It’s been a bumper decade for novelist Philip Roth — he’s won in succession the National Book Critics Circle Award (Patrimony, 1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award (Operation Shylock, 1993), the National Book Award (Sabbath’s Theater, 1995), the Pulitzer Prize (American Pastoral, 1997), and a second PEN/Faulkner Award (The Human Stain, 2000). And now, at 68, he adds to his collection the Edward MacDowell Medal, awarded every year since 1960 to a writer, visual artist, or composer for his or her contributions to the art. Past winners have included Thornton Wilder, Robert Frost, John Cheever, Leonard Bernstein, and Eudora Welty.

Roth accepted the medal last Sunday, August 19, at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire — one of the most venerated oases for artistic life in America, with 32 artist’s studios spread over 450 acres of woods and fields. " Medal Day " at MacDowell is a big deal for the colonists. It’s a day for open studios and big guns, both corporate and artistic — a way to attract attention and funding. Under an open white tent, Robert MacNeil (formerly of PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, now a novelist and chairman of MacDowell’s board of directors) served as master of ceremonies. Various colony officers spoke, and Roth was presented with the medal by his long-time friend William Styron, chairman of the 2001 selection committee.

At a press conference in the colony library before the presentation, Roth was alternately jovial and pessimistic. Although he’s famously reclusive (he rarely gives public readings, and never does TV or radio), on this occasion he took easily to the questions and photographs. He extolled the virtues of MacDowell and places like it ( " He’s a Yaddo man, " Styron broke in), where young writers can savor the value of " concentration, no distraction, silence, and time. " He came of age in a time " when literature mattered, " he said, comparing his early career to the literary life for young writers today. " There was really a sense that what one was doing needed no validation, because you had it. " As for literature now, he said, " if it exists at all, it’s just one more tiny distraction. " He paused and added, " So it’s had its moment — 100 or 150 years, where it seemed to mean something. " In another 25 or 30 years, " it will probably disappear. " Styron tried to add a note of optimism, suggesting that literature has always been " marginal " but that " there will always be a bunch of readers. "

Styron pointed out in his presentation speech that back in the days when Roth himself " mattered, " he was, to quote Roth himself, " not just opposed, but hated " — as a self-hating Jew who was giving comfort to anti-Semites everywhere. Roth was asked about the controversy and publicity surrounding the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), when he felt that he had the reputation of " a crazed penis. " " Where has it gone, where has it gone? " Roth asked wistfully, playing for, and getting, a hearty laugh. But, turning serious, he recounted the days when rabbis denounced him from the pulpit, when his own mother, upset by the public disapprobation, asked him, " Philip, are you anti-Semitic? " To which, he replied simply, " What do you think? Have you been sitting at the same dinner table for all these years with an anti-Semite? "

Roth couldn’t account for his recent streak of widely applauded, widely awarded books. " I’ve been working a lot, " he said thoughtfully. Had his past decade — at an age when most artists are considered beyond their prime — been a peak? " I’d like to think the peak is yet to come. " Had he had any sense that the work was going any better than usual when he produced his prize-winners? " It was only when I looked back on it that I thought, ‘What the hell were you doing?’ " How did he account for it, then? " Solitude, good health, and nothing else to do. " And then he added, " If I’d found something else to do I would have done it. "

Issue Date: August 23 - 30, 2001