EVEN WITH HIS 26TH BOOK about to appear in bookstores, Philip Roth is still revising. Now 71, Roth has won just about every major American award a novelist can win, but a casual suggestion--that he has been insufficiently cruel to one of his characters--gets him pondering. "I didn't think of something like that happening to him," he says, musing aloud. "I guess--you know, it's interesting that you bring that up. It's too late for me to make any changes--the finished book just arrived today--but I wonder what I could have done ..."
That little speech should tell you three things about...