Janet Malcolm, Mary Karr, Judith Thurman, Claire Bloom, John Updike, Primo Levi--these are the starry "supporting players" in a newish biography of Philip Roth.
When Roth spent time with Primo Levi, he imagined that Levi "had his act together." He wrongly inferred that Levi's marriage was functional. Later, when Levi committed suicide, Roth was reminded that we really do not know anything about one another. "We are wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. We carefully reconsider--and then we are wrong. That's how we know we are alive."
Roth was a terrible narcissist--he seemed to think he was entitled to a Nobel Prize. He spent some of his "last lap" drafting a bitter screed against Claire Bloom--only the intercession of a wise friend helped to ensure that the screed would not see the light of day. Roth cheated on Bloom, then wrote a book about his affairs--which caused Bloom to vomit. Roth then denied that there was any truth in the "fictional" work he had just produced.
Roth's main gift to other writers and artists was a sense of freedom. The subtext in any one of his books was this: "If I can be so free on the page, you can, too."
Firing my wad down the toilet bowl....or into the spoiled clothes in the laundry hamper.....Or else I was doubled up over my flying fist, eyes pressed closed but mouth wide open, to take that sticky sauce of buttermilk and Clorox on my own tongue....Through a world of matted handkerchiefs, I moved my raw and swollen penis, perpetually in dread that my loathsomeness would be discovered by someone stealing upon me just as I was in the frenzy of dropping my load....
The *big* books are these: "Portnoy," "The Ghost Writer," "The Counterlife," "Patrimony," "Exit Ghost." The critic Steven Zipperstein makes a compelling case for "Deception"; I might try that one, too. We'll see.
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