(np) Forward review of Bailey/Roth
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Sun May 30 09:02:30 UTC 2021
..."at times taking on a buddy tone with a fireplace glow".......No fucking
'fireplace glow' conceivable, I say, pure conceited fog of writing
innuendo...
but anyway........"at other times taking on a tone of necessary
presentation of shortcomings, a kind of serious breakfast chat to start
one's day"....
..."and a lawyer-like carefulness to prove or disprove Roth's own account
of events and happenings with outside verification"...
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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