Tag: #BlakeBailey

  • ODDS and ENDS – See, I Was Right

    “Odds and Ends” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    First of all, I was right about the Super League. An Op-Ed in The New York Times pretty much said the same thing that I did, (At least I think so) and Five-Thirty Eight also had a Chat about it as well. The bottom line is that the Super League is Dead. Long Live The Super League!

    Pretty shocked that the writer of the Philip Roth biography is now being accused of sexual assault. Won’t be buying that book now.

    I am strangely finding myself interested in how the Knicks are doing. Though basketball is my family’s sport of choice, I have never been a big pro-basketball fan. But something about the team this year has me paying attention. Maybe it’s Rose, maybe it’s the better defense, maybe I like rooting for the underdog. Something.

    I know I am late to the game, but I have been following the Scott Rudin story. It broke at the start of April, and if you don’t know, Rudin is an Oscar and Tony winning producer who is an awful person to work for. He bullies people, screams at them, breaks stuff, throws tantrums, and, well, he’s an asshole. From the years of working at rehearsal studios, I have encountered many Rudin types; they asshole their way to success. Sadly, Rudin types aren’t created in a vacuum, they are enabled. Until the enablers are addressed as well, Rudin types will keep thriving in the entertainment world.

  • Thoughts on the Philip Roth Biography

    I don’t know if you have heard, but there is a new biography on Philip Roth called, “Philip Roth: The Biography” by Blake Bailey. It’s not the most original title, but not unlike a well worn club, it gets the job done. That having been said, I will read Bailey’s Roth biography, and I will also read his biography on John Cheever as well.

    Over the past couple of weeks, as this biography was about to be released to the public, the W. W. Norton & Company marketing department went into overdrive promoting this book, as they should. There was an article in The New York Times, one in The New Yorker by David Remnick no less, and even one on CBS Saturday Morning. I am sure there were more out there, but I stopped with three. They all did their job; made me want to get the biography, and to reread Roth’s work.

    I did notice that all three of these stories on the Roth biography had the same through-line; Roth didn’t want a biography written about him. In one form or another, each piece detailed Roth’s troubled relationship with past biographers, and his tendency to lash out, through unpublished books, defending his reputation after he felt attacked. And, that somehow, either through Roth reaching the end of his life, or by Blake Bailey’s ability to mine the information out of Roth, this biography came to be. And all of that might be completely true. Or a narrative created by the marketing department to increase sales.

    But, then I had this wacky thought that, what if this was Roth’s plan all along? Such as, he denied that most of his work was auto-biographical, but it turns out it was auto-biographical. Roth sure didn’t like the book his ex-wife wrote about him, which painted him as a misogynist. This led Roth to write one of the unpublished manuscripts where he attacked and attacked her, which in the end, sort of confirmed his ex-wife’s book. So, what if Roth created a narrative of “not wanting” a biography, while at the same time leading the biographer to “water?” Wouldn’t that give Roth the final say?

    I will add this; Philip Roth did write a memoir (Patrimony: A True Story) so if he wanted to tell his own story, he could have. In fact, he tried twice, but was persuaded, and it sounds correctly, not to publish. Also, choosing a biographer for your life while you are still alive, does come off as sounding subjective, especially after you had already fired one biographer. Finally, Roth was the best storyteller in the room, so why would he let someone else tell his most important story?

    Just a thought. I mean, I will still buy the book.