fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Blake Bailey Injustice

Moral McCarthyites and a gutless publisher are destroying the career of Philip Roth biographer
Screen Shot 2021-04-22 at 7.16.01 PM

This is unjust:

Earlier this month, the biographer Blake Bailey was approaching what seemed like the apex of his literary career. Reviews of his highly anticipated Philip Roth biography appeared before the book came out, with major stories in magazines and literary publications. It landed on the New York Times best-seller list this week.

Now, allegations against Mr. Bailey, 57, have emerged, including claims that he sexually assaulted two women, one as recently as 2015, and that he behaved inappropriately toward middle school students when he was a teacher in the 1990s.

His publisher, W.W. Norton, took swift and unusual action: It said on Wednesday that it had stopped shipments and promotion of his book. “These allegations are serious,” it said in a statement. “In light of them, we have decided to pause the shipping and promotion of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ pending any further information that may emerge.”

Norton, which initially printed 50,000 copies of the title, has stopped a 10,000-copy second printing that was scheduled to arrive in early May. It has also halted advertising and media outreach, and events that Norton arranged to promote the book are being canceled. The pullback from the publisher came just days after Mr. Bailey’s literary agency, The Story Factory, said it had dropped him as a client.

In an email Wednesday night, Mr. Bailey denied the allegations, calling them “categorically false and libelous.” A lawyer for Mr. Bailey, Billy Gibbens, said in an email that his client “disagrees with Norton’s decision to stop promoting his book.” Some of the allegations were reported earlier by The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate and The Los Angeles Times.

An acclaimed literary biographer of masters like Richard Yates, John Cheever and Charles Jackson and the author of a memoir of his own, Mr. Bailey has received the Guggenheim Fellowship and was a Pulitzer finalist for his Cheever biography. Mr. Roth handpicked him to write the biography after meeting with him in 2012; he terminated an earlier agreement with another biographer in 2009.

Read it all. It seems like there may be something to these allegations, but at this point, that’s all they are: allegations. On the basis of misconduct allegations from years ago, a publisher has withdrawn a major literary biography. The journalist David Rieff, in his new Substack newsletter, comments:

I have absolutely no idea if the accusations made against Bailey are true or false. What interests me is that despite nothing having yet been proven against him, Bailey has in the course of a couple of days been fired by his literary agency, the Story Factory, which announced that it had terminated its association with him “immediately after we learned of the disturbing allegations.” Bailey’s publisher, W. W. Norton was equally quick to distance themselves from him, announcing that not only would it stop promoting the Roth biography, but that it was also halting further shipments of copies of it to booksellers and wholesalers, this even though the biography is already on the best-seller lists. This would continue, Norton said in a statement, “pending any further information that may emerge.” [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/21/publisher-halts-philip-roth-book-amid-sexual-abuse-claims-against-biographer]

Again, Bailey may be guilty of everything the women who have come forward accuse him of having done to them. But neither his literary agency nor his publisher are making any such claim. Quite the contrary: both the Story Factory’s and Norton’s public announcements about the matter are entirely straightforward in saying that they just don’t know. The Story Factory speaks of having terminated Bailey because of “disturbing allegations” [italics mine] while the Norton statement speaks of halting promotion and distribution pending any information that may emerge.” [again, italics mine] In other words, far from being a presumption of innocence, as obviously there would have to be in a court of law, but also not so long ago would have governed a literary agency’s or a publisher’s relationship with an author accused of wrongdoing, there is a de facto presumption of the author’s guilt.

More:

There is another word for this: censorship. For writers are not sports figure and publishers and literary agencies are not – or at least were not – commercial sponsors. That this distinction appears not to have any importance either for the Story Factory or for Norton is an emblem of the moralistic mindlessness of the times. And in my view, anyone who believes that this cultural moment in which censorship has regained its centrality and self-righteousness again become the default position of the American cultural establishment will end any time soon is deluding themselves. Instead, we are entering a Woke version of the Victorian Age, or post-Hays Code Hollywood, in which censorship will be the norm, not the exception.

In historical perspective, there is nothing particularly surprising about this. After all, those who had been adults in the late-18th century never really adapted to the moralism of the 19th century. That’s what Talleyrand meant when he said that those who had not lived before the French Revolution had not known the sweetness of life. It took the First World War to break the Victorian moral consensus. My hunch is that the increasing consensus that a writer or an artist’s moral character, and political and increasingly racial and gender bona fides, should determine whether they are published or exhibited, celebrated or ignored, will grow stronger not weaker in the decades to come. Obviously, the Internet makes it possible to publish or exhibit one’s work, so technically one is not being censored. But the traditional venues still hold sway in the cultural-academic-philanthropic complex, and will, I think, for the foreseeable future. And in those contexts, morals clauses, whether de facto or de jure, will become commonplace. It will, after all, all be done in the name of elementary decency and compassion for and solidarity with victims. Nothing surprising there either: censorship has always claimed the moral warrant of being undertaken for the greater good.

Read the whole thing — and subscribe to Desire and Fate, the Rieff Substack, which is going to be quite good.

He’s right about the Bailey affair. Even if these allegations against Bailey turn out to be true, why on earth should that cause Norton to withdraw the book about Philip Roth? Are we really prepared to welcome a culture that judges art based on the personal moral qualities of the artist? How many books, movies, paintings, and other works of art, or even of journalism, would be left?

This is a very dangerous moment, culturally. We saw this with how Simon & Schuster collapsed in the face of protest, and withdrew Woody Allen’s memoir, based on allegations that Allen vigorously denied. All it takes now is for the right people to make the right kind of accusations, and potentially important books disappear. I have never read Philip Roth, and am unlikely ever to read Philip Roth. But Roth was a major novelist, and he absolutely deserves to have his biography, written by his handpicked biographer, available to those who care about his life and literary legacy.

If Blake Bailey has committed crimes against these women, then he should be held accountable in court. But these disturbing accusations have nothing at all to do with his Roth biography, and it is gutless of Norton to withdraw this book on the basis of what are, as of now, mere allegations. And even if they are proven true, vis-à-vis the book, so what? You don’t have to admire Blake Bailey to appreciate his Roth biography, or anything else he has written. Ernest Hemingway was terrible to women, but his novels were immense accomplishments. Joan Crawford was a horrible bitch of a mother, but we don’t admire her acting because she was a good mommy. If you knew about the private lives of journalists whose work you watch or read every day or week, you might admire them less, but would that have anything to do with how well they report and write?

What the hell is wrong with people, these moral McCarthyites of the Left? Does anyone in institutional authority have the backbone to stand up to them? How many people’s careers will end up being destroyed, and what kind of terrible cost will be inflicted on the world of art and letters, before this hysteria burns itself out? If you’re a writer or artist and think they won’t come for you, you’re dreaming.

UPDATE: Just a note to you all from your extremely frustrated blog host. I have been struggling mightily with the Disqus comments for these past two days. It keeps spitting back up comments that I’ve approved multiple times, and removing others that I’ve also approved. I’m completely fed up with it. We are doing a redesign of the website, and I’ve already put in a forceful plug for getting rid of this horrible commenting system.

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now