Page 20 - Blake Bailey News Today

The I’m-done-with-it energy of Mare of Easttown has resonated because it reflects exactly how so many of us feel ‘It’s irritability, crossness, the oh-for-God’s-sake, complete lack of surprise when the latest outrage comes along.’ Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown. Photograph: AP ‘It’s irritability, crossness, the oh-for-God’s-sake, complete lack of surprise when the latest outrage comes along.’ Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown. Photograph: AP Fri 7...

Philip Roth As a rule, I read few biographies, and certainly not of authors, people whose most significant life events are spent alone. In my case, Churchill, Swift, and Dostoyevsky are the exceptions that prove the rule; world-historical figures who cant be understood outside the context of their times. So Id already decided not to bother with Blake Baileys ballyhooed new book, Philip Roth: The Biography—even though Roth was a friendly acquaintance whod given me help and encouragement way ...

The Interpreter It’s okay. You can take a break. Pay no attention to that giant stack of newspapers. (Extra Gum) In a cathartic new ad for Extra gum called “For When It’s Time,” a horde of hairy, disheveled shut-ins learn that “We are back! We can see people again,” and burst from their trash-filled lairs like a bunch of Brood X cicadas, to mate and cavort and, of course, chew gum. “Tag yourself, I’m the carrying her heels in her hand,” one acquaintance wrote on Twitter. Tag...

The article was provoked by the recent controversy surrounding the decision by publisher W.W. Norton, in response to unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, to remove Blake Bailey’s biography of novelist Philip Roth from print, essentially to “pulp” the book.

Ben Williams considers the hows and whys of owning books that you ought not to.

Given the accusations of abuse made against Blake Bailey, Gene Lyons writes, he has no interesting “at all” in reading Bailey’s Philip Roth biography. As a rule, I read few biographies, and certainly not of authors, people whose most significant life events are spent alone. In my case, Churchill, Swift and Dostoyevsky are the exceptions that prove the rule: world historical figures who can’t be understood outside the context of their times. So I’d already decided not to bother with B...

May 6, 2021 Blake Bailey’s new book about Philip Roth was taken out of print by the publisher after Bailey was accused of rape and attempted rape and “grooming” his teenage students for sex with him when they reached 18. Nation columnist Also: Literature, art, and the idea of ‘freedom’ during the Cold War, from George Orwell to James Baldwin to The Family of Man: Louis Menand has been thinking about all of this. His new book is The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. Men...

Or are they? We’re seeing a worrisome trend in which publishers are pressured to either pull books from publication or cancel book contracts because of accusations made against the authors. And publishers are caving in. Historically, when books have been attacked, the assault has come from right-wing scolds. But this time the attacks are largely coming from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, launched by people who would never imagine themselves as threats to free speech. Their a...

The Atlantic There’s value in knowing what the subject wanted told about himself. 6:30 AM ET Adam Maida / The Atlantic Ten years ago, at Philip Roth’s urging, his agent, Andrew Wylie, informed the literary critic and academic Ira Nadel “that he didn’t have permission to quote from Roth’s work, nor would any of Roth’s friends and associates cooperate in any way” with Nadel’s planned biography. When Nadel’s Philip Roth: A Counterlife came out in March, it received very few and ...

This book has been cancelled Blake Bailey’s new book on Philip Roth has been withdrawn by its US publisher after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against the biographer. Should the work be judged by the standards of the life? One of the most striking elements of the allegations against the celebrated literary biographer Blake Bailey was the speed and fervency of his denial. Over the course of recent weeks, Bailey, 57, whose biography of Philip Roth was published last month, has bee...