Philip Roth

Contents

Prologue

Part One

LAND HO! - 1933-1956

Part Two

DON'T STEP ON THE UNDERDOG - 1956-1968

Part Three

THE MORONIC INFERNO - 1968-1975

Part Four

ENTERING A DOLL'S HOUSE - 1975-1995

Part Five

AMERICAN MASTER - 1995-2006

Part Six

NEMESES - 2006-2018

EPILOGUE

Background

In 2004, American novelist Philip Roth enlisted Ross Miller, a professor at the University of Connecticut and nephew of playwright Arthur Miller, to write an authorized biography of Roth. In 2009, however, they mutually agreed to abandon their arrangement.

Roth and Miller, who were close friends, had a falling out over the direction in which the project was going. Roth reportedly began interfering in Miller's process, including manipulating his interviews.

Blake Bailey, an American writer from Oklahoma, previously published biographies of novelists Richard Yates, John Cheever, and Charles Jackson. After completing his biography of Jackson, Bailey approached Philip Roth in the spring of 2012. In June 2012, Roth and Bailey signed a collaboration agreement. The agreement granted Bailey unrestricted and exclusive access to the author's complete archives, including his unpublished works and personal correspondence. Roth, who was 79 years old at the time, made himself available for extensive interviews conducted by Bailey. Roth also assisted in encouraging friends and family to cooperate in the process. The deal was first reported in The New York Times on September 5, 2012. On September 28, 2012, it was reported that W. W. Norton & Company acquired the rights to the book. At the time, Bailey estimated that the biography would take him eight to ten years to finish writing.

Bailey spent years researching and organizing content for the book, writing a 35-page outline and envisioning each paragraph before the writing process. He officially started writing the book in December 2017. He referenced from a plethora of Roth's papers and Roth's donated materials at the Library of Congress. He was also given a 300-page chronology written by Roth and a copy of Roth's unpublished book Notes for My Biographer. Bailey also inherited Ross Miller's taped interviews; however, Miller would not respond to Bailey's communications. Bailey also referenced from his own interviews which he conducted with 150 people, in addition to the numerous interviews with Roth. He also had a very brief communication with Claire Bloom. In his first interviews with Roth, Bailey expressed his desire to maintain a professional relationship to not repeat the "disturbing" relationship he had with Ross Miller. Bailey demanded freedom to quote from Roth's documents, and that Roth and his team were not to edit his manuscript for any purposes except for factual accuracy. Although Roth at times attempted to sway the narrative in his own direction, Bailey "quietly" went his own way.

Publication

The book was published in the United States by W. W. Norton & Company on April 6, 2021, and in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on April 8, 2021. An audiobook, narrated George Guidall, was released the same day by Recorded Books. The book debuted at number fifteen on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending April 10, 2021.

Cancellation

In April 2021, Bailey was dropped by his agency, the Story Factory, following allegations of sexual misconduct made in the comments section of a literary blog; Bailey denies the allegations. In a statement to the Associated Press on April 21 by W. W. Norton & Company, the publisher announced that it decided to pause the shipping and promotion of Philip Roth: The Biography "pending any further information that may emerge". On April 28, W. W. Norton announced that it is taking the book out of print. The same day, Recorded Books announced that it would be withdrawing the audiobook edition from release.

On May 17, 2021, Skyhorse Publishing announced that it would release a paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions of the biography. The e-book edition was published on May 26, 2021. The paperback version was published on June 29, 2021.

Reception

Pre-allegation reviews

Initial reviews of for the biography were generally positive upon its release on April 6, 2021 before accusations appeared online alleging sexual misconduct by its author.

Alexander C. Kafka of The Washington Post praised the book for being "conversationally readable" despite its length, and wrote that "no one writing about Roth will be able to sidestep this foundational biography". In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews called it an "outstanding" biography, praising Bailey's "evenhanded" treatment of Roth's books and personal flaws. Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, praised Bailey's "consistently luminous, humorous prose" and called it "as dynamic and gripping as any of Roth's own fictions".

In an early negative review, Parul Sehgal of The New York Times felt the author failed his subject and called the book a "narrow portrait of a wide life". Sehgal criticized Bailey's "sprawling" focus on Roth's personal life and his reticence on Roth's literary work and style: "Roth's own writing was full of provocations on the art of biography, full of masks and veils and alter egos, obsessed with plucking apart the idea of a self. Bailey avoids it all, offering readings of the most tepid kind, primarily noticing biographical correspondences, most of them familiar by now."

Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Steven G. Kellman called Bailey's work "a balanced, thorough account" of his subject.

[A]lthough Bailey's capacious book is an authorized—almost collaborative—biography, it is not hagiography. The biographer does not allow his admiration for the man he understandably calls ‘our greatest living novelist' to distort the comprehensive account…he has compiled."

Cynthia Ozick in The New York Times Book Review bestowed high praise on the biography, calling it "a narrative masterpiece."

Post-allegation reviews

Francine Prose in The Guardian noted that her initially favorable impression of the biography underwent a reassessment in light of the reports of sexual misconduct concerning Bailey. Prose notes in retrospect:

[E]ven as I tried to read it uncritically, for entertainment, certain sentences jumped out at me, details that seemed unnecessary, excessive, prurient or simply strange. The odd claim that childbirth had withered Roth's first wife's vagina; the suggestion that Roth was more excited about having dinner with Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark, both important writers, when he learned that their daughter was home from Yale; the description of Roth's particular sexual acts with women mentioned by name…

Critic Alexandra Schwartz at The New Yorker faults W. W. Norton & Co. for neglecting to investigate a pseudonymous email charging author Bailey with rape in 2015. Schwartz termed this "a profound and sinister failure of accountability in the publishing world." As to the literary merits of the biography, Schwartz deplores Bailey's "obsessive cataloging" of Roth's sexual proclivities, and as such, exposing his subject to further charges of misogyny.

Bailey's prurient, exhaustively literal version of [Roth's] life…is sadly diminishing. What he never grasps is Roth the artist, with his powers of imagination, of expression, of language—what made him worthy of biography at all.

Critic Ruth Franklin writing in the New York Times, acknowledged that, though "there has been no investigation as yet into the allegations against Mr. Bailey," she questioned the capacity of male biographers to do justice to their male subjects: "Just as female critics have noticed instances of misogyny in Mr. Bailey's writing, a female biographer would likely have a more critical perspective on Mr. Roth's relationships with women." Bailey had previously written a review in the Wall Street Journal critical of Franklin's 2016 biography of author Shirley Jackson, accusing the author of feminist bias.

Reactions to the cancellation

Writing in the New York Times, culture reporters Alexander Alter and Jennifer Schuessler noted that Norton's action reflects the influence of the #MeToo movement, eliciting "concern from free expression groups."

Authors Guild submitted a protest to the book's cancellation: "Freedom of expression and the freedom to publish are the bedrock principles upon which literary culture and civil society are built. Removing a published book from circulation because of the authors' conduct and resulting adverse public opinion against the author or the subject, no matter how strong and justified, contradicts important principles of free speech and open discourse."

PEN America's chief executive Suzanne Nossel issued a statement on the cancellation, questioning Norton's cancellation: "We are concerned about a precedent whereby even egregious misdeeds by an author result in a book being withdrawn, and potentially taken off limits for readers" but cautioning that a distinction be made between the merits of a literary work and its author.

Bringing out a book should signify that a publisher believes there is something edifying, worthwhile or elucidating contained in the volume. It should not be construed as an endorsement of the ideas or narrative purveyed, nor of the personal conduct of the author.

On April 22, 2021, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) registered objections to Norton's "pause" in distribution of the biography, declaring "books must be judged on their content."

The ongoing cultural reckoning of what to do with the art of morally-compromised artists is a complicated one. Erasure and silencing can gratify the desire to punish, but it does so at the cost of constraining the circulation of ideas. People who reject Blake Bailey's work are free to do so. Others will want to read it whether or not he is guilty of the allegations against him. Readers deserve the right to make this choice for themselves.

Short-story writer James Morrison, film historian Max Alvarez, author and blogger Kathleen Spaltro, biographer Joseph McBride, and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum each penned objections to the book's censorship in the World Socialist Web Site.