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schwarmgiven's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fantastic book. The focus is on the man more than the words--but that is not always such a bad thing. The struggle is all there. There are petty fights and forgiveness, but it is all blended with such respect, historical accuracy, and all-around good writing that this book may be the best author biography I have ever read. Seriously, if you have any interest in Roth at all, read this. It is good.
mimika9's review against another edition
3.0
It is very difficult to rate this book. On one hand, it is exhaustively researched and extremely readable but on the other hand, giving equal weight to his sex life and his work weakens the work. What a pity that Hermione Lee wasn’t able to be Roth’s biographer. I think we would have gotten a much more complex nuanced work.
mkesten's review against another edition
4.0
We learn in Blake Bailey´s biography that Philip Roth carried on an affair with his friend´s wife for 20 years. In my books that’s long time.
Later in life, Roth had sex with a friend’s daughter, that he had another friend pimp beautiful students into Roth’s literature classes, that he had sex with his students, that he made a pass at his step-daughters friend, poisoning his marriage to Claire Bloom, that he had sex with his personal employees, and that he hung around his publishers´offices to scout out new conquests.
He also had an affair with at least one woman who was likely bi-polar. Both his wives likely suffered from mentally illness.
Roth documented many of his affairs in his fiction, so his wives and girlfriends didn’t have to wait long to find out with whom he was being unfaithful.
And several of the women who appear in this book as Roth’s conquests have been given pseudonyms. We’re not told why, but it wouldn’t a big stretch to guess that Roth had probably raped underage women.
His books and fame brought Roth wealth, wealth he sometimes used to support friends and charities, but wealth he also used to control his lovers. And he unabashedly used his fame to bed more women. The details are pretty gross.
There are also some pretty unflattering portraits of Bobbie and Jackie Kennedy in this volume. Like another serial seducer, John Kennedy, Roth also suffered serious and debilitating back pain.
After reading all this who could imagine that Roth’s books will be studied in literature programs around the world in an era of cancel culture? Roth broke every taboo I can think of, and his books circle around men who likewise break sexual taboos. Roth and at least some of his friends — including the biographer — were creeps.
Bailey himself has been accused of sexual misconduct with his students and his publisher. We may never learn the truth of these accusations, but we can surmise why Bailey took on the job: to learn seduction at the feet of a master.
Roth was pretty candid with his biographer only asking that he make him sound “interesting.” Well, interesting he is in this biography if you are excited by the prurient.
But Roth’s life outside of literature was pretty thin. He didn’t have any jobs outside of academe after his military service. He didn’t have any children of his own. He didn’t build any unique institutions.
In a New York Times podcast we also learn that Roth asked that most of his huge output of letters be burned after the biography was finished. It’s as if he wanted to end the suffering for his victims.
Roth complained that he had terrible luck with his wives and girlfriends, but then again he seemed to be in such a rush to bed so many of them it’s hard to empathize with him. His idol was Saul Bellow, another serial seducer if only judged by his five marriages.
I must add that while I could not put down this very long 800-page biography, I’m not sure I ever want to read another of Roth’s books or watch the movies of the books.
He casts a large shadow over American letters whatever you think about his personal behaviour. A large and troubling shadow.
Later in life, Roth had sex with a friend’s daughter, that he had another friend pimp beautiful students into Roth’s literature classes, that he had sex with his students, that he made a pass at his step-daughters friend, poisoning his marriage to Claire Bloom, that he had sex with his personal employees, and that he hung around his publishers´offices to scout out new conquests.
He also had an affair with at least one woman who was likely bi-polar. Both his wives likely suffered from mentally illness.
Roth documented many of his affairs in his fiction, so his wives and girlfriends didn’t have to wait long to find out with whom he was being unfaithful.
And several of the women who appear in this book as Roth’s conquests have been given pseudonyms. We’re not told why, but it wouldn’t a big stretch to guess that Roth had probably raped underage women.
His books and fame brought Roth wealth, wealth he sometimes used to support friends and charities, but wealth he also used to control his lovers. And he unabashedly used his fame to bed more women. The details are pretty gross.
There are also some pretty unflattering portraits of Bobbie and Jackie Kennedy in this volume. Like another serial seducer, John Kennedy, Roth also suffered serious and debilitating back pain.
After reading all this who could imagine that Roth’s books will be studied in literature programs around the world in an era of cancel culture? Roth broke every taboo I can think of, and his books circle around men who likewise break sexual taboos. Roth and at least some of his friends — including the biographer — were creeps.
Bailey himself has been accused of sexual misconduct with his students and his publisher. We may never learn the truth of these accusations, but we can surmise why Bailey took on the job: to learn seduction at the feet of a master.
Roth was pretty candid with his biographer only asking that he make him sound “interesting.” Well, interesting he is in this biography if you are excited by the prurient.
But Roth’s life outside of literature was pretty thin. He didn’t have any jobs outside of academe after his military service. He didn’t have any children of his own. He didn’t build any unique institutions.
In a New York Times podcast we also learn that Roth asked that most of his huge output of letters be burned after the biography was finished. It’s as if he wanted to end the suffering for his victims.
Roth complained that he had terrible luck with his wives and girlfriends, but then again he seemed to be in such a rush to bed so many of them it’s hard to empathize with him. His idol was Saul Bellow, another serial seducer if only judged by his five marriages.
I must add that while I could not put down this very long 800-page biography, I’m not sure I ever want to read another of Roth’s books or watch the movies of the books.
He casts a large shadow over American letters whatever you think about his personal behaviour. A large and troubling shadow.
holodoxa's review against another edition
3.0
In many ways, this is an impressive work of biography. Blake Bailey provides what appears to be a fairly honest and incredibly detailed picture of Philip Roth the man and the author. However, I fear the work would benefit from a little more organizational self-discipline and less lurid indulgences.
It is more than clear (even just from reading Roth's work) that Roth was a man with an insatiable libido - a libido that inspired a carousel of torrid affairs. In the book, the gossipy details of these largely run together. This is of course something that the biography needed to discuss, but I felt Bailey's focus on it came at the cost of deeper discussion of Roth's literature or even his thinking on important issues or the nature of his friendships and vendettas (wanted to learn more about him and Norm Podhoretz).
I felt that Bailey should have provided more detail, analysis, and criticism of Roth's oeuvre. On Roth's major works, excepting American Pastoral, Bailey provides only superficial or brief commentary in favor of dilating on how elements of Roth's works intersected with the actual details of Roth's life. This is interesting to an extent but cataloging them does little to advance the readers understanding of why Roth was such an important writer or what about his writing is enduring, powerful, meaningful, etc - maybe this isn't the purview of biography but it should be when chronicling the life of an author.
Admittedly I've not read a ton of Roth (just American Pastoral, The Ghost Rider, and various selected passages), but I don't come away from reading Bailey's biography feeling more informed on Roth's authorial qualities and accomplishments. However, I do come away with an understanding of Roth as a human being and social presence, which appears to have been Bailey's aim.
It is more than clear (even just from reading Roth's work) that Roth was a man with an insatiable libido - a libido that inspired a carousel of torrid affairs. In the book, the gossipy details of these largely run together. This is of course something that the biography needed to discuss, but I felt Bailey's focus on it came at the cost of deeper discussion of Roth's literature or even his thinking on important issues or the nature of his friendships and vendettas (wanted to learn more about him and Norm Podhoretz).
I felt that Bailey should have provided more detail, analysis, and criticism of Roth's oeuvre. On Roth's major works, excepting American Pastoral, Bailey provides only superficial or brief commentary in favor of dilating on how elements of Roth's works intersected with the actual details of Roth's life. This is interesting to an extent but cataloging them does little to advance the readers understanding of why Roth was such an important writer or what about his writing is enduring, powerful, meaningful, etc - maybe this isn't the purview of biography but it should be when chronicling the life of an author.
Admittedly I've not read a ton of Roth (just American Pastoral, The Ghost Rider, and various selected passages), but I don't come away from reading Bailey's biography feeling more informed on Roth's authorial qualities and accomplishments. However, I do come away with an understanding of Roth as a human being and social presence, which appears to have been Bailey's aim.
shipssail's review against another edition
5.0
I can’t put it down and it’s keeping me up at night which says a lot for a biography imo!
habeasopus's review against another edition
2.0
Do I not enjoy biography, or did I just not enjoy this one? I felt like I had already encountered almost all of the more interesting tidbits from Philip Roth’s life in his fiction. Granted, this may be a problem more than a little unique to Roth as a subject for biography. The book was well-written and exhaustive, but for me, also exhausting.
veryperi22's review against another edition
4.0
It's long and one sided and wonderful in its thoroughness of Roth's life, love, works, and antics.
augustreviews's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.25
Philip Roth was a man of enormous talent and ginormous contradictions. On the one hand, he wrote 32 books, garnered literary awards (PEN/Faulkner, Man/Booker, the Pulitzer) up the wazoo, and was often called, especially in later life, the “world’s greatest living writer,” a title he encouraged.
Yet privately he was a sexual compulsive, notoriously thin-skinned (he held grudges for years), and to anyone who wasn’t totally enthralled by him, defensive and unpleasant.
Such an man of massive contradictions deserves a biography of similar scope, and Blake Bailey’s exhaustively researched—and just plain exhausting—860-page book “Philip Roth: The Biography” fits
the bill mightily.
How Bailey, a gentile from Oklahoma, became the anointed Boswell to Roth’s Johnson (no pun intended) still remains a mystery, but the facts of Roth’s early life are as clear as day. Born in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Weequahic, Newark to Bess and Herman Roth, he attended university at WASP-y Bucknell, received a masters at the University of Chicago where he also taught for a while, and began writing stories people noticed. His early works, “Defender of the Faith” and “Goodby Columbus” brought him recognition as a wunderkind.
In the late 1960s, Roth wrote “Portnoy’s Complaint,” the famous/infamous best-seller about onanistic pleasures that earned him the title of “dirty book writer” and brought him notoriety as a “self-hating Jew” who brought shame on his people. “I am not a ‘Jewish-American’ writer,” he responded. “I am an American writer who happens to be a Jew.”
Roth went on to write novels, both great and not-so-great, but would forever more incur the wrath of Irving Howe, Commentary Magazine, and the New York Times. He was accused of being one-note, and writing novels that were purely autobiographical (which he took pains to point out were not.) With the publication of “American Pastoral,” “The Human Stain,” and in 2004 “The Plot Against America,” his place in the literary firmament was set, something not even the snide remarks of NYT’s Michiko Kakutani could diminish.
Bailey’s bio portrays Roth as constantly embattled: by literary critics who had it in for him from the get-go; by his poor health (massive back pain and heart ailments in his later years), and by two unhappy marriages which he agonized over to his dying day (May 22, 2018). The first was to a woman who tricked him into marriage with a phony pregnancy test; the second was to actress Claire Bloom who wrote a vengeful tale of their marriage. He sued her for libel.
Despite his reputation as a womanizer—well-deserved as he messed around constantly, often with more than one woman at a time—Roth was extremely kind to his mistresses, even after the romance broke up. He gifted them money, took pains to introduce them to fine literature, and even took care of their kids. Roth was also very concerned with the plight of dissident writers in Communist regimes (e.g., pre-glasnost Czechoslovakia) and raised both money and awareness of them long before anyone else did. And despite his general disdain for the mass media, he loved the film version of “Goodbye Columbus,” laughing so loudly in the theater that people in the audience had to shush him.
To anyone who is an outright fan of Philip Roth like me, this book will be manna from Heaven, (despite the embarrassing discovery that the biographer was accused of sexual misconduct, and publication of the book was halted almost immediately afterwards.) Roth’s personal flaws notwithstanding, he remains only the second great writer (after Tolstoy) who didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Literature, apparently because the Swedes couldn’t wrap their heads around him. Their loss. Follow me at acsntn.substack.com
sophronisba's review against another edition
On Tuesday morning, I was a quarter of the way through this biography, contemplating Bailey's take on Roth's first marriage. As best I can tell, neither Roth nor his first wife covered themselves in glory during this marriage. But I was beginning to be a little annoyed that Bailey seemed to not quite understand how unkind and self-centered Roth's behavior toward his wife was. He seemed much more forgiving of Roth's excesses than his wife's. The perils of an authorized biography, I thought. But I was beginning to actively dread the Claire Bloom section.
Then this news broke. This, of course, casts an entirely different light on Bailey's portrayal of Roth's wife and, in fact, all the women in the other biographies. I find myself in the perverse position of wishing to reread and reevaluate all of them, and yet also not wanting to read another word by him.
Should this book be read? I think it should, though not right now, and perhaps I will even finish it myself one day. Roth was, despite his many faults, an important writer of the twentieth century, and Bailey had access to sources that no one may ever see again, or at least not for a very long time. But it can never again be thought of as definitive, and I think it should be read with an eye toward what we are willing to forgive of men we consider geniuses, and how we determine who these geniuses are in the first place. Because it seems to be the case that the gatekeepers who anoint our brilliant writers are often themselves men who treat women very badly indeed. It is just possible that this clouds their judgment when they consider misogynists who happen to construct sentences well.
Then this news broke. This, of course, casts an entirely different light on Bailey's portrayal of Roth's wife and, in fact, all the women in the other biographies. I find myself in the perverse position of wishing to reread and reevaluate all of them, and yet also not wanting to read another word by him.
Should this book be read? I think it should, though not right now, and perhaps I will even finish it myself one day. Roth was, despite his many faults, an important writer of the twentieth century, and Bailey had access to sources that no one may ever see again, or at least not for a very long time. But it can never again be thought of as definitive, and I think it should be read with an eye toward what we are willing to forgive of men we consider geniuses, and how we determine who these geniuses are in the first place. Because it seems to be the case that the gatekeepers who anoint our brilliant writers are often themselves men who treat women very badly indeed. It is just possible that this clouds their judgment when they consider misogynists who happen to construct sentences well.
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