Roth even hand-selected Bailey after parting with his previous biographer, whom Roth fired in 2009 over concerns that he wouldn’t have enough control over the final outcome of the book. Moreover, Roth had happily cooperated with Bailey on this biography before his death in 2018. In the New York Times, Cynthia Ozick described it as “Dostoyevskian” the Washington Post declared it “a triumph.” We might explain that reception through Bailey’s subject: Few living authors command the attitude of mythic reverence enjoyed by mid-20th-century white men of letters, and of those white men, Roth is the undisputed king. When Bailey’s Roth biography came out on April 6, it was greeted with unusual acclaim. In his biography of Philip Roth, Blake Bailey treats his subject’s misogyny with sympathetic accord The story being told about Blake Bailey right now is one of publishing’s institutional power being put to the service of powerful men. The book led to profiles in major magazines and landed on the New York Times bestseller list, a rare feat for a literary biography.Īnd in part, that’s because the story of the allegations against Bailey involves so many major publishing figures, culminating in an accusation of rape occurring in the home of one of the New York Times’s staff book critics. In part, that’s because Bailey’s biography of Roth, himself an especially complicated figure in the post-#MeToo era, was so successful. The allegations against Bailey have swept across the literary world. Reidhead said in a staff email obtained by the New York Times. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses,” Norton president Julia A. Norton also announced it would cease publishing Bailey’s 2014 memoir The Splendid Things We Planned. On April 27, it announced that it would take the biography entirely out of print, including in ebook and audiobook form. On April 21, Norton announced that it would cease to promote or print new copies of Bailey’s biography. Norton, rapidly distanced itself from him. Bailey was quickly dropped by his literary agency, the Story Factory, and his publisher, W.W. And then he used our trust in him against us in the cruelest and most intimate way possible.Blake Bailey, the author of a much-discussed new biography of Philip Roth, has been accused of sexual assault and grooming in a series of articles by the New York Times and the Times-Picayune. “Even those of us hurt by him still loved him on some level. “His behavior was something of an open secret, and it absolutely followed a pattern and was textbook grooming, but no one ever said anything,” Peyton said about Bailey in a letter reviewed by the L.A. In response to the specific accusations, Gibbens wrote Tuesday to the L.A. Times, noting that at the time she considered Bailey “so old.” “He was gross to me,” Gelini said Tuesday to the L.A. All of his students had to keep a personal journal for the class and were encouraged to include intimate details. Jessie Wightkin Gelini, an arts teacher in New Orleans who was in Bailey’s Lusher class in 1999-2000, told this paper that Bailey serenaded his “class pets,” gave them cutesy nicknames, got too close to them and touched them. Peyton and an unnamed classmate both told the New Orleans outlet that when they were younger, Bailey checked in on their love lives and asked frequently about their virginity, saying, “Have you punched your V-card yet?” Books Philip Roth biographer Blake Bailey dropped by agent over ‘grooming’ allegationsīlake Bailey called allegations of sexual misconduct, which first surfaced at the end of a blog post about his new book, “totally false.”
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