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Lead book review

Philip Roth — most meta of novelists, and most honest

Philip Roth was prepared to stare the soul resolutely in the face – and for that he can be forgiven most things, says David Baddiel

3 April 2021

9:00 AM

3 April 2021

9:00 AM

Philip Roth: The Biography Blake Bailey

Cape, pp.918, 30

On page 532 of my preview copy of this biography of Philip Roth there is a footnote. In it, Blake Bailey quotes from Roth’s novel Deception, where the character of Philip Roth asks his mistress what she would do if she was approached after his death by a biographer. Would she talk to him? She replies she might, if he was intelligent and serious.

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