Reflections on Reading Roth

We are honored to have been asked to reflect for this special issue on our engagement as readers of Roth’s fiction for more than three decades. What follows is our very personal take on reading and writing about Roth as his work developed and then moved toward its completion. Focusing on the questions Roth’s fiction has moved us to ask over the years, we look back in the form of a conversation with an imaginary interlocutor on the aspects of Roth’s fiction that have interested us most. Like Roth, if perhaps immodestly, we are reading ourselves and others. In thinking about our individual responses to the following questions, we have been pleased to discover the ways in which our thinking has intersected and also the different directions from which we approach Roth’s fiction.