[In the following review, Madden believes Shop Talk demonstrates Roth's position as a powerful and important voice in the world of contemporary literature.]

In some ways Shop Talk is a misleading title, suggesting detailed discussions about the minutiae of fictional composition and inspiration. Instead, Roth discusses Kafka, Bruno Schulz, and Judaism, as well as politics and the media, as banes and inspirations for creativity. All ten profiles are reprinted from earlier sources, of which six are somewhat awkwardly assembled interviews. The first interview, with Primo Levi, is surprising for the contrast between Roth's exaggerations and Levi's rootedness in the commonsensical. After Roth has referred to Levi as a scientist for the third or fourth time, the Italian gently corrects him by calling himself a mere “technician” and concludes the talk by announcing his satisfaction with working in a paint factory because it “kept me in touch with the world of real things.” The interview with Milan Kundera is full of sage apercus. In discussing his adoptive home, Kundera comments that because France is no longer the center of the world, “it revels in radical ideological postures.” When pressed to define a novel, Kundera labels it a “long piece of synthetic prose” whose exceptional power “is capable of combining everything into a unified whole like the voices of polyphonic music.” The essay about an aging Bernard Malamud is at once lovely and pathetic, as Roth charts an eleven-year separation and a reunion in which the younger writer cannot commend his mentor on work of diminished quality. It is the book's most poignant and unforgettable moment. In spite of its slimness and uneven construction, Shop Talk reminds us of Roth's distinct verbal and intellectual capabilities. His questions are often probing mini-essays and his essays delicate forays into the unique gifts of each of his subjects, and the book reminds us that Roth remains a formidable presence in contemporary American fiction.