Recently there’s been a big brouhaha about whether Philip Roth was a misogynist and/or a sexual predator, and whether his latest biographer is a sexual predator as well. As part of this kerfuffle, a new lengthy Roth biography (over 800 pages – I’m not sure even Philip Roth would care to read that much about himself) is being taken off the shelves.
Hey, why not burn it? Can’t be too careful, you know.
You may or may not like Roth’s novels, but of course this sort of present-day censorship goes way beyond Roth. Personally, I liked Roth’s early work and read most of it way back when, but later on he lost me. I don’t know when the turning point began for me or exactly why, but I think it had something to do with the fact that his later work bored me.
But perhaps I’ve missed some good books along the way. For example, I’d heard that The Human Stain might be one of them, but I never mustered up enough interest to wade through it. Now, looking at the book’s Amazon listing, I am surprised to see that the theme of the 2000 work is described this way:
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.
Sounds prescient, doesn’t it? Things like that were happening back then, but they seemed to be isolated incidents. Now they’re standard and common. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
It was about midway into his second semester back as a full-time professor that Coleman spoke the self-incriminating word that would cause him voluntarily to sever all ties to the college-the single self-incriminating word of the many millions spoken aloud in his years of teaching and administering at Athena, and the word that, as Coleman understood things, directly led to his wife’s death.
The class consisted of fourteen students. Coleman had taken attendance at the beginning of the first several lectures so as to learn their names. As there were still two names that failed to elicit a response by the fifth week into the semester, Coleman, in the sixth week, opened the session by asking, “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?”
Later that day he was astonished to be called in by his successor, the new dean of faculty, to address the charge of racism brought against him by the two missing students, who turned out to be black, and who, though absent, had quickly learned of the locution in which he’d publicly raised the question of their absence. Coleman told the dean, “I was referring to their possibly ectoplasmic character. Isn’t that obvious? These two students had not attended a single class. That’s all I knew about them. I was using the word in its customary and primary meaning: ‘spook’ as a specter or a ghost. I had no idea what color these two students might be. I had known perhaps fifty years ago but had wholly forgotten that ‘spooks’ is an invidious term sometimes applied to blacks. Otherwise, since I am totally meticulous regarding student sensibilities, I would never have used that word. Consider the context: Do they exist or are they spooks? The charge of racism is spurious. It is preposterous. My colleagues know it is preposterous and my students know it is preposterous. The issue, the only issue, is the nonattendance of these two students and their flagrant and inexcusable neglect of work. What’s galling is that the charge is not just false–it is spectacularly false.” Having said altogether enough in his defense, considering the matter closed, he left for home.
More at the link, in case you’re interested.
So here’s my two cents on the whole misogyny question. Not only had I originally read some of Roth’s early fiction, but I had read some of it as excerpts (short stories, actually) published in magazines before the books in which they later appeared were published. I no longer remember what periodicals I saw them in; this was probably close to fifty years ago.
One of these stories ended up as a chapter in Roth’s atypical 1967 novel When She Was Good. I used to own it, but somewhere along the line it got jettisoned, so I can’t read the chapter now to check and see what I think after the passage of so many years. The chapter was about the book’s main character Lucy, a good student from a poor and quite messed-up family who had gotten pregnant as a college freshman and was trying to decide what to do about it. When I first read the chapter as a short story, it was one of the most poignant and also hard-hitting examples of that dilemma I’ve ever seen, and it showed remarkable empathy with the girl.
I also recall being impressed by a chapter in Roth’s 1962 novel Letting Go. The chapter described an unhappy young woman’s first visit to a therapist, with dialogue. It was an example of empathy and insight into the pros and cons of what can happen in therapy to a vulnerable person, who happened in this case to be a woman.
I don’t see how an actual misogynist could have written either of those chapters. But even if he is a misogynist, so what? I don’t care. And I also don’t care if Roth wrote things that were offensive. Maybe his life was offensive, too. People are pretty complicated beings, and I have little doubt that Roth was very complicated, as well. My suggestion is quite simple: if you don’t like his work, don’t read him, and don’t read biographies about him.
But – as Roth himself seemed to be saying in The Human Stain – the woke simply can’t let us be.
