{"id":1967,"date":"2014-03-29T16:09:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T20:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnestes.org\/?p=1967"},"modified":"2014-03-29T16:09:29","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T20:09:29","slug":"philip-roth-the-struggle-with-writing-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/?p=1967","title":{"rendered":"Philip Roth: \u201cThe struggle with writing is over&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/16\/books\/review\/my-life-as-a-writer.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all\">Philip Roth Interviewed<\/a>, surveying his body of work and the work of his life:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn\u2019t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.<\/p>\n<p>Now? Now I am a bird sprung from a cage instead of (to reverse Kafka\u2019s famous conundrum) a bird in search of a cage. The horror of being caged has lost its thrill. It is now truly a great relief, something close to a sublime experience, to have nothing more to worry about than death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Philip Roth Interviewed, surveying his body of work and the work of his life: Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnestes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}