David Baddiel

Philip Roth — most meta of novelists, and most honest

His entire oeuvre is a series of romans-à clef, and he was ‘incapable of dissembling his human essence’, says Blake Bailey

Roth, photographed with a portrait of Kafka for a feature by Albert Goldman in Life Magazine, February 1969. Credit: Bob Peterson 
issue 03 April 2021
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  • Philip Roth: The Biography

    Blake Bailey

    Cape, pp. 918, £30

On page 532 of my preview copy of this biography of Philip Roth there is a footnote. In it, Blake Bailey quotes from Roth’s novel Deception, where the character of Philip Roth asks his mistress what she would do if she was approached after his death by a biographer. Would she talk to him? She replies she might, if he was intelligent and serious.

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