Philip Roth Announces That He'll No Longer Eat Pizza Bagels

Two years after announcing that he would stop writing fiction, author Philip Roth announced this week that he would no longer be eating pizza bagels.

Roth, 81, made the announcement on the steps of the 92nd St Y in Manhattan following a public reading Thursday night.

“I’ve never really liked them all that much to begin with, but they’re convenient—pop them in the microwave and they’re done in just a couple minutes—so I’ve continued on and on,” Roth told reporters. “I’ve eaten them for breakfast, lunch, as a snack. But I’m done. I think I have a box in the freezer, still. I’ll toss it when I get home.”

Roth’s agent, Andrew Wylie, says that Roth is becoming steadily more health conscious as he ages. “Years pass, we’d get together on a Friday night and eat a large pizza each—each of us, our own large pizza—then head out for ice cream after. That kind of living loses its thrill after a while, it’s only natural.”

Roth scholar and Professor of American Studies at the Bosley Institute for Learning John Tucker points out that Roth’s affair with pizza bagels was hinted at in 1998, when “an early draft of Portnoy’s Complain surfaced, featuring several scenes where the title character could not achieve sexual gratification without a plate of the snack, fresh from the microwave, cooling somewhere in the room.” According to Tucker, Roth moving past pizza bagels “is just another monumental moment in the life of a man whose life story consists of a long chain of monumental moments.”

When asked what snack might replace pizza bagels in Roth’s diet, the author replied that he’d heard good thing about Pop Tarts, but wasn’t ready to commit just yet. “This is all so new to me,” Roth said. “I think I’d like to try a couple things out and see what I've been missing.”