Testaments Betrayed: A Response to Those Wishing to Preserve Roth's Private Papers and Make Them Readily Available to Researchers

Abstract

Testaments BetrayedA Response to Those Wishing to Preserve Roth's Private Papers and Make Them Readily Available to Researchers James Duban (bio) Well before he died, philip roth relied on litchfield, connecticut, resident Russ Murdock—friend; stonemason; property caretaker; later, power-of-attorney holder over part of Roth's land and home; and ultimately Roth's gravestone sculptor—to burn "piles of pages […] in big bonfires in his backyard." Murdock did so faithfully, without, he reportedly said, even having "snuck a peek at what Roth brought him" (Zax). Such was friendship; such was integrity. Estate executors Andrew Wylie and Julia Golier should now similarly honor Roth's directive to destroy the personal papers Roth made available to Blake Bailey for the purpose of researching and composing Philip Roth: The Biography (2021). Although contrary opinion exists in calls for document preservation and scholarly access, Golier and Wylie might well grant Roth's wish: "There is a good chance we will destroy them. […] Andrew and I will decide when the time comes" (qtd. in Shephard). My own call for the destruction of the papers pertains—in the current absence of documentation to the contrary—to Roth's explicit wish for their destruction (as quoted below), and to the heretofore unnoted thoughts about "testaments betrayed" by Roth's longtime friend and fellow author, Milan Kundera. One might first dispel the claim that "[i]t's unclear what Roth's actual directives were" (Atler and Schuessler), along with passive-voice speculation that Roth's executors "are interpreted to be under Roth's direction to destroy archival material after it was seen by Bailey" (Helmore). To the contrary, Roth was unequivocal: "Once Blake Bailey has got what he needs, I've asked my executors—my agent, Andrew Wylie, and a friend who's a psychoanalyst, to destroy them after my death. I don't want my personal papers dragged all over of the place. No one has to read them" (qtd. in Kaprielian). [End Page 84] Little matter to some. As if multiple wrongs make a right, scholars cite precedent for ignoring the mandates of authors to destroy their papers: witness Virgil, Kafka, Hardy, Nabokov, and Larkin. Equally predictable in the world of polite scholarly discourse is the much-quoted lament that Roth's disposition prevents "access to these materials to add layers to the conversation" ("Statement"; see also Alter and Schuessler, Helmore). Roth, however, clearly favored monologue, not dialogue. Indeed his 2012 statement (above) from the Paris Review came in response to the explicit question, "How have you started to prepare your archives for after your death?" Roth's response contained no ambiguity. Even less compelling as a rationale for access—as pertains to Bailey's possible surrender of intimate material—is the accusation that Roth constructed "a deeply control-oriented arrangement" (Kelly). Perhaps he did; but what of it? What injunction concerning intellectual property or selective confidentiality does not do the same? And if such resolve is a disappointment to some, then more's the credit to an author who, fearing post-mortem ransacking by biographers, turns the tables on their invasion and leaves them to lament that "[d]arkness is never the proper condition for scholarly work, and in this case the glance has been cast back to the interpreter" (critic qtd. in Helmore). Checkmate! Game, Roth. Postmortem narrative consciousness at its best (see Parrish 127-28; Helmore). As suggested, however, and with recourse to the writings of Milan Kundera, more is at stake than Roth's "ghosting" home invaders. His championing of Kundera, and other writers from the Soviet-dominated "other Europe," is well known. Moreover, many books by Kundera have ended up in the Philip Roth Personal Library of the Newark Public Library. Among them is the British edition and translation of Testaments Betrayed, which has pertinence for the ultimate fate of Roth's personal papers. An apt introduction to Testaments Betrayed are the outlooks of Roth's close friend Bernard Avishai and of Roth scholar Timothy Parrish. The latter, in response to the fate of Roth's personal papers, has recently remarked, "the less we know of Roth's life the better his books seem"; hence, "Roth...