Philip Roth will write no more. “I’m done with writing,” said the famous American novelist in a recent interview. With more than thirty books behind him, he is seventy-eight. He is finishing his last novel, Nemesis, and that will be that. Over the years, he has collected all sorts of prizes for writing in America and abroad. “I know nothing about America today,” he said. “I see it on the television, but I don’t live there any longer.” He still lives in America, but he feels completely detached from it after so many years of feverish writing. I wonder about his last novel’s title, though. Is it about the life of a writer by any chance? I have always felt sorry for novelists, but I feel even more sorry for Roth, a quintessential writer of this genre. Having lived so many different lives, he has been left without a single one of his own. Nemesis, indeed. Alas, I will never read any of his novels. Not even the last one.