(np) Forward review of Bailey/Roth

[Mark Kohut]

Wolcott o'erwrites because he can't handle the simple truths. What sly
awful associationism, just the latest as
he surely rides the words of others who so stupidly want to link these two
as criminals....

On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 5:52 PM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> “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
> >
> --
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>