0:00:02 > 0:00:08This programme contains some strong language and sexual references
0:00:08 > 0:00:12It's Philip Roth's 80th birthday and his entire home town
0:00:12 > 0:00:16of Newark, New Jersey, has turned out to celebrate with him.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19- # ..Happy birthday to you. # - CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:00:19 > 0:00:24Roth is considered by many to be America's greatest living writer,
0:00:24 > 0:00:27but he hasn't always been this accessible.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30We've been talking about making a film together for over 20 years,
0:00:30 > 0:00:34but it's only now, having decided that he will not write again,
0:00:34 > 0:00:38that he feels able to tell the whole story.
0:00:39 > 0:00:42I found it so treacherously difficult
0:00:42 > 0:00:44to make our film originally with you.
0:00:44 > 0:00:47- Yes, that was a different period. - Yeah, it was a different period.
0:00:47 > 0:00:50That's what I felt, that you were ready now to talk about those things
0:00:50 > 0:00:52which you weren't ready to talk about
0:00:52 > 0:00:54when we first discussed them, all those years ago.
0:00:54 > 0:00:55I didn't need that.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58I didn't want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
0:00:58 > 0:01:03Now, you see, now that I don't write, I just want to chatter away.
0:01:07 > 0:01:12Widely feted for a career spanning six decades, after a shocking
0:01:12 > 0:01:17debut, the scope and achievement of Roth's work only grew.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21Over 31 books, he charted the American century,
0:01:21 > 0:01:24detailing both the political and the personal.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30His 1960s novel, Portnoy's Complaint
0:01:30 > 0:01:31about a teenage boy's efforts
0:01:31 > 0:01:34to keep his obsessive masturbation a secret
0:01:34 > 0:01:36from his overbearing Jewish family
0:01:36 > 0:01:41was a sensation and marked him out as a provocateur.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46He then turned the same fearless vision to the American dream,
0:01:46 > 0:01:50never afraid to look hard at the extremes of human experience
0:01:50 > 0:01:53as his characters become impaled on history.
0:01:53 > 0:01:59He explores the heights of love and the depths of depravity and loss.
0:01:59 > 0:02:01MAN SHOUTS
0:02:03 > 0:02:08But the intensity of his childhood growing up in Newark, New Jersey,
0:02:08 > 0:02:09never left him.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14This vibrant immigrant city became central to his work
0:02:14 > 0:02:16and this is where our story begins.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30Welcome to Philip Roth's Newark.
0:02:30 > 0:02:33You have chosen to visit Newark through the eyes
0:02:33 > 0:02:37and genius of Philip Roth.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41Our first stop this morning will be Weequahic High School,
0:02:41 > 0:02:47Philip's alma mater, and on to his childhood home and Philip Roth Plaza.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58Fans now come by the busload to visit the setting of Roth's novels.
0:02:58 > 0:03:02Newark was home to a thriving, close-knit community,
0:03:02 > 0:03:06where Philip grew up, happy at home and school.
0:03:08 > 0:03:09"The women worked all the time
0:03:09 > 0:03:12"with little assistance from labour-saving devices,
0:03:12 > 0:03:15"washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks."
0:03:15 > 0:03:18"If you're from New Jersey", Nathan had said,
0:03:18 > 0:03:21"and you write 30 books and you win the Nobel Prize,
0:03:21 > 0:03:23"and you live to be white-haired and 95,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26"it's highly unlikely, but not impossible, that after your death
0:03:26 > 0:03:30"they'll decide to name a rest stop for you on the Jersey Turnpike."
0:03:30 > 0:03:32- MAN:- "It is a relatively good neighbourhood in Newark..."
0:03:32 > 0:03:36His early books were set here in these quiet residential streets,
0:03:36 > 0:03:39where his father sold insurance door to door
0:03:39 > 0:03:44and where his family was to become not so much famous as infamous
0:03:44 > 0:03:46with the publication of Goodbye, Columbus
0:03:46 > 0:03:48and Portnoy's Complaint.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53But how did this nice Jewish boy become such a troublemaker?
0:03:54 > 0:03:57I'm going to read you a little bit of Portnoy.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00- OK. I didn't bargain for this, you know?- No, I know.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03I shouldn't... I'm not going to let you do this.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05- You can deny that it's yours.- OK.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09"My wang was all I really had that I would call my own."
0:04:09 > 0:04:14I'm a distinguished writer of 80. Must you dredge up my past?
0:04:14 > 0:04:18"What I'm saying, Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick
0:04:18 > 0:04:21"up these girls as much as I stick it up their backgrounds..."
0:04:22 > 0:04:28"..as though through fucking, I will discover America, conquer America.
0:04:28 > 0:04:30"Maybe that's more like it.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35"Columbus, Captain Smith, Governor Winthrop, General Washington,
0:04:35 > 0:04:37"now Portnoy."
0:04:38 > 0:04:41- What do you want me to say? - No comment.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44Do you want me to apologise to the world?
0:04:46 > 0:04:48"Then came adolescence,
0:04:48 > 0:04:50"half my waking life spent..."
0:04:54 > 0:04:57"..in the laundry hamper..."
0:05:00 > 0:05:03"..before which I stood in my dropped drawers,
0:05:03 > 0:05:05"so I could see how it looked coming out."
0:05:06 > 0:05:13I still have my old paperback from back in the day,
0:05:13 > 0:05:17pretty battered and falling open at the dirty bits!
0:05:20 > 0:05:21And I just thought
0:05:21 > 0:05:24it was the funniest thing I'd read in ever, you know?
0:05:24 > 0:05:27It just made me laugh out loud reading it.
0:05:27 > 0:05:31You have to know that for many people...
0:05:31 > 0:05:36For me, for instance, that book was just a revelation.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38- I brought you out of the closet. - Yeah.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42It was, it was an extraordinary moment, that book, really,
0:05:42 > 0:05:46and in a way it's what everyone had been thinking about,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50- but nobody dared speak its name, and you spoke its name.- Mm, mm.
0:05:50 > 0:05:54And for we Jewish boys it was even more so, I have to say.
0:05:54 > 0:05:56Yes, how so?
0:06:17 > 0:06:19Well, I mean, there are elements of farce.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22I mean, certainly in the notorious chapters, you know,
0:06:22 > 0:06:27whacking off and so on, that it actually is written like farce,
0:06:27 > 0:06:32you know, with the mother banging on the door outside, you know?
0:06:32 > 0:06:35"Don't flush!" you know, et cetera.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39It's... It's very, very clever farce
0:06:39 > 0:06:44and even though, you know, he got into trouble with conservative Jews,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47it actually is a kind of absolutely American Jewish novel.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53"Alex. Are you eating hamburgers out?
0:06:53 > 0:06:57"Answer me, please, is that why you flushed the toilet -
0:06:57 > 0:06:59"was there hamburger in it?"
0:06:59 > 0:07:02"I told you - I don't look in the bowl when I flush it!
0:07:02 > 0:07:06"I'm not interested like you are, in other people's poopie!"
0:07:06 > 0:07:09"Oh, oh, oh - 13 years old and the mouth on him!
0:07:09 > 0:07:11"Tell me please what horrible things have we done to you
0:07:11 > 0:07:15"all our lives that this should be our reward?"
0:07:17 > 0:07:20- PHILIP:- And it was a sensation.
0:07:20 > 0:07:24It was an experience unlike any I was ever to know in the future
0:07:24 > 0:07:27and unlike anything that had happened to me in the past.
0:07:28 > 0:07:31Because this was a scandal.
0:07:31 > 0:07:34Nothing in my education prepared me to be a scandalous writer.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40I thought I was going to be a serious writer,
0:07:40 > 0:07:43but the moment I became comical and freewheeling in this way,
0:07:43 > 0:07:44I became a scandalous writer.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48"This hero is not just some miserable wretch
0:07:48 > 0:07:50"writhing in his lusts.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54"He is the Jew avenging himself of his upbringing in a Jewish home,
0:07:54 > 0:07:58"which has become detestable to him, by going out and laying shikses,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02"thereby freeing himself from the nightmare of mameh.
0:08:02 > 0:08:07"This is the book for which all anti-Semites have been praying.
0:08:07 > 0:08:10"I dare say that with the next turn of history, this book will make
0:08:10 > 0:08:13"all of us defendants at court."
0:08:13 > 0:08:17"WE will pay the price, not the author who revels in obscenities."
0:08:20 > 0:08:23It felt very natural to me to write it.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25I didn't feel like I was breaking any taboos.
0:08:25 > 0:08:26Didn't you really?
0:08:26 > 0:08:30No, because my friends and I, we all joked like this.
0:08:30 > 0:08:32We'd been joking like this since we were in high school.
0:08:32 > 0:08:34One thing the boys I grew up with
0:08:34 > 0:08:36and I had was tremendous verbal freedom.
0:08:36 > 0:08:40We weren't afraid to say things. And it wasn't just dirty words.
0:08:40 > 0:08:45It was great curiosity about sex and mostly the great question,
0:08:45 > 0:08:50we raised our voices to the heavens and, "When, when?
0:08:50 > 0:08:53"When, where, how will this thing occur?"
0:08:53 > 0:08:56CAR HORN BEEPS
0:08:56 > 0:08:58- TV: Somebody, I say, somebody knocked.- Yes, I knocked.
0:08:58 > 0:09:00I goes the name Senator Claghorn, that is.
0:09:00 > 0:09:02I know you're from the South.
0:09:02 > 0:09:04When I'm in New York I'll never go to the Yankee Stadium.
0:09:04 > 0:09:06Now, wait a minute...
0:09:06 > 0:09:12- PHILIP:- I had imbibed the mood
0:09:12 > 0:09:16and aura of family life
0:09:16 > 0:09:18in my neighbourhood very strongly, I think,
0:09:18 > 0:09:22and I didn't just grow up in my house,
0:09:22 > 0:09:25and I think when you take a look at the street I grew up on
0:09:25 > 0:09:28you see that there are some 40 or 50 houses on that street,
0:09:28 > 0:09:33maybe even more, and in each house lived ten or 12 people,
0:09:33 > 0:09:38so there we've got 500 people for a start, and that's only one street.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41"Were we ever again to be such keen recording instruments
0:09:41 > 0:09:46"of a microscopic surface of things conveyed by linoleum and oilcloth,
0:09:46 > 0:09:49"by Yahrzeit candles and cooking smells,
0:09:49 > 0:09:52"by Ronson table lighters and Venetian blinds?"
0:09:52 > 0:09:54- PHILIP:- "About one another,
0:09:54 > 0:09:58"we knew who had what kind of lunch in his bag in his locker
0:09:58 > 0:10:01"and who ordered what on his hot dog at Syd's,
0:10:01 > 0:10:06"who smelled of hair oil and who over-salivated when he spoke,
0:10:06 > 0:10:09"whose mother worked and whose father was dead.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13"Perhaps by definition, a neighbourhood is the place
0:10:13 > 0:10:17"to which a child spontaneously gives undivided attention.
0:10:17 > 0:10:21"That's the unfiltered way meaning comes to children,
0:10:21 > 0:10:23"just flowing off the surface of things."
0:10:25 > 0:10:31Well, I think what you're reading about is the deep perceptiveness
0:10:31 > 0:10:36of a kid that comes through his intimate knowledge of all these
0:10:36 > 0:10:41households in the neighbourhood and the gradations of class.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45He just smells... In fact, you can smell them sometimes.
0:10:45 > 0:10:51So I was writing then about the perspective of a young person.
0:10:51 > 0:10:55You have a great perch as a child writer.
0:10:55 > 0:11:00You are in people's houses, you're in their kitchens, you're in their
0:11:00 > 0:11:04bedrooms, you're in their bathrooms, you sleep over, you hear everything.
0:11:04 > 0:11:07No-one dreams that you're going to turn out to be
0:11:07 > 0:11:09this terrible littler writer.
0:11:10 > 0:11:12It's not your fault you don't know what gentiles think
0:11:12 > 0:11:16when they read something like this, but I can tell you,
0:11:16 > 0:11:19they don't think about how it's a great work of art.
0:11:19 > 0:11:21People don't READ art, they read about people.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25And how do you think they will judge the people in your story?
0:11:25 > 0:11:27- Have you thought about that?- Yes.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31- And what have you concluded? - I can't put it into a conclusion.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33I didn't write 15,000 words
0:11:33 > 0:11:36so as now to put it all into a one-word conclusion.
0:11:36 > 0:11:37Well, I can.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40Your story, Nathan, as far as gentiles are concerned,
0:11:40 > 0:11:43is about one thing and one thing only.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47It is about kikes, kikes and their love of money.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50That is all our good Christian friends will see.
0:11:50 > 0:11:52I've watched you all your life.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55You are a good, kind and considerate young man.
0:11:55 > 0:11:57You aren't somebody who writes this kind of story
0:11:57 > 0:11:59and then pretends it's the truth.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01But I did write it.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07I am the kind of person who writes this kind of story.
0:12:10 > 0:12:12'My parents became his protector.
0:12:12 > 0:12:15'You know, he took a lot of gaff from the Jewish community.'
0:12:15 > 0:12:17My father had to take some of the punishment.
0:12:17 > 0:12:20And then there was a lot of, "Are you this..." To them -
0:12:20 > 0:12:21"Are you one of these characters?
0:12:21 > 0:12:24"Is this your character, is that your character?"
0:12:24 > 0:12:26Of course, you leave home at 17
0:12:26 > 0:12:28and because you have to get away from your father.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30You have that quarrel with your father.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33He still drove me nuts when I was an adolescent.
0:12:33 > 0:12:34Not after that.
0:12:34 > 0:12:37But when I was an adolescent he drove me crazy.
0:12:37 > 0:12:43He said in one of his books that he wanted to go to a university,
0:12:43 > 0:12:44a Christian university...
0:12:46 > 0:12:49..to find out how the other half of the world lived.
0:12:49 > 0:12:50And...
0:12:51 > 0:12:54- Did he find out?- He found out.
0:12:54 > 0:12:59Well, I'm only following the path taken by other writers,
0:12:59 > 0:13:04and I don't mean to compare my work to Joyce's, but Joyce left Dublin
0:13:04 > 0:13:09and he couldn't get out of Dublin fast enough.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12And then he couldn't write about anything else for the rest of his life.
0:13:16 > 0:13:23It was a very moral campus there in 1951 when Philip Roth arrived.
0:13:26 > 0:13:28Philip was a gorgeous man.
0:13:28 > 0:13:33He was a dashing young man and there was a whiff of danger about him
0:13:33 > 0:13:40because he was so much smarter than anybody, and so witty.
0:13:40 > 0:13:44- Philip was a kind of iconoclast. - He was a renegade.
0:13:44 > 0:13:51Philip was the first one to be spectacularly sexually successful.
0:13:53 > 0:13:57He found older women pursuing him.
0:13:57 > 0:14:02Well, older women - a year older, eight months older!
0:14:02 > 0:14:06We've got your school mates all talking about you in that Arena, which is very nice.
0:14:06 > 0:14:11- Talking about what? - Talking about you at college and your sexual prowess and your...
0:14:11 > 0:14:14- I didn't have any sexual prowess. - Well, they said you did. - They're wrong.
0:14:14 > 0:14:18Uh, I didn't have any sexual prowess because I didn't have any sex.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21Um, it was not a...
0:14:21 > 0:14:24- Are you sh- are you... - I'm sure of it.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27I have - this great memory of mine that you talk about, I have it.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30- You had no sex at college? - Very little.
0:14:30 > 0:14:33You assume there was lots of - no, that wasn't the way it was.
0:14:33 > 0:14:36We were very, um...
0:14:36 > 0:14:40The norm was a certain kind of decency.
0:14:40 > 0:14:45The whole system of rules, the parietal rules,
0:14:45 > 0:14:49were laid down and it made it impossible for you unless you
0:14:49 > 0:14:52had greater ingenuity than I had, and I had great ingenuity.
0:14:52 > 0:14:57Where would you do this thing? Where would you do it?
0:14:57 > 0:15:02Then, not long out of college, Roth became passionately involved
0:15:02 > 0:15:04with a troubled older woman.
0:15:15 > 0:15:22'..specialist par excellence in the aesthetics of extremist fiction.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25Reader, I married her.'
0:15:25 > 0:15:28He was married.
0:15:30 > 0:15:36His wife, Margaret Anderson, who later became Margaret Roth,
0:15:36 > 0:15:39whose marriage was not a very successful one,
0:15:39 > 0:15:44unfortunately was killed in an automobile accident in Central Park.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48Clearly this was a critical event in his life,
0:15:48 > 0:15:51and was very damaging to him personally but.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55He says that his marriage to Maggie helped make him the writer he is.
0:15:55 > 0:15:58In fact, he says it very clearly.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02It freed him from being a good boy,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05from being the person his parents had raised to believe that
0:16:05 > 0:16:08no-one would ever do him serious harm and the world was -
0:16:08 > 0:16:12although he knew about many things, he knew about anti-Semitism, he knew about prejudice,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15it's not as though he grew up in a coddled environment.
0:16:15 > 0:16:20Still the idea that he could be made to suffer in this way for years
0:16:20 > 0:16:23was astonishing news to him, and it filled him with anger.
0:16:23 > 0:16:28- A woman who had a sign on her saying, 'Stay Away, Keep Out'.- Mm.
0:16:28 > 0:16:31- And of course who betrayed him from the very beginning.- Mm-hm.
0:16:31 > 0:16:38I had seen life in a darker way than I ever had before.
0:16:38 > 0:16:40My upbringing had not been dark.
0:16:40 > 0:16:43Whatever problems we had, whatever tensions
0:16:43 > 0:16:46and conflicts there were, they weren't dark.
0:16:46 > 0:16:48This was a darkness that I knew nothing about.
0:16:52 > 0:16:54He was 23 years old when he met her.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58He was 35 when he died. That's a big chunk of life.
0:16:58 > 0:17:02Did you actually undergo psychoanalysis yourself at that time?
0:17:02 > 0:17:05- Mm. It befell me. - It befell you.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09Yes. For a while. I had a bad time of my first marriage.
0:17:09 > 0:17:14I came out of it feeling very, uh, crippled and bewildered,
0:17:14 > 0:17:18and, um, I felt I needed to be put together again.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21It was the only place I knew where you could go to be put together.
0:17:21 > 0:17:26It was the great era, the flourishing of psychoanalysis in America and in New York.
0:17:26 > 0:17:29Were you kind of liberated by this psychoanalysis? Did it help you
0:17:29 > 0:17:31as a writer, if not as a man, is what I want to know?
0:17:31 > 0:17:38The psychoanalytic situation liberated a certain language in me as a writer.
0:17:41 > 0:17:45'A moment comes, as it did for me some months back,
0:17:45 > 0:17:49when I was all at once in a state of helpless confusion
0:17:49 > 0:17:54and could not understand any longer what was once obvious to me.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57Why do I do what I do?
0:17:57 > 0:18:01My desk had become a frightening, foreign place.
0:18:01 > 0:18:06I came to believe that I just could not make myself over yet again.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11Far from feeling capable of remaking myself,
0:18:11 > 0:18:15I felt myself coming undone.'
0:18:16 > 0:18:21Starting with Portnoy, Roth created a series of fictional disguises,
0:18:21 > 0:18:25which have teased his readers as to how much is based on himself.
0:18:25 > 0:18:29Nathan Zuckerman is a young writer from New Jersey.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41- Would you like me to come along? - No need.
0:18:41 > 0:18:44I can use the exercise after my egg.
0:18:44 > 0:18:50Besides, you must things to write down. There's paper on my desk.
0:18:50 > 0:18:53Paper for what?
0:18:53 > 0:18:55For your feverish notes.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01- You had an earful this morning. - It wasn't so much.
0:19:02 > 0:19:05So much as what? Last night?
0:19:08 > 0:19:11I'll be curious to see how we all turn out some day.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14It should make an interesting story.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19You're not so nice and polite in your fiction.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22You're a different person.
0:19:23 > 0:19:25Am I?
0:19:25 > 0:19:28I should hope so.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43You've been having this conversation with your fictional protege,
0:19:43 > 0:19:47Nathan Zuckerman, since The Ghost Writer in 1979.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52The Zuckerman story changes over the course of nine or 10, however many books there are.
0:19:52 > 0:19:54In the beginning, it's about him coming of age,
0:19:54 > 0:19:56developing as a writer, et cetera, et cetera.
0:19:56 > 0:19:59And then we get to The Counterlife
0:19:59 > 0:20:03and American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, it's not about him.
0:20:03 > 0:20:08He's the ear, he's the voice, he's the observer, he's the eye.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12Zuckerman seems to be the most important mask that Roth has.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16He doesn't really exactly have Roth's previous life experience,
0:20:16 > 0:20:20although he's from Newark and he has much the same family and some of
0:20:20 > 0:20:24the same experiences, and we watch him over the course of a lifetime.
0:20:24 > 0:20:30We trace him until he's 71 years old, so we get to see this man live through history.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35'In the absence of a self, one impersonates selves,
0:20:35 > 0:20:39and after a while impersonates the best self that gets one through.'
0:20:39 > 0:20:42- This is obviously Zuckerman talking. - Aha.
0:20:42 > 0:20:46'What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do
0:20:46 > 0:20:50and not only of myself. A troupe of players that I have internalised,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53a permanent company of actors that I can call upon
0:20:53 > 0:20:57when a self is required, an ever-evolving stock of pieces
0:20:57 > 0:21:00and parts that form my repertoire.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03I'm a theatre, nothing more than a theatre.'
0:21:03 > 0:21:07- Now I know what you're talking about.- Oh, did you really?
0:21:07 > 0:21:11'Being Zuckerman is one long performance
0:21:11 > 0:21:17and the very opposite of what is thought of as being one's self.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22In fact, those who most seem to be themselves appear to me
0:21:22 > 0:21:26people impersonating what they think they might like to be, believe they
0:21:26 > 0:21:31ought to be or wish to be taken to be by whoever is setting standards.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35So in earnest are they that they don't even recognise
0:21:35 > 0:21:38that being in earnest is the act.'
0:21:40 > 0:21:46Just as Portnoy and Zuckerman were young Jewish males from a background much like Roth's own
0:21:46 > 0:21:52Roth's other alter ego, David Kapesh, is, like Roth, now a professor of literature.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55The Kapesh books are a trilogy
0:21:55 > 0:21:58exploring the nature of sexual desire,
0:21:58 > 0:22:02beginning with a surrealist tale of a man who finds himself
0:22:02 > 0:22:06in hospital because of a Kafkaesque metamorphosis.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10And so I wrote a story called The Breast
0:22:10 > 0:22:13about a man who turns into a breast.
0:22:13 > 0:22:18I was in very high spirits during those years,
0:22:18 > 0:22:22very happy, and I think that out of this happiness and high spirits
0:22:22 > 0:22:25these books were born.
0:22:25 > 0:22:30'"Calm down now, Mr Kapesh", a woman said. "I'm only washing you.
0:22:30 > 0:22:35I'm only washing your face." "My face? Where is my face?
0:22:35 > 0:22:40Where are my arms, my legs? Where is my mouth?
0:22:40 > 0:22:45What happened to me?" And then I began to sob uncontrollably
0:22:45 > 0:22:47and had eventually to be put to sleep.'
0:22:50 > 0:22:54I was washed gently but thoroughly every morning
0:22:54 > 0:22:58and then my nipples and aureole were lubricated with oil.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02Six days a week these ablutions were performed by a woman,
0:23:02 > 0:23:05Miss Clarke, and on Sunday by the man.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08It was ten weeks before I had sufficiently recovered
0:23:08 > 0:23:11from the horror of hearing the truth about myself to be able
0:23:11 > 0:23:16to relax again beneath Miss Clarke's ministering hands.'
0:23:19 > 0:23:23When I was writing The Breast I was living in Woodstock,
0:23:23 > 0:23:26as was my great friend, Philip Guston, the painter.
0:23:26 > 0:23:32And Philip read a manuscript of the book and he produced these drawings for me as a present.
0:23:32 > 0:23:37And you will see at the very top The Breast enters the hospital.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41He's put into his hammock and there's a medical chart hanging off him.
0:23:44 > 0:23:48Then down below he's being cleaned up, and the nurse is cleaning him.
0:23:48 > 0:23:53He seems excited by it, there's lots of movement.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56And down below, number three, the doctor comes. It's serious.
0:23:56 > 0:24:01And then the unserious pictures of his girlfriend comes in.
0:24:01 > 0:24:06They have a relationship. And his father comes to visit,
0:24:06 > 0:24:09and his father is very understanding and very accepting of it, I think,
0:24:09 > 0:24:15and they talk. A psychiatrist comes. He's a serious man.
0:24:15 > 0:24:17He smokes a cigar like Freud.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20Depression, The Breast is depressed.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26Philip Guston decided to kill him. He doesn't get killed in my book,
0:24:26 > 0:24:30but Philip put him out of his misery.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33And I thought of these three books as three different dreams
0:24:33 > 0:24:36or nightmares of an erotic nature.
0:24:37 > 0:24:43I was very curious as a writer as to how far I could go.
0:24:43 > 0:24:46What happens if you go further?
0:24:46 > 0:24:50Shame isn't for writers. You have to be shameless.
0:24:51 > 0:24:57Writing about sex involves fictional choices and tact,
0:24:57 > 0:24:59and tactlessness...
0:25:01 > 0:25:05..and you don't want to be necessarily indecorous
0:25:05 > 0:25:09but you don't necessarily want to be decorous either.
0:25:09 > 0:25:15So you have to have a good ear, um, and be able to weigh
0:25:15 > 0:25:17the power of the word.
0:25:20 > 0:25:26'There's no way to negotiate metrically this wild thing.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29It's not 50/50 like a business transaction.
0:25:29 > 0:25:33It's the chaos of Eros we're talking about,
0:25:33 > 0:25:38the radical destabilisation that is its excitement.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42You're back in the woods with sex. You're back in the bog.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48"What it is is trading dominance, perpetual imbalance.
0:25:49 > 0:25:55"You're going to rule out dominance, you're going to rule out yielding.
0:25:55 > 0:25:57"The dominating is the flint.
0:25:57 > 0:26:03"It strikes the spark, it sets it going. Then what?
0:26:03 > 0:26:07"Listen. You'll see. you'll see what dominating leads to.
0:26:08 > 0:26:10"You'll see what yielding leads to."
0:26:12 > 0:26:15Clearly at the centre of all this is the writer,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19the male, preoccupied in his case with sex,
0:26:19 > 0:26:22because he's a provocateur, that's what he is.
0:26:22 > 0:26:26But at the same time, his portrayal of women has made many people call
0:26:26 > 0:26:30him a misogynist, many intelligent people call him a misogynist.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33I think his books are as filled with
0:26:33 > 0:26:35all kinds of women as they are all kinds of men.
0:26:35 > 0:26:38There are good characters, bad characters, sweet characters,
0:26:38 > 0:26:40nasty characters - he runs the gamut.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42He's got some wonderful,
0:26:42 > 0:26:45great heroines, and they run from early on,
0:26:45 > 0:26:48from people like Brenda who's a smart, engaging girl
0:26:48 > 0:26:51in Goodbye Columbus, but especially in some of these later books.
0:26:54 > 0:27:01I got literary fame and I also got sexual fame
0:27:01 > 0:27:03and I also got madman fame.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08I got hundreds of letters, 100 a week, say, some of them
0:27:08 > 0:27:12letters with pictures of girls in bikinis.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15I had lots of opportunity to ruin my life.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19The last thing I wanted to do was make myself more visible than
0:27:19 > 0:27:21I already was.
0:27:21 > 0:27:25The visibility unnerved me. I liked it the old way.
0:27:25 > 0:27:27And so I moved out to the country.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33You can be quite a solitary creature yourself
0:27:33 > 0:27:36and you obviously enjoy Connecticut very much.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40I find it very congenial to live in the natural beauty
0:27:40 > 0:27:43of the place as I have in Connecticut.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48And when I have a project,
0:27:48 > 0:27:51there's no place else I can do it except there.
0:27:58 > 0:28:04I work during the day, do some kind of exercise late in the day,
0:28:04 > 0:28:07come in and have my dinner, read for a few hours and go to sleep,
0:28:07 > 0:28:11and I haven't lost contact with what I've been doing all day.
0:28:11 > 0:28:15There hasn't been all that hubbub that gets you out of where you were.
0:28:18 > 0:28:20You do this day in and day out,
0:28:20 > 0:28:25and I found it was the only way for me to keep the connections alive
0:28:25 > 0:28:29from one day's work to the next because you can't do it with notes.
0:28:29 > 0:28:33There's a tone, there's a pace, there's the scale of things,
0:28:33 > 0:28:35and you can keep that from day to day.
0:28:37 > 0:28:41And then if I'm stuck, and I often am stuck,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44I walk out the door and I'm away.
0:28:45 > 0:28:50I'm virtually in the woods, and I walk around for ten minutes,
0:28:50 > 0:28:51I come back and try again.
0:28:51 > 0:28:56The rhythm is there. Nothing intervenes in your...
0:28:56 > 0:28:59- Yes, that's right.- Even if you can pick up where you left off,
0:28:59 > 0:29:02it may be just as frustrating but you're back where you were.
0:29:02 > 0:29:05But if you go... If you go at it every day, and I did do it
0:29:05 > 0:29:10six or seven, sometimes seven days a week, then the work gets done.
0:29:10 > 0:29:14Quit when you think it's... You can put it into the world.
0:29:18 > 0:29:19Then, in the early '70s,
0:29:19 > 0:29:25Roth's attention shifted as a trip to see Kafka's Prague revealed
0:29:25 > 0:29:30a city in turmoil that would come to absorb and ignite him.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS
0:29:34 > 0:29:36NEWSREEL: The marvellous spring,
0:29:36 > 0:29:39the unbelievable summer, the promise of a new world called
0:29:39 > 0:29:43socialism with a human face, were to be crushed, stamped upon.
0:29:45 > 0:29:47But for the few precious months that it lasted,
0:29:47 > 0:29:52this spring of freedom was a wildly exhilarating experience.
0:29:55 > 0:29:59In 1968 there had been the Prague Spring in which the Russians
0:29:59 > 0:30:02had put down the Czechs' movement for freedom.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11The Communists dominated totalitarian Prague
0:30:11 > 0:30:13when they entered.
0:30:13 > 0:30:16TANK RUMBLES
0:30:19 > 0:30:23I began to meet the dissidents.
0:30:35 > 0:30:36My job isn't to be enraged.
0:30:37 > 0:30:43My job is what Chekhov said the job of an artist was, which is
0:30:43 > 0:30:47the proper presentation of the problem.
0:30:50 > 0:30:56There's a journalistic side to writing novels because you
0:30:56 > 0:31:02need the facts, you need the information, you need the details.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04You have to invent off of something.
0:31:05 > 0:31:10I got to rub two sticks of reality together to get a fire of reality.
0:31:14 > 0:31:15After my four or
0:31:15 > 0:31:21so visits to Prague, I began to think of an idea for a book in which
0:31:21 > 0:31:25a character, writer, who had endured a kind of crazy success of the kind
0:31:25 > 0:31:31I had, then goes to Czechoslovakia and sees the consequences of
0:31:31 > 0:31:33THEIR art,
0:31:33 > 0:31:36what happens to THESE people as a result of the political system.
0:31:38 > 0:31:41SHOUTING
0:31:44 > 0:31:47"You can do whatever you want.
0:31:47 > 0:31:50"No drugs but plenty of whisky.
0:31:50 > 0:31:54"You can fuck, you can masturbate, you can look at dirty pictures.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58"You can look at yourself in the mirror, you can do nothing.
0:31:59 > 0:32:03"All the best people are there, also the worst.
0:32:03 > 0:32:06"We're all comrades now. Come to the orgy.
0:32:06 > 0:32:09"You will see the final stage of the revolution."
0:32:11 > 0:32:15"Balotka explains who is who and who likes what.
0:32:15 > 0:32:20"That one was a journalist till they fired him. He loves pornography.
0:32:20 > 0:32:23"I saw him with my eyes fucking a girl from behind,
0:32:23 > 0:32:25"reading a dirty book at the same time.
0:32:25 > 0:32:28"That one, he's a terrible abstract painter.
0:32:29 > 0:32:33"The best abstract painting he did was the day the Russians came.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36"He went out and painted over all the street signs so the tanks
0:32:36 > 0:32:38"wouldn't know where they were.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41"He has the longest prick in Prague.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47"That one, the little clerk, that's Mr Vodika.
0:32:47 > 0:32:52"He's a good writer, an excellent writer, but everything scares him.
0:32:52 > 0:32:54"If he sees a petition he passes out.
0:32:56 > 0:32:58"Just this week, Mr Vodika told the
0:32:58 > 0:33:02"Government that if he made bad politics he's sorry.
0:33:02 > 0:33:05"He's hoping this way they will let him write again about
0:33:05 > 0:33:06"his perversion.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09"Will they? Of course not.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13"They will tell him now to write a historical novel about Pilsen beer."
0:33:15 > 0:33:16This is the way he likes to work, I think,
0:33:16 > 0:33:20where everything is on the line, where everything matters,
0:33:20 > 0:33:22Prague and why Prague was so riveting to him.
0:33:22 > 0:33:27This is a society where life is on the line every day with
0:33:27 > 0:33:30simple decisions and this gives a quickness and a force
0:33:30 > 0:33:31and a meaning to everything.
0:33:31 > 0:33:35It was thrilling to find such a place and to be able to write about it.
0:33:35 > 0:33:37You quote Zuckerman in front of your book.
0:33:37 > 0:33:41"I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us.
0:33:41 > 0:33:43"If a book we're reading does not rouse us
0:33:43 > 0:33:45"with a blow to the head then why read it?"
0:33:45 > 0:33:47It's a fabulous quote,
0:33:47 > 0:33:49and it applies to Roth throughout his career.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52When you say why him, why this writer, do you know, that quote
0:33:52 > 0:33:54can tell you why because none of these books
0:33:54 > 0:33:57go down easy, because somebody's mad about every one of these books.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00Somewhere somebody's mad about every one of these books,
0:34:00 > 0:34:02somewhere, somebody is hysterical in the print
0:34:02 > 0:34:05somewhere because they do bite and sting you.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08They're not easy, they're not about the landscape,
0:34:08 > 0:34:11they're not comforting, they're not pretty.
0:34:11 > 0:34:12They're about people.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15They're about people in all their depths and disarray.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22"They said they would put in jail for what you're doing here,
0:34:22 > 0:34:25"for espionage, plotting against the Czech people.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32"Recently, an American got off the train in Bratislava and was
0:34:32 > 0:34:35"immediately put into jail for two months because he was mistaken
0:34:35 > 0:34:37"for somebody else.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42"A West German journalist, they drowned in the river.
0:34:42 > 0:34:45"They said he was fishing and fell in.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52"I hear very clearly the sound of the river splashing against the
0:34:52 > 0:34:55"steep stone embankment outside."
0:35:05 > 0:35:07Roth began a series with Penguin books,
0:35:07 > 0:35:10Writers From The Other Europe,
0:35:10 > 0:35:12and devised an elaborate scheme to smuggle
0:35:12 > 0:35:16funds to the blacklisted writers under the watchful eyes of
0:35:16 > 0:35:18the Soviet authorities.
0:35:19 > 0:35:25Philip recruited American writers and scholars to donate 50
0:35:25 > 0:35:32a month that Philip would then take to this grungy little travel agency
0:35:32 > 0:35:37in Manhattan and he would convert the cash into currency that could be
0:35:37 > 0:35:42transferred safely without the Czechoslovakian government finding
0:35:42 > 0:35:46out because if the government found out that these writers were getting
0:35:46 > 0:35:50money from the West they would not only confiscate the money but
0:35:50 > 0:35:54they would further punish the people who were supposed to receive it.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57So it was a very ingenious scheme
0:35:57 > 0:36:00and Philip got William Styron to help a novelist,
0:36:00 > 0:36:05he got Arthur Schlesinger to help a Czech historian,
0:36:05 > 0:36:10he got Arthur Miller to help a Czech playwright and so forth.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13And this gave Philip a sort of new purpose in life.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17INDISTINCT
0:36:19 > 0:36:24And then, in 1976, Roth moved to London.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28"England's made a Jew of me in only eight weeks which,
0:36:28 > 0:36:31"on reflection, might be the least painful method.
0:36:34 > 0:36:37"A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without
0:36:37 > 0:36:43"Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly
0:36:43 > 0:36:50"without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.
0:37:03 > 0:37:07"You in England, the Jersey boy with the dirty mouth who writes
0:37:07 > 0:37:12"the books Jews love to hate, how do you survive there?
0:37:12 > 0:37:14"How can you stand the silence?
0:37:14 > 0:37:17"I was invited a couple of years ago to lecture at Oxford.
0:37:17 > 0:37:19"I was there six months.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22"At dinner, whatever I said, somebody next to me always replied,
0:37:22 > 0:37:24"'Oh, really?'
0:37:26 > 0:37:30"You didn't like the small talk. truthfully, I didn't mind it.
0:37:30 > 0:37:32"I needed a vacation from this place."
0:37:38 > 0:37:41Roth's retreat from the politeness of England, both in life and
0:37:41 > 0:37:45in literature, were his frequent trips to Israel and the chaos
0:37:45 > 0:37:46of the promised land.
0:37:48 > 0:37:51"In Israel, it's enough to live.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54"You don't have to do anything else, and you go to bed exhausted."
0:37:54 > 0:37:57They have to. They're going to sing right there.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02"Have you ever noticed that Jews shout?
0:38:02 > 0:38:05"Here everything is black and white, everybody is shouting and
0:38:05 > 0:38:06"everybody is always right."
0:38:09 > 0:38:13Roth had come to England to set up home with the actress Claire Bloom.
0:38:16 > 0:38:17At first, I think he felt very released,
0:38:17 > 0:38:22as one does in a new place, and very free of the old burdens,
0:38:22 > 0:38:25made a lot of new friends, which he's kept,
0:38:25 > 0:38:27and was very happy.
0:38:27 > 0:38:30Then I think he became,
0:38:30 > 0:38:34he would perhaps tell you something else, but I think be became very
0:38:34 > 0:38:39much afraid of being cut off from his subject, which is American life.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43I came to England because England is Claire's home
0:38:43 > 0:38:47and when we began to live together, we decided
0:38:47 > 0:38:50we would live half of each year in my country and half in hers.
0:38:50 > 0:38:52It was a simple as that, really.
0:38:52 > 0:38:59For any writer, you have to know the inside world in order to make it totally authentic.
0:38:59 > 0:39:04I don't think he really could settle here, Philip loves America,
0:39:04 > 0:39:06he is an American.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08He said to me the other night,
0:39:08 > 0:39:12I'm interested in American history, in everything American.
0:39:12 > 0:39:17He was as well, it has to be said, or is as well a quite secretive man -
0:39:17 > 0:39:22he's both very open and ebullient and also secretive.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26England's never really featured in your work at all.
0:39:26 > 0:39:28Well, I wrote about it. England didn't feature.
0:39:28 > 0:39:31That's true, because I couldn't write a feature-length
0:39:31 > 0:39:33book about London or anything.
0:39:33 > 0:39:35My experience wouldn't allow that.
0:39:35 > 0:39:39But England with Israel was a combination that interested me,
0:39:39 > 0:39:43so, particularly on the issue of anti-Semitism,
0:39:43 > 0:39:48because when Zuckerman goes to Israel and is talking to some people
0:39:48 > 0:39:53on a West Bank settlement, they tell him about how the West is the just
0:39:53 > 0:39:59the home of anti-Semitism and that America is anti-Semitic and England
0:39:59 > 0:40:04is anti-Semitic, and Zuckerman protests and says, "This is paranoia.
0:40:04 > 0:40:08"You have it all wrong. Neither place is that.
0:40:08 > 0:40:13"In fact, America is Zion, America is the true Zion."
0:40:13 > 0:40:18Then he goes back to England and, irony of ironies, his wife's
0:40:18 > 0:40:23family, his new wife's family, turns out to be anti-Semitic.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28'"You must open a window immediately.
0:40:28 > 0:40:30'"There's a terrible smell in here."
0:40:30 > 0:40:33'"Is there, madam?" he courteously replied.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36'"Absolutely. The stink in here is abominable."
0:40:36 > 0:40:41'Turning to Maria, I quietly told her, "I am that stink,
0:40:41 > 0:40:45'"the emanation of Jews.
0:40:45 > 0:40:49'"She is hypersensitive to Jewish emanations. Don't be dense."
0:40:49 > 0:40:53'"Oh, this is ridiculous. You're being absurd."
0:40:53 > 0:40:59'From down the banquette, I heard the woman saying, "They smell so funny, don't they?"'
0:40:59 > 0:41:03You also say, "Jews" or I say this, Nathan says,
0:41:03 > 0:41:08"Jews are to history what Eskimos are to snow."
0:41:08 > 0:41:12What was your experience of actually going into Israel at that
0:41:12 > 0:41:14time on various visits?
0:41:14 > 0:41:16What did you make of it yourself?
0:41:16 > 0:41:20There were a multitude of points of view,
0:41:20 > 0:41:25all of them held powerfully, and all of them in conflict,
0:41:25 > 0:41:31and a society in conflict is irresistible to me as a writer.
0:41:34 > 0:41:38'"Philip, I cannot sit and have coffee here.
0:41:38 > 0:41:42'"Triumphant Israel is a terrible, terrible place to have coffee."
0:41:44 > 0:41:48'"Who do they think they are, these provincial nobodies?"
0:41:50 > 0:41:54'"Jailors, this their great Jewish achievement, to make Jews
0:41:54 > 0:41:58'"into jailers and jet bomber pilots.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02'" Suppose they were to win and have their way and every
0:42:02 > 0:42:06'"Arab in the Nablus and every Arab in the Hebron
0:42:06 > 0:42:08'"and every Arab in the Galilee and in Gaza,
0:42:08 > 0:42:15'"suppose every Arab in the world were to disappear courtesy of the Jewish nuclear bomb,
0:42:15 > 0:42:18' "what would they have here 50 years from now?
0:42:18 > 0:42:23'"A noisy little state of no importance whatsoever.
0:42:23 > 0:42:26'"That's what the persecution and the destruction of the
0:42:26 > 0:42:31"'Palestinians will have been for, the creation of a Jewish Belgium,
0:42:31 > 0:42:36"'without even a Brussels to show for it.'"
0:42:36 > 0:42:42It was the conflict, the contagious conflict, that intrigued me.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45The emotional volatility,
0:42:45 > 0:42:50the political volatility...everything was
0:42:50 > 0:42:52at stake always, it seemed.
0:42:52 > 0:42:55BBC NEWS: In Israel, the alleged Nazi war criminal,
0:42:55 > 0:42:56John Demjanjuk,
0:42:56 > 0:42:58has again appeared in court.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02He's charged with operating the gas chambers at the Treblinka concentration camp.
0:43:02 > 0:43:05At the time I was there, John Demjanjuk,
0:43:05 > 0:43:07the American auto worker,
0:43:07 > 0:43:12previously Ukrainian guard in one of the German death camps,
0:43:12 > 0:43:17John Demjanjuk was on trial for his life, and I went every day to the
0:43:17 > 0:43:21trial, and I sat there probably three or four hours every morning.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25I was gripped by it. Anybody would have been.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32There were incredible and horrifying dramatic moments in the trial.
0:43:36 > 0:43:42'There he was, there it was, bald now and grown stocky,
0:43:42 > 0:43:45'a big, cheerful palooka of 68, a good father,
0:43:45 > 0:43:49'a good neighbour, loved by his family and all his friends.
0:43:49 > 0:43:52'It was nearly 50 years
0:43:52 > 0:43:55'since he'd last smashed open anyone's skull and he was
0:43:55 > 0:43:58'by now as benign and unfrightening as an old boxing champ.
0:43:58 > 0:44:03'Good old Johnny. Man, the demon, as good old Johnny.'
0:44:03 > 0:44:06The trouble for the prosecution was that there was
0:44:06 > 0:44:11no certainty that this man they had in the courtroom, was Ivan
0:44:11 > 0:44:15the Terrible who had committed these horrors at Sobibor and Treblinka.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20So immediately there wasn't one Demjanjuk,
0:44:20 > 0:44:22there were two Demjanjuks.
0:44:22 > 0:44:28The Demjanjuk who the Israelis' prosecution said was Ivan the
0:44:28 > 0:44:33Terrible and the Demjanjuk on trial who said, "I am not Ivan the Terrible.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36"This is a case of mistaken identity."
0:44:37 > 0:44:40'Loved his garden, everyone said.
0:44:40 > 0:44:42'Rather tend tomatoes now
0:44:42 > 0:44:46'and raise string beans than bore a hole in somebody's ass with a drill.
0:44:46 > 0:44:48'He'd sowed his oats and settled down,
0:44:48 > 0:44:50'all that rough stuff sworn off long ago.
0:44:50 > 0:44:54'He could only barely remember now all the hell he'd raised.
0:44:54 > 0:44:57'So many years, the way they fly.
0:44:57 > 0:44:59'No, he was somebody else entirely.
0:44:59 > 0:45:02'That hell raiser was no longer him.'
0:45:02 > 0:45:06'So there he was, or there he wasn't.'
0:45:09 > 0:45:15Were you ever a guard in an SS Nazi extermination camp?
0:45:15 > 0:45:16Never.. Never.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Never.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23Was that your picture?
0:45:23 > 0:45:25I don't know.
0:45:25 > 0:45:27You can't be sure?
0:45:27 > 0:45:29I am not sure. I don't know.
0:45:32 > 0:45:38I just thought if my narrator, Roth's, confusion mirrored
0:45:38 > 0:45:44the struggle between Demjanjuk one, Demjanjuk two, mirrored
0:45:44 > 0:45:48the struggle between the Jews, the Israelis and the Palestinians, all
0:45:48 > 0:45:54the conflict in this society, that somehow I could make use of this.
0:45:54 > 0:45:55I didn't know what it was.
0:45:56 > 0:46:01In writing Operation Shylock, Roth used the idea of double identity,
0:46:01 > 0:46:07creating two protagonists who shared the same name, Philip Roth.
0:46:07 > 0:46:11It was a new twist on his game with the reader.
0:46:11 > 0:46:15It turns out that at that time, roaming through the world,
0:46:15 > 0:46:20there was a man who, for all I know is still living, though I haven't
0:46:20 > 0:46:25heard from him in recent years, who pretended to be me, a man bearing
0:46:25 > 0:46:29a very strong resemblance to me, a rather uncanny resemblance to me.
0:46:29 > 0:46:34He arrived in Israel, registered at the King David Hotel,
0:46:34 > 0:46:38and announced that he was a spokesman for a doctor in what he called diasporism.
0:46:38 > 0:46:41He presented himself as a kind of anti-Moses who was going to
0:46:41 > 0:46:45lead the Jews out of Israel back to Europe
0:46:45 > 0:46:50because he felt that Zionism had exhausted itself as an ideology
0:46:50 > 0:46:52and as a programme for the Jews,
0:46:52 > 0:46:54that he was there to prevent a second Holocaust.
0:46:54 > 0:46:56Well, these are not ideas I hold
0:46:56 > 0:47:00and I didn't much like these ideas being expounded as mine.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Roth then uses the voice of a Palestinian ex-patriot, speaking
0:47:07 > 0:47:11to her nationalist husband and his friend Roth, about the futility
0:47:11 > 0:47:15of the conflict and the emotional propaganda on both sides.
0:47:18 > 0:47:21'"Palestine is a lie,
0:47:21 > 0:47:26'"I will not sacrifice Michael to more lies.
0:47:26 > 0:47:29'"People like you,
0:47:29 > 0:47:34'(meaning me as well) "run from backwaters provinces like this one.
0:47:34 > 0:47:39'"You ran, you were right to run, both of you, as far as you could from
0:47:39 > 0:47:44'"the provincialism and egocentricity and the xenophobia and the lamentation.
0:47:44 > 0:47:48'"You were not poisoned by the sentimentality of these
0:47:48 > 0:47:51'"childish, stupid, ethnic mythologies.
0:47:51 > 0:47:54'"You plunged into a big, new, free world,
0:47:54 > 0:47:57'"with all your intellect and all your courage.
0:47:57 > 0:48:03'"Truly free young men, devoted to art, books, reasons, scholarship.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07'"Well, all I mean is that you couldn't possibly have
0:48:07 > 0:48:09'"been as idiotic as you are now.'"
0:48:15 > 0:48:18And my head was turning with all this.
0:48:18 > 0:48:23I went to meet people in Ramallah in the West Bank in the refugee
0:48:23 > 0:48:26camps and so on.
0:48:26 > 0:48:33I thought I was getting deep into the Jewish...nightmare...
0:48:35 > 0:48:43..that through Demjanjuk I entered the nightmare of 1939 to 1945.
0:48:44 > 0:48:48Through the friend who took me to Ramallah and through
0:48:48 > 0:48:52the settler leader who took me all round, I entered the struggle
0:48:52 > 0:48:58that's been going on since 1948 in Israel and this just
0:48:58 > 0:49:00ignited me.
0:49:00 > 0:49:06NEWS REPORT: Demjanjuk himself, in court today, Ivan or not Ivan,
0:49:06 > 0:49:10cried out for all to hear, "I am innocent, innocent, innocent."
0:49:10 > 0:49:14HE SPEAKS UKRANIAN
0:49:19 > 0:49:24'"Did six million really die? Come off it.
0:49:24 > 0:49:29'"The Jews pulled a fast one on us again, keeping alive their
0:49:29 > 0:49:33'"new religion, Holocaust-omania.'
0:49:33 > 0:49:36'"Read the revisionists.
0:49:36 > 0:49:42'"What it really comes down to is there WERE no gas chambers.'
0:49:43 > 0:49:45'"Note to the reader, this book is a work of fiction.
0:49:45 > 0:49:49'Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or
0:49:49 > 0:49:50'dead is entirely coincidental.
0:49:50 > 0:49:52'This confession is false.'
0:49:54 > 0:50:00I remember I had lunch once in the Knesset with Olmert,
0:50:00 > 0:50:02who later became Prime Minister.
0:50:02 > 0:50:04He was telling me how the
0:50:04 > 0:50:07American Jews were going to come to Israel by the boatload.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10I told him that no-one's coming here.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14They're very happy where they are. I said, "There is a Zion.
0:50:14 > 0:50:15"It's called America."
0:50:18 > 0:50:21Certainly New York is Zion, you know,
0:50:21 > 0:50:27and I sense your comfort, you can be an American Jew and say you're
0:50:27 > 0:50:31an American Jew and say you're an American, which you are.
0:50:31 > 0:50:33I just wanted to talk to you about Irving Berlin.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36"I took more pride in Easter Parade than
0:50:36 > 0:50:39"in the victory of the Six Day War, found more
0:50:39 > 0:50:43"security in White Christmas than in the Israeli nuclear reactor."
0:50:43 > 0:50:44HE LAUGHS
0:50:44 > 0:50:46That's very good. Who wrote that?
0:50:46 > 0:50:48Well, that's you.
0:50:51 > 0:50:55MUSIC: Easter Parade by Judy Garland
0:51:01 > 0:51:05"The radio was playing Easter Parade and I thought that this is
0:51:05 > 0:51:08"Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12"God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then he gave to Irving Berlin
0:51:12 > 0:51:16"Easter Parade and White Christmas, the two holidays that celebrate
0:51:16 > 0:51:19"the Divinity of Christ, the Divinity that's the very heart of the Jewish
0:51:19 > 0:51:25"rejection of Christianity, and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do?
0:51:25 > 0:51:26"He de-Christs them both.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35"Easter he turns into a fashion show
0:51:35 > 0:51:37"and Christmas into a holiday about snow.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40"Gone is the gore and the murder of Christ,
0:51:40 > 0:51:43"down with the Crucifix and up with the bonnet.
0:51:43 > 0:51:47"He turns their religion into schlock but nicely, nicely,
0:51:47 > 0:51:51"so nicely the goy don't even know what hit them.
0:51:51 > 0:51:54"They love it. Everybody loves it."
0:51:54 > 0:51:55That just chi... That's so true.
0:51:59 > 0:52:03And then there's God Bless America, to boot.
0:52:03 > 0:52:05Irving Berlin wrote God Bless America.
0:52:05 > 0:52:07THEY SING "God Bless America"
0:52:07 > 0:52:10It's now a staple of everybody's baseball game played in America.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12In the seventh inning, when there's always a little break,
0:52:12 > 0:52:18everybody stands up and some American soldier or seaman or airman
0:52:18 > 0:52:20sings God Bless America.
0:52:20 > 0:52:21# God bless... #
0:52:21 > 0:52:23And the whole crowd sings,
0:52:23 > 0:52:26and the ball players put their hands over their heart and this song was
0:52:26 > 0:52:30written by an immigrant from Russia, Jewish immigrant from Russia.
0:52:30 > 0:52:33# God bless America... #
0:52:33 > 0:52:37'Roth, now separated from Claire Bloom, had returned home
0:52:37 > 0:52:41'to America, to the place and the subject closest to his heart.
0:52:41 > 0:52:46'The book he now chose to write was a touching and powerful portrait
0:52:46 > 0:52:50'of his father in the last months and days of his life.'
0:52:50 > 0:52:53Can we just talk about Patrimony for a second,
0:52:53 > 0:52:57because I don't know whether you intended to write that book
0:52:57 > 0:53:01or you just felt that you needed to chronicle that experience
0:53:01 > 0:53:04as it was happening because it was so personal to you.
0:53:04 > 0:53:11When my father became seriously ill in 1988, I guess,
0:53:11 > 0:53:15and I came to be with him in America, and I would go over
0:53:15 > 0:53:17to Elizabeth and spend the day with him,
0:53:17 > 0:53:18when I came back in the evening,
0:53:18 > 0:53:24I was very depressed because I knew how it was going to end, and
0:53:24 > 0:53:28it was going to be awful too, and so I wrote down what happened that day.
0:53:28 > 0:53:29I don't know why the hell I did it.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33I was keeping a book of crisis, you know.
0:53:33 > 0:53:37I wrote if we went to the doctor, what he said,
0:53:37 > 0:53:40what we learned at the doctor and so on.
0:53:40 > 0:53:43It was very banal, really.
0:53:43 > 0:53:46But then it went on for months and months and months,
0:53:46 > 0:53:50and the record got larger, and I paid attention.
0:53:50 > 0:53:52So, using my notes, I wrote the book.
0:53:55 > 0:54:00I wanted to, um, have a snapshot of his character.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08"He was, for his age, a fit-looking man of medium height
0:54:08 > 0:54:14"whose spontaneous, unassuming virility and spirited decency
0:54:14 > 0:54:17"had made him instantly appealing to the widows around.
0:54:20 > 0:54:25"Only his eyes really remained beautiful and you would never
0:54:25 > 0:54:29"have known that unless you happened to be nearby when he slipped
0:54:29 > 0:54:33"off his glasses for a moment, then you would have seen how much
0:54:33 > 0:54:35"grey there was in those eyes.
0:54:35 > 0:54:40"Up close, you would have seen how gentle and untroubled
0:54:40 > 0:54:45"those eyes were, as though they alone had existed since 1901,
0:54:45 > 0:54:50"beyond the reverberations of that crude, imperfect, homemade
0:54:50 > 0:54:55"dynamo whose stubborn output had driven him through everything."
0:54:58 > 0:55:01RECORDING: 'I was born on August 26th
0:55:01 > 0:55:04'1901, in the city of Newark
0:55:04 > 0:55:06'in the county of Essex.
0:55:06 > 0:55:07'And what's today's date?
0:55:07 > 0:55:13'Today's date is January 7th, 1984.
0:55:13 > 0:55:15'And you have how many sons?
0:55:15 > 0:55:21'I have two sons. The first-born is Sandy, and Philip.
0:55:21 > 0:55:24'Philip was born in '33, I believe.'
0:55:25 > 0:55:28"I must remember accurately, I tell myself,
0:55:28 > 0:55:30"remember everything accurately so that
0:55:30 > 0:55:34"when he is gone I can recreate the father who created me.
0:55:35 > 0:55:37"You must not forget anything."
0:55:39 > 0:55:46I wanted to get them, you know, take a photograph of them in motion,
0:55:46 > 0:55:50and, erm, so I did remember him, as I thought he was.
0:55:50 > 0:55:52I don't think I idealised him.
0:55:54 > 0:55:56"'You must not forget anything.'
0:55:57 > 0:56:01"That's the inscription on my father's coat of arms.
0:56:01 > 0:56:03"To be alive to him is to be made of memory.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07"To him, if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing."
0:56:07 > 0:56:12And then I had a friend of mine lived in that building right over there,
0:56:12 > 0:56:15which is now a gutted, empty building.
0:56:15 > 0:56:16"'See those steps?
0:56:16 > 0:56:20"'1917 I was sitting on that stoop with Al Borok.
0:56:20 > 0:56:22"'Remember Al Borok? He had the furniture store.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26"'I was sitting there with Al the day America went into the war.
0:56:26 > 0:56:29"'It was springtime, April or May, I forget.
0:56:29 > 0:56:31"'There's where your great aunt had the candy store.
0:56:31 > 0:56:34"'That's where my brother Maurice had his first shoe store.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37"'Gee, is that still there?' he says.
0:56:37 > 0:56:38"On and on."
0:56:43 > 0:56:45I don't know if you want me to read this,
0:56:45 > 0:56:49but there are these pieces about the very difficult moments in which
0:56:49 > 0:56:55you looked after your father in those last years in Patrimony.
0:56:55 > 0:56:59- Mm-hm.- "I tiptoed back into the bedroom where he was asleep,
0:56:59 > 0:57:02"still breathing, still living, still with me.
0:57:02 > 0:57:04"Yet another setback,
0:57:04 > 0:57:08"outlasted by this man who I'd known unendingly as my father.
0:57:08 > 0:57:12"I felt awful about his heroic, hapless struggle to cleanse
0:57:12 > 0:57:14"himself before I'd got up to the bathroom
0:57:14 > 0:57:19"and about the shame of it, the disgrace he felt himself to be,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23"and yet now that it was over and he was so deep in sleep, I thought
0:57:23 > 0:57:27"I couldn't have asked anything more from myself before he died.
0:57:27 > 0:57:30"This, too, was right and as it should be."
0:57:30 > 0:57:31So, again, this...
0:57:31 > 0:57:33Well, he'd beshat... As he said, "I beshat myself,"
0:57:33 > 0:57:38he said, and I had to...left lunch where there were some family
0:57:38 > 0:57:41and I followed him upstairs.
0:57:41 > 0:57:43He'd gone out about 10 minutes earlier,
0:57:43 > 0:57:45and he'd just come out of the hospital about two days earlier.
0:57:45 > 0:57:48He hadn't been able to move his bowels,
0:57:48 > 0:57:54and suddenly just had this explosion about, as happens,
0:57:54 > 0:57:59two feet from the toilet, and it was just a God-awful mess.
0:57:59 > 0:58:05And, of course, he was humiliated, and all that time that he went
0:58:05 > 0:58:08through so much with his terrible brain tumour
0:58:08 > 0:58:13and losing his faculties one by one, he never cried except when that
0:58:13 > 0:58:17humiliating thing happened, and he was infantilised, as it were.
0:58:22 > 0:58:26"The defunct warship drifting blindly into shore.
0:58:28 > 0:58:30"This is not a picture of my father
0:58:30 > 0:58:35"at the end of his life that my wide-awake mind with its resistance
0:58:35 > 0:58:39"to poetic metaphor was ever likely to have licensed.
0:58:41 > 0:58:45"Rather, it was a sleep that, in its wisdom, kindly delivered up
0:58:45 > 0:58:51"to me this childishly simple vision, so rich with truth and
0:58:51 > 0:58:53"crystallised my own pain so aptly,
0:58:53 > 0:58:57"in the figure of a small fatherless evacuee on the Newark docks."
0:59:11 > 0:59:15Now in his mid-50s, Roth had much of his greatest work ahead of him.
0:59:15 > 0:59:20He would return to the subject of Newark but not with
0:59:20 > 0:59:25the introspective vision of a Jewish son but looking outward at America
0:59:25 > 0:59:27and the American century.
0:59:27 > 0:59:33Philip is extremely patriotic but he has his idea of what
0:59:33 > 0:59:35America should be
0:59:35 > 0:59:38and America, you know, should be
0:59:38 > 0:59:41liberal and tolerant
0:59:41 > 0:59:46and sort of in the spirit of FDR's America and a place of fairness,
0:59:46 > 0:59:52of fair economic opportunity, and obviously a place where people
0:59:52 > 0:59:56of various races and religious backgrounds are treated equally.
0:59:56 > 0:59:59Philip is incredibly incisive
0:59:59 > 1:00:02and incredibly engaged with what it means
1:00:02 > 1:00:07to be an American, what it means to become an American.
1:00:07 > 1:00:11The moment which gives Philip his greatness
1:00:11 > 1:00:14is this moment in the last third
1:00:14 > 1:00:18of his life, you know, when he stops
1:00:18 > 1:00:25doing all these reflexive, ludic, post-modern, introverted,
1:00:25 > 1:00:27self-interested things and says,
1:00:27 > 1:00:30"OK, I'm going to look at my country.
1:00:30 > 1:00:32"I'm going to," you know, "from everything that I've done,
1:00:32 > 1:00:35"with that experience of everything that I've done, I'm going
1:00:35 > 1:00:41"to turn the beam away from myself and out at America."
1:00:41 > 1:00:43And he starts taking on, you know,
1:00:43 > 1:00:48some of the big things that had been the big themes of America in his
1:00:48 > 1:00:51life, so he talks about McCarthyism in I Married A Communist,
1:00:51 > 1:00:58he talks about race, he talks about Vietnam, you know, and he finds
1:00:58 > 1:01:00a kind of grandeur, you know,
1:01:00 > 1:01:04that you wouldn't have said was there before.
1:01:08 > 1:01:13He's just hitting it out of the ballpark one after the next.
1:01:13 > 1:01:15Every book is worth reading
1:01:15 > 1:01:18and worth relating to the other books that he writes,
1:01:18 > 1:01:20and you have the feeling of a body of work
1:01:20 > 1:01:24that is coming out, thought out one book in relation to the other,
1:01:24 > 1:01:27and each book taking on a subject of its own
1:01:27 > 1:01:29and yet speaking to the book that preceded it.
1:01:29 > 1:01:34I think the little run of novels that begins with Sabbath's Theater
1:01:34 > 1:01:39and goes through the trilogy The Human Stain and American Pastoral
1:01:39 > 1:01:43and I Married A Communist, it's just... It's the most extraordinary
1:01:43 > 1:01:47piece of work that I think anybody's done in a very long time.