Tag: #PhilipRoth

  • 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.

  • Sticking the Landing, And the Climax

    I have been kicking around this idea for novel for about two years in my head, but only in the last six months have I started to try to get some work on it done. Originally, I was not going to think too hard about the first draft, and just write the damn thing, and see what happens. (I had done this for the other two novels I have written, but let’s be honest here, that was 20 years ago, and they aren’t very good.) I got about three chapters into it, and then the thing petered out. I knew how I wanted it to start and the whole first act, and I knew what the second act would be, but the ending was still a little vague, and I wasn’t clear how I would connect the three acts. Then, I sucked it up, and did a rough outline of the book. It helped get the first and second act to work together, but the third is still unfocused, and all over the place.

    I found myself looking up at the ceiling last night, trying to get the thing to work in my mind. Maybe I should make it a bit of a literary parody of the type of protagonists that Roth, Ford, and Updike would have written? (You know, the overly sexual white guy who fails up.) It could be funny, but also a cheat to get an ending, as I would be, well, stealing one of theirs. Maybe I should stop working on it? Should I set it aside for a while, work on something else, and see if the absence will help me come up with an ending? Maybe doing this outlining work, thinking about the story is actually holding me back, as I am not actually writing it? Maybe I need to make the time and actually write it, and not this system of “pre-production” work of outlining… I don’t know.

    But getting it right, sticking the ending, when it comes to my writing, is not my strong suit. It seems like in all things, there should be some sort of exercise one could do, to work on this skill. I see lots of writing workshops on how to outline, or getting your idea out of your head on to paper, or how to stop talking and start writing. But I haven’t seen any type of workshop that’s “How to End Your Story Strong.”

    Just an idea.

  • 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.