An Open Letter to Philip Roth, Douchebag

So it may be old news to some, but the author Philip Roth has quit writing. I just wanted to thank him.

Thank you, Mr. Roth, for not choking the world with another mediocre novel. But when I read in the Writer’s Chronicle that writing “cannot compete with the screen,” I decided to make good use of his novels.

I went through my home and found I had a copy of American Pastoral. I took the copy and, carefully, painstakingly, tore it to pieces and placed it in my compost heap (minus the cover, of course) amidst the piles of coffee grounds and fruit rinds. I felt this was the ideal place for Mr. Roth’s writing.

Why? Because he’s a coward. If you want to quit, fine. If you want to stop writing because you’ve expended all of your talents, of course. But to blame film?

Fiction operates on an entirely different level than film. Movies are passive experiences, for the most part. We witness what occurs on the screen. Certainly, we may be moved to tears or anger, but it is much like witnessing anything in real life. For example, if you see a man berating his wife with horrible words, you may feel disgust or anger, but you are just witnessing the event as an observer. Unless you decide to “get involved” in the situation, and no matter how much the experience may change you, your role is a passive one. You are watching actors on the stage.

Fiction, on the other hand, operates much differently. People who read books, as many scientific studies have shown, allow the reader to experience the story as participant. We go with Alice into the rabbit hole, we stand beside Odysseus in his journeys, we FEEL the story through Claudia’s eyes (in Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye)… all the beauty and reality and horror of human experience.

So, Mr. Roth, I am glad that you’re hanging up your pen. Perhaps you’ll find fulfillment in, say, composting. Ashes to ashes, shit to shit.

As a writer and lover of fiction, though, I cannot accept someone of your stature blaming culture. Certainly, the majority of people prefer films to reading. But the majority of people prefer McDonald’s to quality food. If a world-renowned chef were to say, “I’m not going to cook anymore because so many people eat at McDonald’s,” I would say the same thing: Good fucking riddance.

So I go out to churn the compost from time to time and I’m happy to see the pages and words of Mr. Roth become indistinguishable from other organic wastes. Eventually, his book will become one with the earth, just as Mr. Roth himself… and his mark on this writer’s life will be to provide nutrients for my garden plants, just as his writings have provided nutrients to so many readers. I will eat of the vegetables that have eaten of Roth, and in this manner, I shall shit him out.

And this is what a coward deserves. I will never read another word of Mr. Roth’s, even if he were to pull a Michael Jordan with multiple comebacks, multiple “retirements.” You, sir, have done a great discredit to writers and the form of the novel. And for this, I hope more people take my lead and churn your writings into compost.

At least, that way, you WILL contribute somehow to the world, though not as a writer. Please do not give any more interviews. Please, please do not write another book. Please just die and let your writings fade into obscurity (Pulitzer prizes? Read The Known World if you want to see what the prestige of that award truly means… shite).

I look forward to a world without you, and your writings. If only you had stopped earlier, you may have spared us all a lot of mediocrity.

JDC