Read | 04. May 2021

To Read Or Not To Read

When I first heard about Philip Roth´s brand new biography there was no doubt about me wanting to read it as soon as possible. As I knew and very much appreciated its author, Blake Bailey, whose biography on John Cheever I read more than ten years ago.

An acclaimed literary biographer of masters like Richard Yates and Charles Jackson and the author of a memoir of his own, Blake Bailey has received the Guggenheim Fellowship and was a Pulitzer finalist for his Cheever biography. Mr. Roth handpicked him to write the biography after meeting with him in 2012; he terminated an earlier agreement with another biographer in 2009.

Then something happened that actually seems to destroy Bailey´s reputation forever - and made his publishing house let the book go, in spite of the loss they risk after having paid him a mid-six-figure advance, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Several women came out to accuse Bailey of harrasment and even rape. And there is not doubt that the author´s way of treating misagonyst Philip Roth, with a lot of understanding, gave those women the courage to finally talk about what he did to them: the narrative of the book regarding women always turned Roth´s way.

I had only read 120 of the nearly 900 pages so far when I came across the New York Times article - and I liked it very much. As Bailey never bothers to talk about the writer´s work - as one critic claimed: "The book only seems to continue when Roth left his desk." And makes it so much more readable. And I have to say: there is some talking about affairs and numbers of young girls around him, but very much in the spirit of the times, and never without respect.

Anyway, I could not get over all those articles that followed the one in the Times, so I put the book on the shelf for now. Maybe it will rest there forever.

We can only imagine what Philip Roth might have said about all that...