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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 May 2021 07.04 EDT Last modified on Fri 7 May 2021 12.43 EDT There’s a scene in Mare of Eastto...

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 can't be understood outside the context of their times. So I'd already decided not to bother with Blake Bailey's ballyhooed new book, Philip Roth: The Biography—even though Roth was a friendly acquaintance who'd given me help and encouragement way back when. After all, his novels were semi-autobiographical; his memoirs a veritable hall of mir...

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. Tagging myself was easy. Clearly I was the harried Zoom mom clad in pajamas, flying out the front door ...

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.