Why the Other Philip Roth Bio Never Took Off
Ten years ago, at Philip Roth’s urging, his agent, Andrew Wylie, informed the literary critic and academic Ira Nadel “that he didn’t have permission to quote from Roth’s work, nor would any of Roth’s friends and associates cooperate in any way” with Nadel’s planned biography. When Nadel’s Philip Roth: A Counterlife came out in March, it received very few and generally indifferent reviews. The Wylie item comes from the other new Roth biography, the one that has been generating public attention: the “authorized” version by Blake Bailey. As is well known, that attention has come in two segments—before and after several women came forward with detailed allegations that Bailey had sexually assaulted them.
Outrage, disgust, finger-pointing, and justice-seeking all make sense as responses to the ongoing Bailey-Roth scandal. But why did
