Editors' Note

Abstract

Editors' Note Aimee Pozorski and Maren Scheurer Soon after news broke of the scandal of blake bailey, philip roth's official biographer, we were inundated with many versions of the same question: Will Philip Roth be "canceled"? The question seemed to be motivated by a concern that Bailey's scandals with women—grooming and sexual assault, to name a few—would be connected to the scandals of Roth himself. It is, if not ironic, then at least telling, that Roth famously wrote about "cancel culture" before it entered our lexicon. His 2000 novel, The Human Stain, for example, features a protagonist, Coleman Silk, who is canceled (to use the language of the twenty-first century) for misusing the word "spooks" when describing three prodigal students he never met. Twenty years later, readers, academics, journalists, and fans started to wonder whether the same was true for Philip Roth regarding his poor choice in biographer that, some said, reflected his attitudes toward women. This fallout occurred shortly after the Newark Public Library launched its unparalleled Philip Roth Personal Library—featuring volumes from Roth's home libraries—and leaders in the city of Newark began planning a Philip Roth Festival to commemorate what would have been Roth's ninetieth birthday. In response to these questions about the future of Roth's legacy, we gave a resounding answer: No. Of course, Roth will not be "canceled." There was no way we could imagine one of the most important writers of his generation going away any time soon, and surely not in response to scandalous books, or scandals surrounding books. Then again, of course we can never be sure. History, and literary legacy, are equal measures fickle and unpredictable. But we think it is safe to say, at least by the printing of this issue, that Roth remains more relevant than ever. As a powerful indication of how Roth has not lost value in the academy, in 2020, the Philip Roth Society decided to present the Siegel/McDaniel Award for graduate research to two candidates because of the high quality of the papers in the competition. Both Siegel/McDaniel winners printed in this issue submitted outstanding essays concerned with how Roth's work is in conversation with a younger generation of writers and important new fields in cultural studies, such as food and affect. A close reading of all of the essays in this issue not only shows that Roth is not canceled, but also why and how that must be so. The essays, while not comprising a special issue or planned to take such a unifying approach, all address versions of the same themes: Roth's perpetual questioning of the status quo, his infamous bristling at rules and conventions, his keen awareness of the link between thought and [End Page 1] embodiment, his celebration of critical thinking, and his worries about the effects of accepting bad policy and misreadings of our founding documents as truth. These themes, of course, made Roth famous in the 1960s, when the US and the world were on the verge of social and political upheavals. A generation later, we seem on the precipice of another significant turning point, when we still need thinkers and activists to take to the streets and the page. Roth knew this better than anyone. In the wake of scandals all over the world, not least of which have been televised in the United States as the country attempts to grapple with the 2021 coup at the Capitol and the conservative backlash at the Supreme Court, the scholars published in the pages of this journal continue to find value in Roth's uncanny ability to showcase the best of us, even when writing about the worst. We hope you take heart in reading the essays in this issue, essays that at once recognize the significance of the written word and the literary language of revolt. In this way, we will have done our own small part to help reposition Roth as an indispensable voice, not only in 1959 or in 1969 or in 1995 or in 2010, but right here, today, when we once again seem to be on the verge of transformational change...