Blake Bailey, _Philip Roth: The Life_ (1)

WHAT A MESS, eh? "I don't want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting," Roth apparently told Bailey; Bailey uses it as his epigraph. Even so, the reader gets a very palpable feeling that Roth saw this biography as a keystone in his posthumous reputation, not only giving Bailey full access to his papers and Boswellian amounts of conversation time, but also telling him whom to  interview and even what questions to ask. Roth knew Bailey had serious biographical chops (very evident in the Cheever bio). Roth also knew, perhaps, that Bailey would take a worldly, men-will-be-men position on Roth's treatment of his two wives and many, many mistresses, a point on which Roth likely knew he needed some rehabilitation, especially after Claire Bloom's memoir.

Except now it turns out that Blake Bailey, accused of rape and grooming his middle school students for later seduction, now has no credibility whatsoever as a witness for the defense, so far as predatory behavior or misogyny goes.

What's going to happen to this book? I imagine most research libraries have already bought it. Another publisher picked it up after Norton dropped it, but all those Pulitzer and National Book Award visions are flaming like the Hindenburg. Some folks will still read it, I expect. I'm reading it.

I haven't finished it--I'm about 250 pages in--but I would have to say it's quite good. I've already gotten the impression, though, that Bailey decided to just give Roth a pass on the question of marital fidelity, for instance. Roth could be generous, thoughtful, stimulating company, and emotionally supportive to his women friends, but he was not going to be faithful, and he was not going to give anything in his life higher priority than his work. As a husband, he barely gets a passing grade.

To my mind, though, that takes nothing away from the fiction. He did not do right by many of the women in his life, but he does tend to do right by his women characters--does right by them as fictional characters, that is, in that they're always interesting. 

Consider Maggie Martinson, his first wife, traces of whom turn up in Marge of Letting Go, Lucy in When She Was Good, the Monkey in Portnoy's Complaint, and Maureen in My Life as a Man, and who appears as herself in The Facts. He ended up loathing her, but her fictional avatars are always fascinating, surprising, resourceful, and quick off the mark, always as least as interesting as their Roth-resembling male counterparts. 

I think of Nathan Zuckerman's postscript to The Facts, pointing out that he, the character, is much more  interesting than Roth, the writer, is, and that Roth should stick to writing about Zuckerman. When Roth was writing of Roth, he succumbed to the temptation to present himself as a nice guy, according to Zuckerman--and Zuckerman (fictional though he is!) had a point. Roth's characters are always more interesting than the people they are based on, even the ones based on Roth himself. Roth gave Bailey an impossible assignment--Roth as presented by Roth, which is what the book turned into, was never going to be as interesting as a Roth character.