(np) Forward review of Bailey/Roth

[Jochen Stremmel]

“All forked out, Roth could redirect and redeploy his warlock energy and
remaining resources on the later fiction…while casting the most important
role of all before the Big Fade-Out. Enter the biographer. Not just any
golden retriever would do. In Roth’s case, the position required a literary
Lego architect of tact, sophistication and meticulous care, not some
racketeer who would go rooting around behind his back but a capable junior
partner who could take direction and follow the sheet music … With the
diligent and diplomatic Bailey, Roth appeared to have made the right
choice. If anything, he appeared to have made too right a choice, a certain
conceited quality stardusting their collaboration, The Biography at times
taking on a buddy tone with a fireplace glow … Later in life Roth would
lament to Bellow that much of the fun had gone out of teaching—‘You used to
be able to sleep with the girls in the old days ... and now of course it’s
impossible. You go to feminist prison’—and this loss in penis-privilege is
unlikely to evoke pathos in any but the most predatory. Did Roth and Bailey
exchange similar sighs, invoking the iron clang of feminist prison? The
allegations of predation against Bailey have raised the specter of an
affinity between him and Roth that frames their relationship less as that
of biographer and subject and more that of co-conspirators—partners in
slime, a fraternal symmetry.”

–James Wolcott on Blake Bailey’s *Philip Roth: The Biography*
<https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/philip-roth-the-biography/> (*London
Review of Books*
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/james-wolcott/sisyphus-at-the-selectric>
)

Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l

Am Sa., 1. Mai 2021 um 09:19 Uhr schrieb Jochen Stremmel <
jstremmel at gmail.com>:

> The more I think about it the less I feel it's unfortunate.
>
> But perhaps you were being ironic and I'm being a bit thick.
>
> And the review was funny, thanks!
>
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>