“We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint"
April 23, 2021 8:22 PM Subscribe
Philip Roth and the sympathetic biographer: This is how misogyny gets cemented in our culture This is how a misogynistic culture is conceptualized, created, cultivated and codified. It doesn’t happen because one dude does a bad thing. It happens when like-minded dudes are allowed to be one another’s gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers of broader culture, when faults are allowed to go unexamined, and so they instead spread: Harvey Weinstein dictated the content of movie theaters for decades; it turns out he was abusing women all along. Roger Ailes, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer shaped coverage and discussion of sexual misconduct scandals throughout the 1990s and 2000s; they were later accused of sexual misconduct themselves.
Even the Amazon book summary feels like it reads awkwardly: posted by hippybear at 8:55 PM on April 23, 2021
My ongoing campaign to leave this set of writers back in the 20th century where they belong continues apace. Despicable dudes just enable more (and sometimes even worse) despicable dudes, and God knows most of the writing isn't worth it.
posted by praemunire at 10:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [37 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [37 favorites]
That's a slightly strange thing to say about Roth, who wrote what may be the best novel of the 21st century so far, Plot Against America.
posted by kickingtheground at 11:22 PM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by kickingtheground at 11:22 PM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
This review at the New Republic was a bracing read, too.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:29 PM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:29 PM on April 23, 2021 [7 favorites]
Yeah, all of the linked material in the WaPo article is worth a click.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:30 PM on April 23, 2021
posted by Going To Maine at 11:30 PM on April 23, 2021
Actually, I don’t think Linda Grant’s review of the Dying Animal is linked. It is here, in The Guardian.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
It looks like this is a reprint of the article? (For those without WAPO subscription.
posted by taz at 11:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by taz at 11:35 PM on April 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Couldn't stand Portnoy's Complaint, but I thought the savagely mordant parodies of Nixon which appeared occasionally in the New York Review were brilliant and very effective; he lived up to his middle namesake in Polemics, if not Poetics.
posted by jamjam at 12:33 AM on April 24, 2021
posted by jamjam at 12:33 AM on April 24, 2021
Phillip Roth is/was that kid on the playground who wanted you to look at pictures of naked women that he cut out of his dad's 'Hustler' magazines: wanted you to look at them while he looked at you... fucking creep. The un-surprise that his biographer, the one he chose - the one he changed his mind about having a biography written at all for - that his biographer turned out to be a rapist (creeping into her room in the middle of the night WTF!) is... exactly on brand.
Reading Philip Roth is like eating a very good cake in which are scattered worms - not grubs, worms. maybe centipedes. (Debating reading Plot against America, the issue is, "do I want to read about some guy who likes to treat women like shit and then read the excuse about why this is perfectly fine? Because I'm eating cake - not a gourmet meal, not even pastry: I like cake, but I can live without it. A gourmet meal a couple times a year, an exquisite pastry, stuff feeds your soul - cake is for your belly, your taste buds.) I fucking hate bugs in my cake.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:44 AM on April 24, 2021 [28 favorites]
Reading Philip Roth is like eating a very good cake in which are scattered worms - not grubs, worms. maybe centipedes. (Debating reading Plot against America, the issue is, "do I want to read about some guy who likes to treat women like shit and then read the excuse about why this is perfectly fine? Because I'm eating cake - not a gourmet meal, not even pastry: I like cake, but I can live without it. A gourmet meal a couple times a year, an exquisite pastry, stuff feeds your soul - cake is for your belly, your taste buds.) I fucking hate bugs in my cake.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:44 AM on April 24, 2021 [28 favorites]
But I still can’t help thinking about that Parmesan cheese... Is it a small, subtle, seemingly inconsequential story? You bet. Am I overanalyzing it? Not at all. And why it is so important articles like these get pointed out.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:46 AM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by From Bklyn at 12:46 AM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
I just stumbled on this fascinating Twitter thread about Bailey by Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin. Somewhat analogous to the article in the op, she details how, among other issues, Bailey critiqued her sympathetic take on Jackson's experience within her marriage, in which Franklin says she was both "supported and sabotaged".
Interesting, but not surprising, that Bailey felt comfortable imposing his misogyny on Franklin's work, while also condemning her for having an overly feminist take on Jackson's life.
posted by sundaydriver at 1:10 AM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
Interesting, but not surprising, that Bailey felt comfortable imposing his misogyny on Franklin's work, while also condemning her for having an overly feminist take on Jackson's life.
posted by sundaydriver at 1:10 AM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
One of my greatest regrets is that when I was at Bard to give a presentation I did not leave time to piss all over Roth's grave.
posted by dame at 3:18 AM on April 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by dame at 3:18 AM on April 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
Debating reading Plot against America, the issue is, "do I want to read about some guy who likes to treat women like shit and then read the excuse about why this is perfectly fine?
If it helps you decide about Plot Against America - the "Philip Roth" character in it is a little kid. I've read it; it's mostly about the alternate-history what-if stuff involving rising anti-Semitism in the wake of a Charles Lindbergh presidency, and I honestly didn't pick up on any moments of "women getting shat on" that weren't organically coming from events of the plot or were endemic to the 1940s itself.
In fact, you might get away with reading it by doing what I've started doing with some old films featuring problematic, icky dudes - mentally excise Roth's name from it. Maybe check it out of the library (so no additional money is spent), and then tell yourself it's by a different guy entirely, "Alan Smithee" or "Sid Meniscus" or whatever name you want. You get the reading of the book without Roth getting any of the credit.
I hear you on this though.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:24 AM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
If it helps you decide about Plot Against America - the "Philip Roth" character in it is a little kid. I've read it; it's mostly about the alternate-history what-if stuff involving rising anti-Semitism in the wake of a Charles Lindbergh presidency, and I honestly didn't pick up on any moments of "women getting shat on" that weren't organically coming from events of the plot or were endemic to the 1940s itself.
In fact, you might get away with reading it by doing what I've started doing with some old films featuring problematic, icky dudes - mentally excise Roth's name from it. Maybe check it out of the library (so no additional money is spent), and then tell yourself it's by a different guy entirely, "Alan Smithee" or "Sid Meniscus" or whatever name you want. You get the reading of the book without Roth getting any of the credit.
I hear you on this though.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:24 AM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Remember when that blogger figured out that almost every single caption for New Yorker cartoons could be replaced with "Christ, what an asshole?" and it would still make sense and be funny? Well, turns out, you can respond to anything and everything ever written by or about Philip Roth with "Christ, what an asshole!" and that works too.
posted by pjsky at 6:18 AM on April 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by pjsky at 6:18 AM on April 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
That's a slightly strange thing to say about Roth, who wrote what may be the best novel of the 21st century so far, Plot Against America.
Is it really that good? I would have unhesitatingly said Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Cycle is top rank for the 21st century (so far)
The only Roth I read was Portnoy's Complaint when I was 14 and while I did get a kick out of it at the time, upon reflection it always seemed that being a teenage boy was responsible for most of it, which didn't encourage me to branch out further with Roth, who always gave off the impression of having an ego much larger than his typewriter could account for.
posted by dis_integration at 6:45 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Is it really that good? I would have unhesitatingly said Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Cycle is top rank for the 21st century (so far)
The only Roth I read was Portnoy's Complaint when I was 14 and while I did get a kick out of it at the time, upon reflection it always seemed that being a teenage boy was responsible for most of it, which didn't encourage me to branch out further with Roth, who always gave off the impression of having an ego much larger than his typewriter could account for.
posted by dis_integration at 6:45 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I can’t see how Plot Against America could possibly be good enough to justify the rest of his work, his life, or privileging that particular book above things written by people who aren’t known shitbags.
I’ve hated Roth since before it was cool.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:17 AM on April 24, 2021 [19 favorites]
I’ve hated Roth since before it was cool.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:17 AM on April 24, 2021 [19 favorites]
I have found this from George Orwell always very useful in thinking about terrible people and their works:
' If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, “This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.” Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.'
posted by lesbiassparrow at 7:30 AM on April 24, 2021 [58 favorites]
' If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, “This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.” Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.'
posted by lesbiassparrow at 7:30 AM on April 24, 2021 [58 favorites]
I haven't read The Plot Against America (or any other Roth for that matter), but I thought David Simon's TV series adapting the book was pretty good.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:31 AM on April 24, 2021
posted by Paul Slade at 7:31 AM on April 24, 2021
I've never read any Roth, but I have read some Updike and some of his other contemporaries and no matter how good the prose was I got tired of books about Upper-Middle Class White Men Who Love To Fuck But Hate Women.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:46 AM on April 24, 2021 [40 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:46 AM on April 24, 2021 [40 favorites]
I didn't think an authorized biography of Philip Roth was going to be critical of him. I didn't expect the author of that biography to be falling far from the Roth tree, either.
A biography should be an argument about why a body of work matters and how a given person came to produce that body of work. If the biographer is any good, there is an argument even for horrible people whose body of work is problematic. This was never going to be that book. Perhaps it's too soon for that book. Having lived through a lot of what Roth lived through, I know the why he wrote "American Pastoral". I know why I read "The Plot against America" during the Trump Presidency. Will these works endure? Let's wait and see and then write the biography. I'd like to learn about the Roth who wrote "The Ghost Writer".
posted by acrasis at 9:15 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
A biography should be an argument about why a body of work matters and how a given person came to produce that body of work. If the biographer is any good, there is an argument even for horrible people whose body of work is problematic. This was never going to be that book. Perhaps it's too soon for that book. Having lived through a lot of what Roth lived through, I know the why he wrote "American Pastoral". I know why I read "The Plot against America" during the Trump Presidency. Will these works endure? Let's wait and see and then write the biography. I'd like to learn about the Roth who wrote "The Ghost Writer".
posted by acrasis at 9:15 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
That's a slightly strange thing to say about Roth, who wrote what may be the best novel of the 21st century so far, Plot Against America.
Not even in English.
posted by praemunire at 9:25 AM on April 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
Not even in English.
posted by praemunire at 9:25 AM on April 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
I think the other thing that's implied by the article but not outright stated: it's not that misogynist biographers, editors, etc. are simply giving a pass to to the bad actions of writers like Roth. It's also that these particular writers found themselves at the top of the pantheon BECAUSE of their misogyny.
Roth (and Updike, and maybe Bellow, I've never read him) is enormously talented. But was he more talented than, say, Shirley Jackson? It seems like Roth's hating on women was a distinguishing feature of his writing; a feature, not a bug.
posted by Playdoughnails at 9:29 AM on April 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
Roth (and Updike, and maybe Bellow, I've never read him) is enormously talented. But was he more talented than, say, Shirley Jackson? It seems like Roth's hating on women was a distinguishing feature of his writing; a feature, not a bug.
posted by Playdoughnails at 9:29 AM on April 24, 2021 [17 favorites]
I'd like to learn about the Roth who wrote "The Ghost Writer".
This is, and this is the last I’ll say of it, the real bummer with Roth. The Ghost Writer is subtle (enough) to be surprising and enlightening. Similarly, swaths of The Human Stain and Operation Shylock are good to really good - and you’re going along and enjoying the book and the smarts of Roth and complexity of the narrative and maybe even thinking about recommending it to some one you know and respect and then all of a sudden some male character pulls out his Willy and asks you to admire it with him. And you step back and think “What the fuck are you doing? We were having a perfectly nice conversation...” Then he talks shit about a female character or even behaves in an absolutely abhorrent manner - and asks you to agree “it’s cool man because she likes it, secretly. You can tell.” And you drop the book because, you know, it has taken a big poop in your lap.
And it’s a fucking shame because he had some good stories to tell : but he was a compulsive willy-shower. He did it in, I think, each book of his that I’ve read. A friend said, “you know it’s gonna happen, in his books, so you just gotta skip that part.” But this isn’t an allowance one has to make - in neither one’s private life nor the art one consumes.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:15 AM on April 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
This is, and this is the last I’ll say of it, the real bummer with Roth. The Ghost Writer is subtle (enough) to be surprising and enlightening. Similarly, swaths of The Human Stain and Operation Shylock are good to really good - and you’re going along and enjoying the book and the smarts of Roth and complexity of the narrative and maybe even thinking about recommending it to some one you know and respect and then all of a sudden some male character pulls out his Willy and asks you to admire it with him. And you step back and think “What the fuck are you doing? We were having a perfectly nice conversation...” Then he talks shit about a female character or even behaves in an absolutely abhorrent manner - and asks you to agree “it’s cool man because she likes it, secretly. You can tell.” And you drop the book because, you know, it has taken a big poop in your lap.
And it’s a fucking shame because he had some good stories to tell : but he was a compulsive willy-shower. He did it in, I think, each book of his that I’ve read. A friend said, “you know it’s gonna happen, in his books, so you just gotta skip that part.” But this isn’t an allowance one has to make - in neither one’s private life nor the art one consumes.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:15 AM on April 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
Bellow isn't really a misogynst, but his work can be quite racist. I also haven't settled for myself if Ravelstein is homophobic or depicting homophobia. I forgive a bunch of really toxic shit, and rarely refuse to read a novel because I think it's immoral, so reading Sabbath's Theater and feeling the same kind of primal moral disgust was a weird expeience
posted by PinkMoose at 11:23 AM on April 24, 2021
posted by PinkMoose at 11:23 AM on April 24, 2021
Wait so I read the article and it seems like the worst of what he does was sexualized writing? I mean that's an odd complaint from the author of "Portnoy's Complaint." Unless my critical reading skills have diminished over Covid, the worst he did was cheat on his wife but that in itself can be a really complicated topic as I've known people in polygamous relationships that when things went poorly as relationships do suddenly got accused of cheating. I don't touch things with a 10ft pole, I'm not defending Philip Roth only that it isn't clear: When Roth began “openly dating other people” while still married, Maggie’s “demands for his attention took more and more bizarre forms,” Bailey writes.
I mean there's a huge gap between being what we now see as misogynist and what something like Harvey Weinstein did. I'm sincerely not getting the point of the article, and I apologize if I offended someone with missing something.
posted by geoff. at 11:37 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I mean there's a huge gap between being what we now see as misogynist and what something like Harvey Weinstein did. I'm sincerely not getting the point of the article, and I apologize if I offended someone with missing something.
posted by geoff. at 11:37 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
One of my greatest regrets is that when I was at Bard to give a presentation I did not leave time to piss all over Roth's grave.
As a tribute? Although I'm not comfortable conflating the life of the artist with the art, based on Sabbath's Theatre, he would enjoy it.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:58 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
As a tribute? Although I'm not comfortable conflating the life of the artist with the art, based on Sabbath's Theatre, he would enjoy it.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:58 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wow you really know how to wreck a vengeance fantasy, betweenthebars.
posted by dame at 12:22 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by dame at 12:22 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I forgive a bunch of really toxic shit, and rarely refuse to read a novel because I think it's immoral
It's also possible not to want to read misogynist and racist writing because ...you know, you're the target.
I've noticed lately the New Yorker writing reviews about novels or films, and they'll get me interested in something and then a third or halfway into the review, it's like, of course he portrays women terribly. And that shouldn't be an afterthought you hide halfway through. I don't really want to spend my life swallowing shitty things people think to engage in a culture.
(And I mean loud shitty. Like Virginia Woolf was a snob and probably a racist, but her books don't shove it in my face.)
posted by dame at 12:31 PM on April 24, 2021 [24 favorites]
It's also possible not to want to read misogynist and racist writing because ...you know, you're the target.
I've noticed lately the New Yorker writing reviews about novels or films, and they'll get me interested in something and then a third or halfway into the review, it's like, of course he portrays women terribly. And that shouldn't be an afterthought you hide halfway through. I don't really want to spend my life swallowing shitty things people think to engage in a culture.
(And I mean loud shitty. Like Virginia Woolf was a snob and probably a racist, but her books don't shove it in my face.)
posted by dame at 12:31 PM on April 24, 2021 [24 favorites]
Unless my critical reading skills have diminished over Covid, the worst he did was cheat on his wife
he openly hated & fat-shamed his wife's teenage daughter, gave his wife an ultimatum to kick her out when she turned 18, which she did
later she moved back in & he attempted to fuck one of her friends, then was like "what is the point of having attractive young women in the house if I do not get to fuck them"
he called a girlfriend while she was at work & insisted she stay on the phone until he was finished jerking off
these are the examples of that behavior pattern that I remember off the top of my head
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:34 PM on April 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
he openly hated & fat-shamed his wife's teenage daughter, gave his wife an ultimatum to kick her out when she turned 18, which she did
later she moved back in & he attempted to fuck one of her friends, then was like "what is the point of having attractive young women in the house if I do not get to fuck them"
he called a girlfriend while she was at work & insisted she stay on the phone until he was finished jerking off
these are the examples of that behavior pattern that I remember off the top of my head
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:34 PM on April 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
Unless my critical reading skills have diminished over Covid, the worst he did was cheat on his wife
I cannot second reading that New Republic review of the biography strongly enough. The entire book sounds like an unintentional self-own that came out at a very bad cultural moment, when some men started paying attention to women.
I’d love to read Bloom’s Leaving a Doll’s House.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:12 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
I cannot second reading that New Republic review of the biography strongly enough. The entire book sounds like an unintentional self-own that came out at a very bad cultural moment, when some men started paying attention to women.
I’d love to read Bloom’s Leaving a Doll’s House.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:12 PM on April 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
The thing I always come back to in discussions like this is: if we’re going to admit that a writer is obviously grievously wrong about fifty percent of the human population, why would we think that they have any meaningful insights about any other part of the human experience?
posted by rishabguha at 1:13 PM on April 24, 2021 [33 favorites]
posted by rishabguha at 1:13 PM on April 24, 2021 [33 favorites]
The thing I always come back to in discussions like this is: if we’re going to admit that a writer is obviously grievously wrong about fifty percent of the human population, why would we think that they have any meaningful insights about any other part of the human experience?
Lots of people seem to think that Roth was a good writer who spoke to them. I don’t know whether that means his fiction was saying something “meaningful about the human experience” -whatever that means- but I think if someone thinks that a book speaks to them at a moment in time it’s not for me to invalidate that. I might have opinions about what their being validated by it says about their own opinions, but that’s a different issue.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:26 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Lots of people seem to think that Roth was a good writer who spoke to them. I don’t know whether that means his fiction was saying something “meaningful about the human experience” -whatever that means- but I think if someone thinks that a book speaks to them at a moment in time it’s not for me to invalidate that. I might have opinions about what their being validated by it says about their own opinions, but that’s a different issue.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:26 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
It’s such a weird thing, that many readers will make excuses for male novelists being unable to create well-crafted female characters. It’s such a basic aspect of writing.
It’s like saying that someone’s a great author, with the small issue that they don’t know how verbs work.
posted by Kattullus at 2:01 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
It’s like saying that someone’s a great author, with the small issue that they don’t know how verbs work.
posted by Kattullus at 2:01 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
It’s like saying that someone’s a great author, with the small issue that they don’t know how verbs work
How every Joyce fan tries to get me to read Ulysses
posted by Think_Long at 2:16 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
How every Joyce fan tries to get me to read Ulysses
posted by Think_Long at 2:16 PM on April 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
It’s such a weird thing, that many readers will make excuses for male novelists being unable to create well-crafted female characters. It’s such a basic aspect of writing.
I used to have this argument with my Bellow-loving friend. "This guy is categorically unable to present half of humanity--people who are intimate with his characters, who play important roles in his narratives, even--as recognizable human beings. Doesn't that suggest he's maybe got some fundamental technical problems?" Pretty much applies to those guys as a class, to some degree or another.
(There is some beautiful stuff in, e.g., Humboldt's Gift; if you've ever had a brilliant and self-destructive friend, you'll probably find the opening sections moving. But, yes, misogynist (and a jerk to his wife), and I don't know his earliest work, but definitely racist in that alter kacker way in his old age.)
I also haven't settled for myself if Ravelstein is homophobic or depicting homophobia.
Something I realized even at the time of Closing of the American Mind, when I was a lot, let us say, more innocent about such things, was that Bloom was a deeply closeted homosexual, even to himself, so miserable about it that it seeps through in his writing even though it's the last thing he'd want you to know. And at the worst possible place for it short of a monastery.
posted by praemunire at 2:19 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I used to have this argument with my Bellow-loving friend. "This guy is categorically unable to present half of humanity--people who are intimate with his characters, who play important roles in his narratives, even--as recognizable human beings. Doesn't that suggest he's maybe got some fundamental technical problems?" Pretty much applies to those guys as a class, to some degree or another.
(There is some beautiful stuff in, e.g., Humboldt's Gift; if you've ever had a brilliant and self-destructive friend, you'll probably find the opening sections moving. But, yes, misogynist (and a jerk to his wife), and I don't know his earliest work, but definitely racist in that alter kacker way in his old age.)
I also haven't settled for myself if Ravelstein is homophobic or depicting homophobia.
Something I realized even at the time of Closing of the American Mind, when I was a lot, let us say, more innocent about such things, was that Bloom was a deeply closeted homosexual, even to himself, so miserable about it that it seeps through in his writing even though it's the last thing he'd want you to know. And at the worst possible place for it short of a monastery.
posted by praemunire at 2:19 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
To put a very sharp point on it, if you say “this novel is steeped in misogyny but I found it artistically profound anyway,” what you’re saying is that as a reader the misogyny does not matter to you. I can’t see any principled way of separating aesthetic judgements like that from the political and interpersonal opinions they imply.
posted by rishabguha at 3:03 PM on April 24, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by rishabguha at 3:03 PM on April 24, 2021 [16 favorites]
Alexandra Schwartz has a review of the biography and a round-up of the accusations against Bailey in The New Yorker: “Blake Bailey, Philip Roth, and the Biography That Blew Up”
posted by Going To Maine at 3:30 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 3:30 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Bloom was a deeply closeted homosexual, even to himself,
...I didn’t know that Bloom was closeted. There are recordings of a lecture/class of his discussing Moby Dick that is pretty magnificent. That’s not actually related to the first observation. Just, something worth looking out for.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:34 PM on April 24, 2021
...I didn’t know that Bloom was closeted. There are recordings of a lecture/class of his discussing Moby Dick that is pretty magnificent. That’s not actually related to the first observation. Just, something worth looking out for.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:34 PM on April 24, 2021
Roth, who wrote what may be the best novel of the 21st century so far, Plot Against America.
I can pretty much guarantee that the best novel of the 21st century so far is not by an author who is pale, male and stale, or even American.
posted by Thella at 3:38 PM on April 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
I can pretty much guarantee that the best novel of the 21st century so far is not by an author who is pale, male and stale, or even American.
posted by Thella at 3:38 PM on April 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
Alexandra Schwartz has a review of the biography and a round-up of the accusations against Bailey in The New Yorker: “Blake Bailey, Philip Roth, and the Biography That Blew Up”
David Remnick had a much longer review of the biography in The New Yorker just before all of the Kerfuffle broke: “The Secrets Philip Roth Didn’t Keep”. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly in keeping with the thread, but it’s interesting as an example of failure: it’s exactly the sort of thing that someone enamored of Roth’s writing who wants to acknowledge his failings (but really can’t fully engage with them) would produce. I’d love to hear him and Schwartz have a conversation about this, and to know if/how his take has changed.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:22 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
David Remnick had a much longer review of the biography in The New Yorker just before all of the Kerfuffle broke: “The Secrets Philip Roth Didn’t Keep”. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly in keeping with the thread, but it’s interesting as an example of failure: it’s exactly the sort of thing that someone enamored of Roth’s writing who wants to acknowledge his failings (but really can’t fully engage with them) would produce. I’d love to hear him and Schwartz have a conversation about this, and to know if/how his take has changed.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:22 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Bloom was a snob, obsessed with coterie, who thought that his aesthetic tastes were intended for a small private circle, whether that meant for sodomy or a rare bottle of Sancerre, he also wrote better than Roth
posted by PinkMoose at 5:35 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by PinkMoose at 5:35 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
who thought that his aesthetic tastes were intended for a small private circle
Which is funny, because even Midwest-clueless me reading American Mind thought: this dude is very curiously invested in molding young men.
posted by praemunire at 5:53 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Which is funny, because even Midwest-clueless me reading American Mind thought: this dude is very curiously invested in molding young men.
posted by praemunire at 5:53 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
There was this cringy piece about Bailey and Roth in the LA Times from April 2 that totally did not get what the excellent New Republic review was saying.
This fucking sentence that links to that review!
Blake Bailey has been accused of taking the he said side in “Philip Roth: The Biography,” and it’s true: On a case-by-case basis, the biographer’s thumb often lands on Roth’s side of the scale.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 7:05 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
This fucking sentence that links to that review!
Blake Bailey has been accused of taking the he said side in “Philip Roth: The Biography,” and it’s true: On a case-by-case basis, the biographer’s thumb often lands on Roth’s side of the scale.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 7:05 PM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
"It’s such a weird thing, that many readers will make excuses for male novelists being unable to create well-crafted female characters. It’s such a basic aspect of writing."
What's particularly galling is that a great novelist who happens to be female, or Black, or an immigrant (in the US) will always be called a "great woman novelist" or "great Black novelist" or "great immigrant novelist." Who typically write a whole panoply of human characters really, really well, or their books would never get out of the slush pile.
But certain kinds of white men who have a facility with language, a preoccupation with how difficult it is to walk around with a penis and think about sex, and no ability to write women will always be called a "great novelist," full stop. Not a "great male novelist" or a "great white novelist." Just a "great novelist," because they write books that recreate the experience of being a (particularly selfish) adolescent boy and never maturing out of it, and there is apparently an enormous market of editors and literary critics for whom "adult man with an adolescent boy's psyche, who's constantly angry at women but now gets to fuck them sometimes" is THE pinnacle of human emotional journeys. And so the half of humanity who don't identify as male, and the huge portion of men who OUTGROW BEING FIFTEEN, all get swept aside for these "great novelists" who are all writing the same damn adolescent boy story.
The other thing that really bothers me about these novels -- most of Roth included -- is that every now and then, you stumble across one that does this better, and it really highlights the emotional poverty and the stunted perspective of guys like Roth. "Revolutionary Road," by Richard Yates, didn't strike me as having a particularly well-written female protagonist (April). But I felt like Yates was looking at Frank's experience from a position of greater maturity and understanding than Frank had, and that made the novel shattering, even though April was underwritten and a bit of a placeholder. I don't actually know anything else Yates wrote or how he's considered as a writer, but it was what jumped to mind as an example here; it was clear that Yates's experience and understanding of the world was broader than Frank's, and that Yates was illuminating Frank's experience through Yates's broader lens.
Whereas in Roth (and lots of these other guys like Franzen, Irving, etc.), I typically came away feeling that the male protagonist had exactly as much maturity and understanding as Roth had, so Roth didn't actually have that much insight into his protagonist. He could tell us the autobiographical story of a sex-obsessed emotionally-stunted manchild, but he couldn't turn those into a broader perspective on humanity because he didn't have that himself. Which I guess is sort-of another way of saying "this guy doesn't understand women, so his books are necessarily limited." This guy doesn't have the emotional or spiritual maturity to situate his life experience within the endless panorama of human experience, so he centers his own life experience and thinks that's a perceptive and penetrating story. But it isn't, and it can't be, because he has no idea he isn't at the center, and without that perspective, the story can't be truly insightful. Yates had insight into the limitations of Frank. Lots of these "great novelists" who are white men don't seem to. But "female novelists" and "Latina novelists" and "Black novelists" all know from the jump that they're not at the center of the universe, and they don't make the mistake of failing to situation their experience of the world within a larger world. They have to do it, because they've been doing it their entire lives.
And the literary establishment in the English-speaking world keeps saying, "Hello, fellow adolescent male! I, too, have never outgrown being a teenager, and the best books are the ones that flatter my delusions as universal truths!" I feel like it was my junior year of high school when I was like, "... all these books have the same three insights, and that's really boring." But somehow the literary establishment just keeps publishing that same novel, over and over and over, and devoting most of their promotional efforts to them. Frustrating.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:26 PM on April 24, 2021 [52 favorites]
What's particularly galling is that a great novelist who happens to be female, or Black, or an immigrant (in the US) will always be called a "great woman novelist" or "great Black novelist" or "great immigrant novelist." Who typically write a whole panoply of human characters really, really well, or their books would never get out of the slush pile.
But certain kinds of white men who have a facility with language, a preoccupation with how difficult it is to walk around with a penis and think about sex, and no ability to write women will always be called a "great novelist," full stop. Not a "great male novelist" or a "great white novelist." Just a "great novelist," because they write books that recreate the experience of being a (particularly selfish) adolescent boy and never maturing out of it, and there is apparently an enormous market of editors and literary critics for whom "adult man with an adolescent boy's psyche, who's constantly angry at women but now gets to fuck them sometimes" is THE pinnacle of human emotional journeys. And so the half of humanity who don't identify as male, and the huge portion of men who OUTGROW BEING FIFTEEN, all get swept aside for these "great novelists" who are all writing the same damn adolescent boy story.
The other thing that really bothers me about these novels -- most of Roth included -- is that every now and then, you stumble across one that does this better, and it really highlights the emotional poverty and the stunted perspective of guys like Roth. "Revolutionary Road," by Richard Yates, didn't strike me as having a particularly well-written female protagonist (April). But I felt like Yates was looking at Frank's experience from a position of greater maturity and understanding than Frank had, and that made the novel shattering, even though April was underwritten and a bit of a placeholder. I don't actually know anything else Yates wrote or how he's considered as a writer, but it was what jumped to mind as an example here; it was clear that Yates's experience and understanding of the world was broader than Frank's, and that Yates was illuminating Frank's experience through Yates's broader lens.
Whereas in Roth (and lots of these other guys like Franzen, Irving, etc.), I typically came away feeling that the male protagonist had exactly as much maturity and understanding as Roth had, so Roth didn't actually have that much insight into his protagonist. He could tell us the autobiographical story of a sex-obsessed emotionally-stunted manchild, but he couldn't turn those into a broader perspective on humanity because he didn't have that himself. Which I guess is sort-of another way of saying "this guy doesn't understand women, so his books are necessarily limited." This guy doesn't have the emotional or spiritual maturity to situate his life experience within the endless panorama of human experience, so he centers his own life experience and thinks that's a perceptive and penetrating story. But it isn't, and it can't be, because he has no idea he isn't at the center, and without that perspective, the story can't be truly insightful. Yates had insight into the limitations of Frank. Lots of these "great novelists" who are white men don't seem to. But "female novelists" and "Latina novelists" and "Black novelists" all know from the jump that they're not at the center of the universe, and they don't make the mistake of failing to situation their experience of the world within a larger world. They have to do it, because they've been doing it their entire lives.
And the literary establishment in the English-speaking world keeps saying, "Hello, fellow adolescent male! I, too, have never outgrown being a teenager, and the best books are the ones that flatter my delusions as universal truths!" I feel like it was my junior year of high school when I was like, "... all these books have the same three insights, and that's really boring." But somehow the literary establishment just keeps publishing that same novel, over and over and over, and devoting most of their promotional efforts to them. Frustrating.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:26 PM on April 24, 2021 [52 favorites]
What's particularly galling is that a great novelist who happens to be female, or Black, or an immigrant (in the US) will always be called a "great woman novelist" or "great Black novelist" or "great immigrant novelist."
Also galling is that Bellow and, iirc, Roth both had to fight against being classed as merely great X novelists, but they were able to largely win that fight, while people from other groups, like Ellison, who also felt the same, were not granted the privilege of being evaluated on their own merits.
Bellow: I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles
posted by bootlegpop at 10:37 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also galling is that Bellow and, iirc, Roth both had to fight against being classed as merely great X novelists, but they were able to largely win that fight, while people from other groups, like Ellison, who also felt the same, were not granted the privilege of being evaluated on their own merits.
Bellow: I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles
posted by bootlegpop at 10:37 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I haven't read the Roth book yet but Bailey's Yates biography is pretty good
His Cheever bio was pretty good too. I think that not having contact with the subject may have been helpful. I read both Nadel and Bailey on Roth over the last month. Roth setting up Bailey with the project was partially a direct reaction to hearing that Nadel had been given a contract to write a Roth bio, so there was a greater than usual connection between the two volumes.
Before the allegations came out, my take was that Nadel's bio was better written but that Bailey had more information, especially regarding Roth's less public last decade. I thought that they were both pretty revealing of Roth's flaws, but I also always thought that Roth's writing itself was pretty revealing of his flaws, so it's possible that my standards weren't high enough in that regard. Given that, it's possible that reviewers would have had the same issues with Nadel's text that they had with Bailey's, had anyone bothered to review it, but I think that his distance from the subject may have been an advantage.
---
With the way that this came out, reaching the public first through comments left on a piece taking down Bailey's perspective on Roth by Ed Champion, who has had his own rather prolific issues in the past, I'm glad that, in the rather circular midst of men with issues (Champion) talking about how men with issues (and, in Bailey's case, much worse) talked about men with issues (Roth), the voices of the women who were victimized ultimately finally came to the fore.
I am still rather stunned that Norton forwarded the 2015 accuser's email directly to the person accused. The person who did that should have their employment terminated, and I'm not likely to take Norton's attempt at handling this very seriously until they do so.
posted by bootlegpop at 11:51 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
His Cheever bio was pretty good too. I think that not having contact with the subject may have been helpful. I read both Nadel and Bailey on Roth over the last month. Roth setting up Bailey with the project was partially a direct reaction to hearing that Nadel had been given a contract to write a Roth bio, so there was a greater than usual connection between the two volumes.
Before the allegations came out, my take was that Nadel's bio was better written but that Bailey had more information, especially regarding Roth's less public last decade. I thought that they were both pretty revealing of Roth's flaws, but I also always thought that Roth's writing itself was pretty revealing of his flaws, so it's possible that my standards weren't high enough in that regard. Given that, it's possible that reviewers would have had the same issues with Nadel's text that they had with Bailey's, had anyone bothered to review it, but I think that his distance from the subject may have been an advantage.
---
With the way that this came out, reaching the public first through comments left on a piece taking down Bailey's perspective on Roth by Ed Champion, who has had his own rather prolific issues in the past, I'm glad that, in the rather circular midst of men with issues (Champion) talking about how men with issues (and, in Bailey's case, much worse) talked about men with issues (Roth), the voices of the women who were victimized ultimately finally came to the fore.
I am still rather stunned that Norton forwarded the 2015 accuser's email directly to the person accused. The person who did that should have their employment terminated, and I'm not likely to take Norton's attempt at handling this very seriously until they do so.
posted by bootlegpop at 11:51 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
Geez, Eyebrows McGee, if I could get that whole breakdown of what's wrong with authors like Roth cross-stitched on a pillow, I would.
It'd have to be a pretty big pillow...
posted by meese at 8:36 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
It'd have to be a pretty big pillow...
posted by meese at 8:36 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Before leaving, Stephanopoulos extends his hand and tells Roth it was a pleasure speaking to the finest writer in America. * ... But the way Roth tells the story – or at least the way he told it to Roy Blount Jr. – he waited a beat, then corrected Stephanopoulos.
"Living,” Roth said...And does it even matter, considering that Roth takes a professional interest in making the line between fact and fiction one giant, fetching blur?"
posted by clavdivs at 10:36 AM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
"Living,” Roth said...And does it even matter, considering that Roth takes a professional interest in making the line between fact and fiction one giant, fetching blur?"
posted by clavdivs at 10:36 AM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
Eyebrows, I would favorite that comment 100 times if I could. (I see I'm not the only one who liked it.)
I think Bellow has marginally more distance from the center of the story, because he has a better sense of humor, and sometimes the absurdity of his self-perception becomes felt in the story. But not much.
I sometimes wonder how much of this effect, which in the end is Typical White Guy approach on steroids, is a result of the "more royalist than the king" approach to then-dominant WASP culture a lot of midcentury Jewish intellectuals adopted.
posted by praemunire at 11:37 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think Bellow has marginally more distance from the center of the story, because he has a better sense of humor, and sometimes the absurdity of his self-perception becomes felt in the story. But not much.
I sometimes wonder how much of this effect, which in the end is Typical White Guy approach on steroids, is a result of the "more royalist than the king" approach to then-dominant WASP culture a lot of midcentury Jewish intellectuals adopted.
posted by praemunire at 11:37 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
Bloom was a leader among that small group, who along with the poor we will always have with us (precisely that long, in fact), and who think good taste rather than good works will be our only salvation.
I believe I ran into Philip Roth in the gift shop of a resort on Orcas Island in the San Juans of Washington state back in the mid 80s. I looked up and met the eyes of a man about ten feet away and thought 'hmm, Philip Roth!' and he got that slightly stricken look of someone who doesn't want to be recognized, from which I gathered that the young woman he was with was probably not his daughter. I have less than no interest in meeting and getting to know celebrities, but it turns out I wasn't above glancing over at her, then looking back at him and raising my eyebrows before going on with the rest of my morning.
posted by jamjam at 1:05 PM on April 25, 2021 [10 favorites]
I believe I ran into Philip Roth in the gift shop of a resort on Orcas Island in the San Juans of Washington state back in the mid 80s. I looked up and met the eyes of a man about ten feet away and thought 'hmm, Philip Roth!' and he got that slightly stricken look of someone who doesn't want to be recognized, from which I gathered that the young woman he was with was probably not his daughter. I have less than no interest in meeting and getting to know celebrities, but it turns out I wasn't above glancing over at her, then looking back at him and raising my eyebrows before going on with the rest of my morning.
posted by jamjam at 1:05 PM on April 25, 2021 [10 favorites]
In my early twenties, I went through period of intense interest in the works of Roth, Updike, et. al. as a way of gaining insight into the way that kind of man thinks.
As soon as I grew up a little and realized that I was the ongoing object of that kind of thinking, and would therefore have endless chances to observe it and its effects on every area of my life, I lost interest.
Like most women, I have no choice but to deal with this BS in my daily life. But whenever I do have the choice, my money and--perhaps more importantly--my attention go elsewhere.
posted by rpfields at 3:38 PM on April 25, 2021 [9 favorites]
As soon as I grew up a little and realized that I was the ongoing object of that kind of thinking, and would therefore have endless chances to observe it and its effects on every area of my life, I lost interest.
Like most women, I have no choice but to deal with this BS in my daily life. But whenever I do have the choice, my money and--perhaps more importantly--my attention go elsewhere.
posted by rpfields at 3:38 PM on April 25, 2021 [9 favorites]
"As soon as I grew up a little and realized that I was the ongoing object of that kind of thinking, and would therefore have endless chances to observe it and its effects on every area of my life, I lost interest."
The other thing is that you can read LOTS of male writers who don't write women very well, but who are profoundly humanist in their writing, with a deep and broad and sympathetic understanding of human nature (even if they mostly confine their understanding of it to the lives of men) and of the way we all contain multitudes and possibilities and limitations. Like, Tolstoy does not write women well, and they are clearly side notes to the stories he wants to tell, and his misogyny runs deeper than is typical of his time period, but HOLY CROW the man understood human beings (he just thought they only really came in the male variety). Philip Roth seems like an infant next to him, literally like a 15-year-old boy trying to sound like an adult, because Roth doesn't have the same broadly humanist perspective where nothing human is alien to him; he just has his own, incredibly limited perspective. I'd point to others like Dostoyevsky, Hugo, Melville; Twain probably -- all of whom wrote their male characters from that broad humanist perspective that situates specific men within a broader understanding of humanity, even if their women weren't all that great. (I know this is a super-weird and limited list, shaped by my own reading history. I am just a person who loves books, not a person who studied literature.)
Or you can just skip right to George Eliot and read Middlemarch, “One of the few English novels written for grown-up people," as Virginia Woolf said, and read a deeply humanist novel written by a woman who knows how to write women as complete human beings. It's such an immediately broader, more colorful, more universal novel because the other half of the world exists in its entirety and richness, as it never gets to in Tolstoy or Hugo.
I deeply feel that nothing would help most English-language male authors more than reading Little Women and Anne of Green Gables at an impressionable age, so that they have early exposure to the interior lives of adolescent girls the way they do to the interior lives of adolescent boys. I'm curious whether the popularity of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels will lead to more men reading -- and later writing -- more fully-formed women. But how many men who consider themselves well-read and up-to-date on literary things do you know who have read Ferrante? I seriously know ONE. They all agree they're among the most important novels of the 21st century; they just haven't read them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:12 PM on April 25, 2021 [12 favorites]
The other thing is that you can read LOTS of male writers who don't write women very well, but who are profoundly humanist in their writing, with a deep and broad and sympathetic understanding of human nature (even if they mostly confine their understanding of it to the lives of men) and of the way we all contain multitudes and possibilities and limitations. Like, Tolstoy does not write women well, and they are clearly side notes to the stories he wants to tell, and his misogyny runs deeper than is typical of his time period, but HOLY CROW the man understood human beings (he just thought they only really came in the male variety). Philip Roth seems like an infant next to him, literally like a 15-year-old boy trying to sound like an adult, because Roth doesn't have the same broadly humanist perspective where nothing human is alien to him; he just has his own, incredibly limited perspective. I'd point to others like Dostoyevsky, Hugo, Melville; Twain probably -- all of whom wrote their male characters from that broad humanist perspective that situates specific men within a broader understanding of humanity, even if their women weren't all that great. (I know this is a super-weird and limited list, shaped by my own reading history. I am just a person who loves books, not a person who studied literature.)
Or you can just skip right to George Eliot and read Middlemarch, “One of the few English novels written for grown-up people," as Virginia Woolf said, and read a deeply humanist novel written by a woman who knows how to write women as complete human beings. It's such an immediately broader, more colorful, more universal novel because the other half of the world exists in its entirety and richness, as it never gets to in Tolstoy or Hugo.
I deeply feel that nothing would help most English-language male authors more than reading Little Women and Anne of Green Gables at an impressionable age, so that they have early exposure to the interior lives of adolescent girls the way they do to the interior lives of adolescent boys. I'm curious whether the popularity of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels will lead to more men reading -- and later writing -- more fully-formed women. But how many men who consider themselves well-read and up-to-date on literary things do you know who have read Ferrante? I seriously know ONE. They all agree they're among the most important novels of the 21st century; they just haven't read them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:12 PM on April 25, 2021 [12 favorites]
This is like when I found out about Woody Allen and my Movies To Watch list got a lot shorter. I'd been bumping the mid-century literary giants further and further down the list as I tried to diversify my reading. But now I can just forget about a heap of stuff I wasn't enthused about anyway. Thanks, MeFi!
posted by harriet vane at 6:36 AM on April 26, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by harriet vane at 6:36 AM on April 26, 2021 [7 favorites]
"Roth, who wrote what may be the best novel of the 21st century so far, Plot Against America."
Plot Against America is half a good novel. The first part with the effect of the Lindbergh presidency on the family was really interesting - then it turned into all exposition of the way it all happened at the macro level and brought the world back to the pre-Lindbergh status quo.
So half a good novel about what it's like to live in a fascist white supremacist society and half a summary of a pulp novel.
posted by Billiken at 7:36 AM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Plot Against America is half a good novel. The first part with the effect of the Lindbergh presidency on the family was really interesting - then it turned into all exposition of the way it all happened at the macro level and brought the world back to the pre-Lindbergh status quo.
So half a good novel about what it's like to live in a fascist white supremacist society and half a summary of a pulp novel.
posted by Billiken at 7:36 AM on April 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I actually just finished listening to The Plot against America audio book like four days ago and actually think the second half is stronger than the first, and less "macro," Billiken. The strongest women in the novel are the ten-year-old narrator's good mother and bad aunt, and they both emerge and develop as defining characters closer to the end as resister and collaborator. The expensive long-distance collect calls at the end of the book, through which Mrs. Roth in Newark saves Philip's frenemy Seldon after his mother is killed by Nazis in Kentucky -- guiding the distraught kid through making dinner for himself, alone, with what little is left in the refrigerator, when his mother never comes home -- was one of my top five novel cries of the 21st century.
The only other Roth novel I ever read, five decades ago when I was eight years old -- yes, I was a precocious reader and my parents let me read absolutely anything that was on the shelf -- was Portnoy's Complaint. I will let you all speculate how that may have shaped an eight-year-old goyim boy's mind in the early 1970s. But you know, good literature is not propaganda, and good novelists have imaginations that may but don't necessarily match up to their identities. And shitty identities can be attached to great minds that produce amazing art. And a novelist whose collected work, viewed today, is certainly misogynist, may have been groundbreaking and liberating for both men and women in the entirely different world of nearly a lifetime ago.
The same summer I read Portnoy's Complaint I read Dante's Inferno and Petronius's Satyricon (dull summer, otherwise) and began to absorb the fact that literature, and culture, have historical context. Philip Roth entered cultural production as one person and exited as a somewhat different person. He was born into one American culture and exited from a very different culture. Our culture will become a very different culture fifty years from now, and if we're lucky, all of the novelists publishing in 2021 will be assessed for similar flaws in 2071.
Those of you judging The Plot against America through your understanding of Roth's biography and earlier work, not having read the book, should try reading the book. I agree with Kickingtheground way above: It's fantastic.
I don't know a damned thing about the biographer except what I've read in this thread, but if it turns out he's pure evil, that is not more pee on Philip Roth's grave. That's pee on his grave.
posted by gum at 5:30 PM on April 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
The only other Roth novel I ever read, five decades ago when I was eight years old -- yes, I was a precocious reader and my parents let me read absolutely anything that was on the shelf -- was Portnoy's Complaint. I will let you all speculate how that may have shaped an eight-year-old goyim boy's mind in the early 1970s. But you know, good literature is not propaganda, and good novelists have imaginations that may but don't necessarily match up to their identities. And shitty identities can be attached to great minds that produce amazing art. And a novelist whose collected work, viewed today, is certainly misogynist, may have been groundbreaking and liberating for both men and women in the entirely different world of nearly a lifetime ago.
The same summer I read Portnoy's Complaint I read Dante's Inferno and Petronius's Satyricon (dull summer, otherwise) and began to absorb the fact that literature, and culture, have historical context. Philip Roth entered cultural production as one person and exited as a somewhat different person. He was born into one American culture and exited from a very different culture. Our culture will become a very different culture fifty years from now, and if we're lucky, all of the novelists publishing in 2021 will be assessed for similar flaws in 2071.
Those of you judging The Plot against America through your understanding of Roth's biography and earlier work, not having read the book, should try reading the book. I agree with Kickingtheground way above: It's fantastic.
I don't know a damned thing about the biographer except what I've read in this thread, but if it turns out he's pure evil, that is not more pee on Philip Roth's grave. That's pee on his grave.
posted by gum at 5:30 PM on April 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
I read a very diverse group of writers, I stopped reading mostly old, white American authors at least 20 years ago, not because of any political or social reasons, just because I was bored and had already read most of the big names anyway. And it's completely true that we have been sold a lie that the Giants of Literature are those guys, and only those guys. As discussed upthread, the system was created around them, and they crowded out so many other writers for so long.
That said, I read American Pastoral a couple of years ago and it's amazing. When Roth is at his best, he's an incredible writer.
posted by chaz at 6:28 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
That said, I read American Pastoral a couple of years ago and it's amazing. When Roth is at his best, he's an incredible writer.
posted by chaz at 6:28 PM on April 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Norton Takes Philip Roth Biography Out of Print (NYT).
From the article:
“Norton is permanently putting out of print our editions of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ and ‘The Splendid Things We Planned,’ Blake Bailey’s 2014 memoir. Mr. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses,” [an] email said, which was signed by Norton’s president, Julia A. Reidhead. A copy of the email was reviewed by The New York Times.
Ms. Reidhead also said that Norton would make a donation in the amount of the advance it paid to Mr. Bailey, who received a mid-six-figure book deal, to organizations that support sexual assault survivors and victims of sexual harassment.
Wow, it seems that the times (no pun intended) really are changing. We are changing them.
posted by rpfields at 2:05 PM on April 27, 2021 [4 favorites]
From the article:
“Norton is permanently putting out of print our editions of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ and ‘The Splendid Things We Planned,’ Blake Bailey’s 2014 memoir. Mr. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses,” [an] email said, which was signed by Norton’s president, Julia A. Reidhead. A copy of the email was reviewed by The New York Times.
Ms. Reidhead also said that Norton would make a donation in the amount of the advance it paid to Mr. Bailey, who received a mid-six-figure book deal, to organizations that support sexual assault survivors and victims of sexual harassment.
Wow, it seems that the times (no pun intended) really are changing. We are changing them.
posted by rpfields at 2:05 PM on April 27, 2021 [4 favorites]
Reaction from The Week columnist and author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege and The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders, Damon Linker: "Norton (pub of my 2nd book) is taking the Bailey bio of Roth out of print. We live in a cultural world in which people think that inanimate objects possess occult powers requiring them to be expunged when those connected w them are accused of evil deeds."
posted by PhineasGage at 6:54 PM on April 27, 2021
posted by PhineasGage at 6:54 PM on April 27, 2021
From the NYT article:
In 2018, Ms. Rice wrote anonymously to Ms. Reidhead, the president of Norton, to report that Mr. Bailey assaulted her several years earlier. (She also emailed a New York Times reporter, who responded, but Ms. Rice did not reply after deciding not to pursue it further.) Mr. Bailey later contacted Ms. Rice and denied the allegations, saying that his publisher forwarded the complaint.
In her email to staff on Tuesday, Ms. Reidhead acknowledged that Norton could have done more to look into the allegations. “As a publishing company we are limited in our investigative abilities,” she wrote, “but we recognize that there may be situations, such as allegations of potentially criminal conduct, where we should actively consider bringing in outside assistance.”
If I'm not mistaken, it would appear that the executive summing up how they handled this in the staff email is the executive that likely forwarded the accuser's email to the accused biographer. That seems like the worst thing that Norton did, so it is unfortunate that they don't appear to be addressing it.
-----
As an aside, I was fairly surprised that the NYT got a respected female author, Cynthia Ozick, to write a positive review of the book that was pretty much just a glowing tribute to Roth (before the accusations against the biographer were made public). I knew that she was a fan of Roth, but it felt like there was more that needed to be addressed, given that it was, I believe, the main NYT review. Today I saw that Ozick had also given a glowing blurb to a Bari Weiss book two years ago, so that all now makes a little more sense. As a result, I'm not even sure that I want to read any more of Ozick's books, despite enjoying the ones that I have read.
posted by bootlegpop at 9:03 PM on April 27, 2021
In 2018, Ms. Rice wrote anonymously to Ms. Reidhead, the president of Norton, to report that Mr. Bailey assaulted her several years earlier. (She also emailed a New York Times reporter, who responded, but Ms. Rice did not reply after deciding not to pursue it further.) Mr. Bailey later contacted Ms. Rice and denied the allegations, saying that his publisher forwarded the complaint.
In her email to staff on Tuesday, Ms. Reidhead acknowledged that Norton could have done more to look into the allegations. “As a publishing company we are limited in our investigative abilities,” she wrote, “but we recognize that there may be situations, such as allegations of potentially criminal conduct, where we should actively consider bringing in outside assistance.”
If I'm not mistaken, it would appear that the executive summing up how they handled this in the staff email is the executive that likely forwarded the accuser's email to the accused biographer. That seems like the worst thing that Norton did, so it is unfortunate that they don't appear to be addressing it.
-----
As an aside, I was fairly surprised that the NYT got a respected female author, Cynthia Ozick, to write a positive review of the book that was pretty much just a glowing tribute to Roth (before the accusations against the biographer were made public). I knew that she was a fan of Roth, but it felt like there was more that needed to be addressed, given that it was, I believe, the main NYT review. Today I saw that Ozick had also given a glowing blurb to a Bari Weiss book two years ago, so that all now makes a little more sense. As a result, I'm not even sure that I want to read any more of Ozick's books, despite enjoying the ones that I have read.
posted by bootlegpop at 9:03 PM on April 27, 2021
Reaction from The Week columnist and author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege and The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders, Damon Linker
Odd that you left out "author of 'When #MeToo goes too far', 'The collective religious experience of #MeToo', and 'The Aziz Ansari takedown is a setback for the #MeToo movement'," all of which seem much more germane here.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:11 AM on April 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
Odd that you left out "author of 'When #MeToo goes too far', 'The collective religious experience of #MeToo', and 'The Aziz Ansari takedown is a setback for the #MeToo movement'," all of which seem much more germane here.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:11 AM on April 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
A sharp critique of the biography, the subject, and the author by Judith Shulevitz in The Atlantic.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:57 AM on April 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 5:57 AM on April 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
More thoughts on the larger implications of Norton's cancellation of the book, from WaPo's book critic Ron Charles: "The Philip Roth biography is canceled, Mike Pence’s book could be next — and publishing may never be the same."
posted by PhineasGage at 12:41 PM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by PhineasGage at 12:41 PM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
All of these people could still release books and have someone distribute them or even just make them free to download. What is changing is the making money out of them, which is a different issue.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 3:18 PM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by lesbiassparrow at 3:18 PM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Zuckerman Bound, the only shit of Roth's I ever tried to read, is a sterling example of an author typewriting his way up his own fundament. I was anticipating something in the region of Saki's Reginald mixed with Morris Lurie's "Africa Wall", but god it was just...the only lasting impression I have is that it was obnoxious. "Crystal sentences," (not a direct quote but something I imagine has been said about Roth) my foot.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:13 PM on April 28, 2021
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:13 PM on April 28, 2021
Josh Levin, Susan Mathews, and Molly Olmstead at Slatehave some more reporting on the accusations against Bailey by his students (plus interviews): “Mr. Bailey’s Class” (NB this is full of grossness, be very warned.)
posted by Going To Maine at 5:10 PM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 5:10 PM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
The article by one of his students and victims linked in the article above is also worth reading (with all of the appropriate trigger warnings).
posted by bootlegpop at 6:39 PM on April 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by bootlegpop at 6:39 PM on April 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wow, that article about his class. If you had a teacher you were close to in junior high or high school, who wasn't a creeper, and who really mattered in your life -- the entire article is utterly stomach-churning, watching how someone could take a relationship similar to the one you had with your (good human being of a) teacher, and turn it into something prurient and exploitative and frightening. I keep getting that sense where you're channel-surfing and bored and stumble on a what you think is a suburban comedy when you start watching, and then suddenly there's a hint that something's not quite right, and you realize with swift certainty that you're watching a horror movie. Only you can't change the channel. Even without the stories of sexual assault and rape, this is just betrayal after betrayal after betrayal, of children. (But just like the horror movie, the minute the note of wrongness creeps in, you can tell exactly how it's going end. This guy's a predator and he's clearly not going to stop at being a creeper. Before you're halfway through, you can tell he's going to leave a trail of assault behind him.)
Also, of course this fucker identifies with Holden Caulfield as an adult. Of course he fucking does.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:22 PM on April 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also, of course this fucker identifies with Holden Caulfield as an adult. Of course he fucking does.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:22 PM on April 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
Reaction from The Week columnist and author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege and The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders, Damon Linker: "Norton (pub of my 2nd book) is taking the Bailey bio of Roth out of print. We live in a cultural world in which people think that inanimate objects possess occult powers requiring them to be expunged when those connected w them are accused of evil deeds."
This is an absolutely asinine take. It turns out that people don't want to be connected to rapists and fascists (for good reason.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:41 AM on April 30, 2021
This is an absolutely asinine take. It turns out that people don't want to be connected to rapists and fascists (for good reason.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:41 AM on April 30, 2021
A small part of the story about Bailey, but I've never liked the idea of students being expected to write about their personal lives for English class, and I'm glad I was in school before it was common. It's alright as an option, but it shouldn't be a requirement.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:45 AM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:45 AM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
That is the bullshit that allows abuse to continue and silences the voices of the dispossessed. The argument that we are obliged to condone the voices of rapists, abusers, and fascists out of some obligation to the "marketplace of ideas" is a deeply immoral one, an argument that puts questionable ideas above actual harm suffered by actual people.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:49 PM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:49 PM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yeah. Plus it ignores that this whole unveiling of horrors has certainly made the marketplace of ideas aware that Bailey's ones on 50% of the population are shite. And now we all know that Roth was awful too.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 9:58 PM on April 30, 2021
posted by lesbiassparrow at 9:58 PM on April 30, 2021
Plus it ignores that this whole unveiling of horrors has certainly made the marketplace of ideas aware that Bailey's ones on 50% of the population are shite.
The argument that "many of literature’s celebrated authors led troubled–and troubling–lives" ignores that one of the big things that has been happening is that as we learn more about said "celebrated authors", we as a society are beginning to say that perhaps they shouldn't be celebrated because of the harm they left in their wake.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:07 PM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
The argument that "many of literature’s celebrated authors led troubled–and troubling–lives" ignores that one of the big things that has been happening is that as we learn more about said "celebrated authors", we as a society are beginning to say that perhaps they shouldn't be celebrated because of the harm they left in their wake.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:07 PM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
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