Philip Roth The Biography by Blake Bailey

"It was not for lack of love that I did not marry any of those women [Ann Mudge, Barbara Sproul, etc.]. I did not marry who would have married me.  I did not marry them because none was a finagler, a cheat, or a manipulator made by panic who would have her man no matter what."

--Philip Roth, quoted in Philip Roth The Biography by Blake Bailey (W.W, Norton & Company, Inc. 2021)

Ah, yes, the girls.  It keeps coming back to the girls.  No matter how loftily we may wish to elevate our sights and vouch that only the Work matters, the sheer volume of acitivity in Roth's erotic life as recorded in Blake's compendium, the turnstile whirl of passing infatuations (while certain lovers loyally remain in the corner of the frame), makes that a tough go.  Girls. women, devoted mistresses, literary groupies, other men's wives, writing class students. famous actresses (not only Ava Gardner but Mia Farrow), one-night stands, sex with prostitutes in London, handjobs in Bangkok, orgies in Prague ("as he picked his way upstairs amid the copulating bodies, he was bitten on the ankle") it all makes for an R-rated sizzle competing with the feature attraction.

James Wolcott, "Sisyphus at the Selectric," London Review of Books. 20 May 2021

After I finished Blake Bailey's 800 pages of Philip Roth's biography and started to struggle with what to say about it I received the latest issue of London Review of Books with Wolcott's 8,000 word review.  I've always liked Wolcott's writing (I dropped my subscription to Vanity Fair when he no longer appeared there) and his review is intelligently written and perceptive (it is easily found on-line) in its attempt to reconcile Roth's life and work.  Roth went around with a big chip on his shoulder for being Jewish and a womanizer and never could understand why he did not received a Nobel Prize.  Whatever one may feel about the relationship between an author and his work there is no doubt that Roth used his novels to skewer his wives (from two diastrous marriages) and his enemies, real and imagined.  It is also true that Roth was quite generous with some of his friends and mistresses and played a major role in getting a number of Eastern European writers published in English during the Cold War.  I have certainly enjoyed some of his books --from Portnoy's Complaint to The Great American Novel to The Plot Against America -- novels where he doesn't grind his axes or lose one in a hall of mirrors.  And no doubt, like most writers he was a product of his time (as Harvey Weinstein said, "things were different then") but was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to transcend it.