As I approach yet another birthday I can’t help but be sobered by the comments Philip Roth made shortly before his death earlier this year: “…by 2010 I had a strong suspicion that I’d done my best work and anything more would be inferior. I was by this time no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the verbal energy or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack of any duration on a complex structure as demanding as a novel…” Well, I hope there’s still some salt in this old shaker…