I met Philip Roth after I had published a short book about his work for the Methuen Contemporary Writers Series. He read the book and wrote me a generous letter.
The room had been turned into a small, meticulously organized office-IBM golf-ball typewriter, alphabetical file holders, Anglepoise lamps...with a few books on the mantelpiece.
Roth's manner, which matches his appearance-subdued, conventional clothes, gold-rimmed spectacles, the look of a quiet professional American visitor to London... there is a ferocious concentration and mental rapacity; everything is grist for his mill, no vagueness is tolerated, differences of opinion are pounced on greedily.