Book World: 'Philip Roth,' by Blake Bailey, is a colorful, confident and uncompromising biographical triumph Alexander C. Kafka, The Washington Post April 6, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail By Blake Bailey - - - A seasoned literary biographer is tasked with writing the life story of a prickly, reclusive and renowned novelist whose work revels in alter-egos and funhouse transformations of his personal history. That sounds like the plot of a Philip Roth novel! But in 2012, it happened to Blake Bailey and the subject was Roth himself - the man who helped liberate American Jewish characters from underdog and mensch status; brought adolescent male lust and general bodily functions, pleasures and decay into high-resolution narrative focus; and, with "The Plot Against America," augured the rise of Donald Trump.