L IFESTYLE /C ULTURE
Continued from Page 18
www.jewishexponent.com LEGAL SERVICES
ATTORNEYS! documented, personal scorn
of Richard Nixon, Gershom
Scholem and Nicole Kidman?
Regardless, Bailey succeeds
in this respect, writing with a
grace and skill that makes 800
pages fl y.

Roth was 26 when he published
his first novel, “Goodbye,
Columbus,” and given the heavy
overlap between Roth’s personal
and artistic life — a theme that
Bailey returns to frequently — it’s
a fool’s errand to speak of Roth’s
life, career and fi ction as cleanly
distinct from one another.

Roth tried in vain to make
that distinction even as he wrote
book aft er book about philan-
dering Jewish writers from
Newark, occasionally named
Philip Roth. He never made a
convincing case; from “Th e Ghost
Writer” to “Portnoy’s Complaint”
to “I Married A Communist,”
plot points and characters are
clearly taken from his personal
life, and his protagonists’ insights
are imbued with unmistak-
able Roth-ness in content and
articulation. Books
Continued from Page 18
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26 APRIL 15, 2021
fi nds his country shunning
him at every turn. Determined
to fi nd answers, he begins
boarding train aft er train,
crisscrossing the place he once
thought of as home.

Th us, the story has some
eerie insight into the centrality
of the train in what was to come.

Th e sometimes-frantic prose is
a testament to the period of its
composition — the weeks aft er
Kristallnacht — but there are
fully formed ideas, characters
and stories here.

“The People’s Painter:
How Ben Shahn Fought for
Justice with Art” (April 20)
Written by Cynthia
Levinson; illustrated by
Evan Turk
JEWISH EXPONENT
And so when he publishes
“Goodbye, Columbus,” and
becomes Philip Roth, novelist,
the distinction between writer
and person that was easier to
make about a Ph.D. student
evaporates. When the book was
lambasted by the ADL, the
Rabbinical Council of America
and countless letter writers,
accusing of him of having
sullied the name of American
Jews in the name of self-ha-
tred, enrichment or some other
nefarious reason, he reacted as
if he was personally insulted,
because he had been. When
foes at Th e New York Times
passed down negative reviews
of his novellas without passing
judgment on him personally,
he also reacted as if he’d been
personally insulted.

Roth as Misogynist, a label
that dogged him as a person and
a writer for his entire career, is
given an extensive hearing, and
for good reason: He did a lot of
hateful things toward women,
and the women in his novels
could be broadly drawn sex
objects, nags or shrews.

His relationship with Claire
Bloom, chronicled in her explo-
sive 1996 memoir, accused
him of emotional abuse and
manipulation, among other
off enses. Roth worried that her
book would be the fi nal word
on the subject of his relation-
ship toward women, and given
Bailey’s partisanship in this
arena, this book can occasion-
ally read like Roth’s personal
riposte to Bloom and all women,
as when Bailey calls the journal
of Roth’s fi rst wife “a pretty
insipid piece of writing.”
Th ere’s so much more to be
said on all of these subjects.

Every U.S. literary magazine and
newspaper with a books section
has written about this book in
the past few weeks, but no single
review has widened the lens
enough to capture the fullness
of Roth’s life and work. Th ere
is too much to be said about his
qualities as a writer, as a Jew, as a
man, as a celebrity.

Luckily, there was one guy
with the space to say it, so this
really is a book worthy of being
called “Th e Biography.” ●
Th is is a sweet, beautifully illus-
trated book. Turk takes Shahn’s
art as a clear inspiration without
mimicking the source material
too closely, and Levinson’s story
of a growing political and artistic
conscience seems pretty acces-
sible to young readers. For the
budding Ben Shahn in your life.

A mysterious message from a
stranger throws it all into fl ux. ●
“At The End of the World,
Turn Left” (April 20)
Zhanna Slor
I came into this book
knowing nothing about the
writer or her work and came
out wanting to know a lot
more about both.

Slor’s novel is about a pair
of Jewish sisters born in the
USSR but still trying to fi nd
their place in the world. One
of them thinks it’s Israel, and
the other one has no idea what
it might be, except that it isn’t
her hometown of Milwaukee.

jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
Courtesy of Agora Books
Roth Courtesy of Abrams Books
for Young Readers
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