Not sure I'll miss Roth. He's done lots of good stuff, but sometimes I feel compelled to check him out and, like you, I'm not always satisfied. Since I have limited time to spread around, maybe this will free me up for newer, fresher voices.

Frankly, I never much cared for Roth's stuff. He said some pretty homophobic shit early in his career which maybe he grew out of, but even as a young man, I couldn't rejoice - as others did - in reading Portnoy's Complaint or Goodbye, Columbus. I thought it was because I wasn't straight nor Jewish. Now I think it's because we just didn't click.

I suppose I should celebrate him being a serious novelist. There doesn't seem to be many of those anymore.

E.M. Foster retired because he was tired of writing about the love lives of heterosexuals, when he would have been prosecuted for writing realistically about his own love as a homosexual.

Foster's last novel, Maurice, based, in part, on his life-long gay love affair, was only published in the 1970s, after his death.

Doubt that's Roth's reason for retiring, but oddly enough I haven't read much of his work since the 1970s.

I won't miss him.

I definitely will miss him. I disliked the fact that his male characters got older but his female characters didn't, he was a consummate writer. I'm afraid this is the beginning of his death. Someone like Roth doesn't quit writing unless he's about to lose his mind, in the literal not figurative sense.

should be "but he was a consummate..."