Philip roth

Don’t cancel Philip Roth

Philip Roth is the Hugh Hefner of the American novel: he is the playboy of fiction; he has built a house of pleasure. But now, according to some, it is time to demolish that house.  A new biography of Roth is about to come out, and some of the details in it are the ammo that Roth’s critics have been waiting for: they have been pounced on as proof that he is a ‘misogynist’ and that there should be no place for him in the era of MeToo. So what is Roth said to have done, according to Blake Bailey’s new authorised biography? Bailey describes Roth getting bored with his English

Michaela Coel’s dazzling finale reminds me of Philip Roth: I May Destroy You reviewed

It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently very fashionable indeed) and the late Philip Roth (increasingly discredited as an embodiment of all those phallocentric white guys who once ruled American fiction merely because they were great writers). Nonetheless, this week’s television made it hard not to. On Tuesday night, as an adaptation of Roth’s The Plot Against America began on Sky Atlantic, Coel’s I May Destroy You was serving up a dazzling final episode that confirmed how Rothian the series has been. For one thing, the main character Arabella, played by Coel herself, was — like many