fresh Air over the years. We remember him by revisiting excerpts from interviews in 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2006. ... [mehr] https://www.npr.org/2018/05/23/613631354/philip-roth-you-begin-every-book-as-an-amateur

Roth answers questions after being awarded the 2001 
Edward MacDowell Medal for his contribution to the arts