Read This: Philip Roth gives some sobering advice to a newly published novelist

The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or noteworthy pieces that caught our eye.

Philip Roth, the uber-prolific novelist of the neurotic, surprised everyone recently by quietly announcing in an interview with French magazine Les Inrocks that 2010's Nemesis would be the last book he would ever write. In fact, after decades of writing, reading, and teaching fiction, the 78-year-old author has sworn it off completely. In an almost surreal piece published on The Paris Review's blog earlier last week, waiter and novelist Julian Tepper details a run-in he had with the author a little over two weeks before he announced his resignation. Tepper was prepared for the encounter, having seen Roth in the restaurant before, and offered him a copy of his book, Balls, despite knowing that Roth does not read fiction. After complementing the very Rothian title, the legend offered Tepper some equally Rothian advice: "[J]ust stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself."

So maybe one man saw it coming. Then again, Roth is a guy who spent over 50 years describing every crevice of his anxious mindscape, so it's possible he just says that kind of stuff on the reg. [via The Guardian]