His Own Ghost Writer: Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth

Abstract

His Own Ghost WriterBlake Bailey’s Philip Roth Timothy Parrish (bio) Blake Bailey. Philip Roth. Norton, 2021. 912 pp. $40.00 hardback. Perhaps the most important revelation of Blake Bailey’s controversial biography is something that we perhaps have long known, even without the confirming diagnosis of the subject’s psychiatrist, Hans J. Kleinschmidt: Philip Roth was a narcissist. One may also add, as Roth would surely wish us to, he was a narcissist who was a very gifted writer. Indeed, Roth would have us go further than that — he would want us to ask, who cares if the writer was a narcissist when all any reader should want is what the writer wrote? As a lifetime reader of Roth, I am sympathetic to the argument implied by that question. A biographer, however, must ignore arguments that distract from the life lived. Roth’s first appointed biographer, Ross Miller, seems to have challenged Roth’s premise. In an interview with one of Roth’s cousins, Miller was recorded speaking of Roth and his brother, Sandy, having “a predatory side. They look at women — and I’m not gonna write about this — but they are misogynist” (732). Unsurprisingly, when Roth got wind of such interviews, he refused him access to his papers and friends. He effectively fired him. Bailey, on the other, kept his post. It’s easy to see why. Throughout, Bailey is either at pains to defend Roth from charges of misogyny or eager to contextualize grievances so that the reader understands that the accuser has a grudge with Roth. His consistent line is that Roth was more sinned against than sinning. As Roth would wish him to do, he invokes Roth’s stature as a writer to justify and at the same time conceal his subject’s every malignant act. Nor does he critically examine Roth’s works to convey his aesthetic achievement or explain why Roth’s books remain and will remain worth reading. For this, he relies on reviewers and the awards on Roth’s shelf. Perhaps the most telling fact about the biography, given Roth’s many reprehensible acts and frequent jettisoning of close relationships that cease to serve him, is that Roth never fired Bailey. Indeed, I suspect Roth would be happy with the finished project and likely pleased that recent allegations of [End Page 126] his biographer’s misconduct have overshadowed his own. There is a reason Roth chose for his biographer one seemingly ignorant of the Judaism that shaped him. Roth doesn’t want us to know him — in any way that he himself has not sanctioned. A narcissist compartmentalizes his life so that those who know him only know him as he wishes to be known. If the friend or acquaintance violates that “knowing,” the friend is sacrificed — and often defamed — because the narcissist cannot stand exposure. Being revealed as he “really” is, as opposed to being seen through the mask that he presents the world, is so devastating to the narcissist that it can cause mental and physical breakdowns. One sees this pattern over and over in Bailey’s life of Roth, who is often described on the edge of suicide or a severe mental breakdown. The two most obvious cases are Roth’s ex-wives, Margaret Martinson and Claire Bloom, each of whom violated the implicit contract made with their husband, that is, never to reveal to the public any of his egregious acts. Miller committed the same offense. The challenge for the biographer of a narcissist is to see his subject in all of his guises and permutations. The result will likely not be pretty, since the narcissist’s every friendship is transactional and the image he presents with one friend or acquaintance likely contradicts the image he presents with other persons. And if the biographer is writing about a living subject and happens to know that living subject, the biographer’s tricky situation is to reveal the totality of the subject’s often monstrous behavior without the subject grasping his achievement until it is too late for the subject to stop him. In theory, Bailey had a remarkable opportunity to thread this moving needle since his...