By Philip Roth, from remarks he gave at a celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday at Columbia University in 2008. They are included in Philip Roth: Why Write?, which will be published next month by the Library of America.

Seventy-five. How sudden! It may be a commonplace to note that our time here steals away at a terrifying speed, but it nonetheless remains astonishing that it was just 1943 — it was 1943, the war was on, I was ten, and at the kitchen table, my mother was teaching me to type on her big Underwood typewriter, its four upward-sloping rows…