Philip Roth has not changed his opinion of Donald Trump.
When asked recently about today's America, the author did not hold back.
"No one (except perhaps the acidic H. L. Mencken, who famously described American democracy as 'the worship of jackals by jackasses') could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U.S.A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell'arte figure of the boastful buffoon."
The acclaimed novelist, who stopped writing fiction in 2010 and officially retired in 2012, hails from Newark's Weequahic neighborhood, where he set many of his novels. He offered his comments in emails with The New York Times. Roth's writerly responses made him a top trend Tuesday on social media.
There was also a little tidbit of news he let drop in his email: David Simon, creator of "The Wire," is adapting Roth's 2004 Newark-set novel "The Plot Against America" for TV in the form of a six-part miniseries. (He told the Times that his novel is in good hands.)
Roth on Trump
Roth, 84, addressed the current president specifically when asked about parallels between the America imagined "The Plot Against America" and Trump's America. In the book, Charles Lindbergh, known for his anti-Semitism and racism, becomes president when he defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The main difference between Lindbergh and Trump?
"He was also -- because of the extraordinary feat of his solo trans-Atlantic flight at the age of 25 -- an authentic American hero 13 years before I have him winning the presidency," Roth writes.
"Trump, by comparison, is a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac."
This, of course, isn't the first time Roth has weighed in on the president.
In email correspondence with the New Yorker about a year ago, Roth called Trump "humanly impoverished," going on to say that he is "ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English."
Roth on #MeToo
Roth was also asked about another theme that has inhabited his novels: "male sexual desire," and what he thinks of the current outpouring of allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
"I've stepped not just inside the male head but into the reality of those urges whose obstinate pressure by its persistence can menace one's rationality, urges sometimes so intense they may even be experienced as a form of lunacy," Roth writes, in part. "Consequently, none of the more extreme conduct I have been reading about in the newspapers lately has astonished me."
Roth on Springsteen's autobiography
Since he's not writing, Roth, who currently lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, spends his time reading, seeing friends, going to concerts, watching movies and checking email. Among his recent reads are works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nell Irvin Painter, Edmund Morgan, Teju Cole, Stephen Greenblatt and ... The Boss.
"How in the midst of all this I came to read and enjoy Bruce Springsteen's autobiography, 'Born to Run,' I can't explain other than to say that part of the pleasure of now having so much time at my disposal to read whatever comes my way invites unpremeditated surprises," Roth says.
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.