A collection of conversations and essays about writers and writing. The
collection explores the importance of religion, politics and history in the
work of others. The essays trace the imaginative path by which a writer's
individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life.How is literature made in the writer's mind, and how is the writer's mind
engaged by what is happening out in the world? In Philip Roth's intimate
intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they
explore the importance of region, politics and history in their work and trace
the imaginative path by which a writer's highly individualised art is informed
by the wider conditions of life. Featured are Milan Kundera and Czechoslovakia,
Primo Levi and Auschwitz, Edna O'Brien and Ireland, Aharon Appelfeld and
Bukovina, Ivan Klima and Prague, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Warsaw, Bruno Schulz
and Poland, as well as appreciative portraits of two of Roth's late friends -
the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston. Shop Talk concludes
with 'Rereading Saul Bellow', a vivid presentation of Bellow's achievement and,
in the spirit of this collection, very much a colleague's reading.
