Rehabilitation of a great stylist

WHEN PHILIP ROTH SENT Alfred Kazin a copy of The Facts, Kazin told Roth he was in “awe” of his brilliance. He reserved his real feelings for his diary. The book was, Kazin wrote, no more than “the latest issue in the plentiful long-standing journal of PR’s every moment, love, emotion and visit to the analyst”.

As it happens, I think Roth’s “novelist’s autobiography” one of his most fizzing examinations of the stories that construct our various selves. But even Roth’s most devout fan would have to concede Kazin’s point. No novelist mined his private life for material more deeply than Philip Roth.

Here to prove the point is . It’s a magnificent book — sedulous, scrupulous, fair-minded, reassuringly elegant in tone — everything Roth, who gave Blake Bailey the gig after Hermione Lee dropped out, could have hoped for. Still, anyone familiar with Roth’s work will already know the story Bailey tells.