Exit Roth

In 2007, Philip Roth published a novel titled "Exit Ghost." Now, it seems, it's exit Roth. The writer of thirty-one books--novels, short story collections, autobiography, criticism--has said (in French, in an interview with a Paris magazine) "That's it, folks."

Astonishment among fellow writers. Writers don't stop writing--P.G. Wodehouse kept going to age ninety-four, and would have kept on, if the Grim Reaper hadn't turned up at his door.

But writers don't stop writing? Roth disagrees, citing E.M. Forster ("A Passage to India," etc.) who called it a day at forty. And Shakespeare retired from the game a decade or so before his final exit.

Even so, those of us who have been followers of the Roth oeuvre from "Goodbye, Columbus" to "Nemesis" hope this is just a temporary lurch off the road, and that he, like Sinatra, a fellow Jersey boy, will grow bored and return.