Book Review: Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth, by Benjamin Taylor (2020)

 

Cover of Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth, by Benjamin Taylor, 2020. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor, with my Roth books in the background.)

Philip Roth had acclaim and renown as a brilliant writer from the moment his first book Goodbye, Columbus appeared in 1959. Despite decades of literary fame and winning just about every literary prize imaginable (except for the Nobel Prize) Roth never became a public figure the same way that authors like Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal did. You weren’t going to find Roth on Johnny Carson, kibitzing about his latest novel. There remained an aura of mystery around Philip Roth.

 

Roth’s official biographer, Blake Bailey, will publish his tome about Roth in April 2021. Until then, for a look at the man behind the novels, we have Benjamin Taylor’s memoir Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth. Published in May 2020, Here We Are gives us some sense of what Philip Roth was like as a person.

 

Taylor and Roth first met in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that they really became friends. They remained close until Roth’s death in 2018. One of the more vivid parts of the book is Taylor recounting how many people came to see Roth in the hospital during his final days. Ex-lovers of Roth’s showed up at his deathbed! That’s like a scene, well, out of a Philip Roth novel:

 

“Lying on the hospital bed, Zuckerman inhaled sharply. There stood Jennifer. Sweet, proud Jennifer. He didn’t know it at the time they met, but she would be his last lover. It was at one of his readings. An upscale bookstore on the Upper West Side, filled with millennials noshing on overpriced bagels. He looked up from a paragraph, and suddenly, she was there. In the fourth row, her auburn hair falling loosely around her shoulders, her dress revealing a hint of décolletage. They chatted after the reading as she got her book signed. She told him how much she had liked his book about his friend Swede Levov. She seemed slightly shy; she told him she was a writer herself. ‘I’d be interested to read your work,’ he told her. It wasn’t a lie. He asked for her email address, and she rummaged around her too-large purse, searching for a pen. He laughed ‘There’s pens right here, on the table.’ ‘Of course, how silly of me!’ She mimed smacking herself on the forehead. He told her she should wait around for him; he’d like to talk to her more. After he finished signing for the long line of people, they went out for a drink. They became lovers that night.

 

“To see her here now, in the hospital, seemed to him like a great cosmic joke. She seemed so vital, the very picture of healthful youth. His eyes, dark and still expressive, darted around the hospital room before they drew her in. Even now, he still strained to get a look at her calf muscles.”

 

What Here We Are is missing are the mundane, quotidian details that would paint a more vivid picture of the friendship between Roth and Taylor. With a two-decade age gap, the relationship inevitably tilts towards mentor and protégé. Taylor is a writer as well, a fact that he barely brings up in the book. You need to be brutally honest when you’re writing a memoir, and yet Taylor holds too much about himself back. We learn little about Taylor throughout the book. Presumably, Taylor doesn’t have a husband, or a long-time partner, as he’s able to spend so much of his time hanging out with Philip. He seems to be practically at Roth’s beck and call.

 

Here We Are humanizes Roth, which means that we see his bad side as well—the pettiness, continually seeking revenge on those who have seemingly wronged him. Why is it that so many writers seem intent on holding onto grudges? Taylor informs us that even after Roth announced he had stopped writing fiction in 2012, he was still writing non-fiction aimed at settling scores. Roth gave Taylor two manuscripts, “Notes for My Biographer” and “Notes on a Scandal Monger” that were takedowns of Roth’s first official biographer, Ross Miller, who Roth decided was not up to the task, and Roth’s ex-wife, the actress Claire Bloom, who had published Leaving a Doll’s House, a memoir of her life with Roth that put him in a most unflattering light. (Sidenote: Claire Bloom was married to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth. Interesting pairing.) After Roth’s death, Taylor deposited the manuscripts at the Princeton University Library, so perhaps future scholars can page through them and see if there’s anything interesting.

 

Taylor reveals more about Roth’s health problems than I was previously aware of. Taylor tells us that Roth had three spinal fusion surgeries in the last 15 years of his life. (p.163) Yikes. In 1982, when Roth was 49, doctors told him that he had “a fraction of normal cardiac function.” (p.164) Roth spent the next few years dreading that his heart might suddenly stop. Finally, in 1989, Roth had a quintuple bypass. (Why this wasn’t done in 1982, I don’t understand.) Taylor posits that this bypass gave Roth a new lease on life and was to some degree responsible for the late-career blossoming of his talent. I think Taylor is onto something. Presumably freed from some of the dread about his health, Roth let his imagination run wild again, and set off on his most triumphant run of novels.

 

Taylor also lets us know that Roth slept with the actress Ava Gardner in London. Taylor writes in an aside, “I tell you this, reader, in strict confidence.” (p.75) Which is a ridiculous thing to write, since he’s writing it in a book! Anyway, this solves a minor mystery for me, as it now becomes clear that Ava Gardner was the model for Caesara O’Shea, the fading movie star Nathan Zuckerman has a one-night stand with in Zuckerman Unbound.

 

For fans of Roth, I’d also recommend James Atlas’ audiobook Remembering Roth, published through Audible. It’s another story of a younger writer’s friendship with Roth, and how it eventually soured.

Philip Roth, 1933-2018

Philip Roth, 1933-2018. Pictured in 2012, he's reading Ike's Bluff, by Evan Thomas.

Philip Roth died on Tuesday at the age of 85. It’s been a bad ten days for my favorite writers. Like Tom Wolfe, Philip Roth was someone I had read about for many years before I actually started reading his work. I read the novella “Goodbye, Columbus” in 1999, just after graduating from high school. It was in the textbook for a class called “Short Novels,” although we didn’t actually read “Goodbye, Columbus” in the class. I liked “Goodbye, Columbus” when I first read it, but for whatever reason I didn’t read any more of Roth’s work until I read his 2010 novel Nemesis, which would prove to be his last book. (I reviewed Nemesis here.) The book struck a nerve with me, and I found it fascinating. I then went on something of a Roth binge, as I re-read Goodbye, Columbus, which I reviewed here, and then read several of his other books, like The Great American Novel, American Pastoral, Portnoy’s Complaint, Zuckerman Unbound, and his 1988 memoir, The Facts. In a long piece that I’m especially proud of, I wrote about the various connections between Portnoy’s Complaint, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Facts. 

Roth wrote about himself, of course, but he was also astute and perceptive about the United States. His novels tell us much about American life during the late 20^th century. Roth was funny, biting, moving, and always interesting. His career had a fascinating trajectory. He was anointed as an important writer from the very beginning. Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus, won the National Book Award in 1960. He was quickly known as a “writer to watch.” However, his follow up novels, Letting Go and When She Was Good, did not light up the best-seller lists. 

Things changed for Roth in 1969 when the uproariously ribald Portnoy’s Complaint was published. It was a huge hit, and also condemned by many as utter filth. Roth didn’t produce another hit like Portnoy during the 1970’s, and even into the 1980’s it seemed that he might be remembered as someone who peaked early and produced decent, in unspectacular, work regularly after that. And then, something funny happened. In the 1990’s, as he moved into his 60’s, he started turning out one acclaimed book after another. In 1995 he won another National Book Award for Sabbath’s Theater. In 1998 he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for American Pastoral. Suddenly, Roth was being acclaimed as the Great American Novelist of his time. There have been few other American writers, if any, who could match Roth’s late blooming productivity and critical acclaim. In the 20 year period from 1990 to 2010, Roth published 15 books. That’s a huge number for a serious literary author. 

One interesting difference between Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe is how Roth was embraced by the literary establishment in a way that Wolfe never was. Wolfe never won the Pulitzer Prize, or any other of the major awards that Roth seemed to collect as easily as baseball cards. I would assume that some of that is due to the fact that Wolfe started his career as a journalist, and only moved to writing fiction when he was in his 50’s. I think some people always thought of Wolfe as a journalist, a category that they consider below fiction. And it may not have helped Wolfe’s case that he basically told fiction writers that they were missing the boat during the 1960’s and 1970’s—that most of the really great writing done about America during that era was done by authors who could be grouped together under the banner of New Journalism. 

What Roth and Wolfe had in common was their iconoclasm. They were never afraid to shake things up, and question the status quo. Both suffered the slings and arrows of outraged critics. Roth had to fend off attacks from Jewish critics that he was a self-hating Jew. He has long been criticized by feminist authors and critics as being a misogynist. Wolfe had to fend off attacks from writers like Norman Mailer and John Updike, who both essentially said that his 1998 novel A Man in Full wasn’t literature. 

I found the 2013 American Masters documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked, to be a fascinating look at the author. In it, Roth comes across as quite funny and down to earth. Thanks to the documentary, I also learned that Philip Roth was left-handed, which was another reason for me to like him.

Book Review: "Goodbye, Columbus," by Philip Roth (1959)

"Goodbye, Columbus", by Philip Roth, 1959.

Philip Roth, 1960's.

I recently read Philip Roth’s first book, “Goodbye, Columbus,” which includes the novella-length title piece and five short stories. First published in 1959, “Goodbye, Columbus” won the National Book Award the following year. The book’s critical reception placed Roth at the top of a list of young literary talent.  

“Goodbye, Columbus” details the summer romance between Neil Klugman and Brenda Patimkin. Neil is a recent college graduate working at a library, and Brenda is a college student at Radcliffe. Neil and Brenda are both Jewish, but her family is much more financially successful than his is. The difference between their families is pronounced, but the Patimkins are friendly to Neil, and even let him stay in their house for a week towards the end of the summer. 

Neil and Brenda quickly become lovers, and Neil gets way too hung up on persuading Brenda to get a diaphragm. She eventually acquiesces to his wishes, even though she doesn’t really want to get a diaphragm. For her part, Brenda is too hung up on having Neil be whatever she wants to him to be, not what he actually is. This is partly Neil’s fault, as he doesn’t stand up for himself as much as he should. When he vacations at the Patimkin house, Brenda makes him get up and run every morning because she wants him to, not because he seems to have any desire to. Like a lot of young romances, they are both trying too hard to shape the other person into their ideal rather than accepting the other person for who they are. 

One exchange that reveals this occurs as Neil and Brenda stretch in preparation for running. She says to him:

“’You know,’ Brenda said, ‘you look like me. Except bigger.’

We were dressed similarly, sneakers, sweat socks, khaki Bermudas, and sweat shirts, but I had the feeling that Brenda was not talking about the accidents of our dress-if they were accidents. She meant, I was sure, that I was somehow beginning to look the way she wanted me to. Like herself.” (P. 50)

Not surprisingly, Neil and Brenda’s relationship does not last much longer than the summer, as after Brenda goes back to college, her mother finds Brenda’s diaphragm hidden in her dresser. Needless to say, the Patimkins are shocked at what’s been happening right under their noses. When Brenda tells Neil about this, he exacerbates the situation by accusing Brenda of deliberately leaving the diaphragm in her drawer so her mother would find it. Much like a Woody Allen character, Neil just keeps stubbornly pushing at exactly the wrong point, and their relationship is over.

Personally, I found the title novella to be more interesting than the short stories. Roth creates vivid characters in “Goodbye, Columbus” that stick with you long after you’ve finished reading. The short stories are not as memorable, and the characters are not as finely drawn. The novella still feels fresh today, but most of the short stories are set in the past, and because of this “Goodbye, Columbus” sometimes feels like a much older book, like it was published in 1949 instead of 1959. “Defender of the Faith,” takes place in 1945, the main action of “You Can’t Tell a Man By the Song He Sings” takes place in 1942, and “Eli, the Fanatic” takes place in 1948. 

Interestingly enough, the five short stories in “Goodbye, Columbus” are some of the only short stories Roth has ever published, except for serialized parts of his novels. After this book, he seldom returned to the short story form. Obviously Roth must have found that his talents were better suited to longer works.

“The Conversion of the Jews” is a rather trifling story, as it details a young boy’s petulant desire to have others bow to his whims. He climbs onto the roof of his synagogue, and threatens to jump off unless the rabbi and his mother say that they believe in the Immaculate Conception, a key teaching of Catholicism. This placates the boy, and he comes down. I guess the point is that people will say anything so a boy won’t jump off of a roof, but that doesn’t seem to be a very interesting point to make. 

“Defender of the Faith” is a much more intriguing story, and my favorite of the short stories in this book. When the story was originally published in The New Yorker, it caused a large uproar among Jewish readers. The story is narrated by Sergeant Nathan Marx, a combat veteran who is posted back to the United States as the European campaign wraps up in the spring of 1945. Marx, who is Jewish, encounters a pushy private named Sheldon Grossbart, who is also Jewish. Grossbart asks for a lot of special favors, and Marx, against his better judgment, usually gives in to Grossbart’s wishes. 

Grossbart plays off of Marx’s desire to aid Jewish solidarity, asking to be excused from cleaning the barracks on Friday night so he and the other Jewish soldiers can attend religious services. Grossbart says that the Jews need to stick together.

“’That’s what happened in Germany,’ Grossbart was saying, loud enough for me to hear. ‘They didn’t stick together. They let themselves get pushed around.’” (P. 125) 

 Grossbart then wants to be given a weekend pass so he can go visit his aunt and celebrate Passover. It’s a month after Passover, and no one is supposed to get passes during basic training, but Marx gives in, writing a pass for Grossbart and two other Jewish privates. Marx is already greatly annoyed by Grossbart, but he convinces himself that he has done Grossbart a generous favor. The final straw comes when Grossbart returns from his aunt’s house with an egg roll for Marx, rather than the gefilte fish that Marx asked for. This strikes Marx as odd, and Grossbart admits that he just reread the letter and his aunt actually invited him home next week. Marx explodes in anger, and warns Grossbart to stay away from him. 

The soldiers are due to be sent to the West Coast and from there on to the Pacific, but Grossbart somehow pulls a string and is due to be sent east, to New Jersey, much closer to his home. When Marx learns of this, he pulls a string of his own and lies to the officer in charge of the roster, saying that Grossbart wants to be sent to the Pacific. Marx succeeds in getting Grossbart sent to the Pacific along with the other men.

It’s difficult to see today why the story caused such a furor. My best guess is that people were offended by the actions of the two main characters. Grossbart is a scheming jerk, and Marx abuses his power in order to punish Grossbart. Both characters do bad things that we might find morally wrong. Did readers get upset at Roth because he was showing that Jewish characters could be devious and immoral? 

Roth described the controversy about “Defender of the Faith” in the 2013 American Masters documentary, “Philip Roth Unmasked.” Roth says that after the story was published The New Yorker received many angry letters from readers:

“I was suddenly being assailed as an anti-Semite, this thing that I’d detested all my life. And a self-hating Jew. I didn’t even know what it meant.”

Roth goes on to talk about the subject matter of “Goodbye, Columbus”:

“There were those who were offended, and there were the rabbis who gave sermons denouncing me as an anti-Semite. I suppose what riled them about ‘Goodbye, Columbus’ was the story about a Jewish middle-aged man who is an adulterer, a Jewish girl having sex who bought a diaphragm. I maintained then, as I do now, that there were Jewish girls who bought diaphragms, and there were Jewish husbands who were adulterers. You know, Isaac Singer, when he was criticized by Jewish critics and Jewish readers for his stories, they would say rather ‘Mr. Singer, why must you write about Jewish whores and Jewish pimps?’ And Singer said ‘What should I write about? Portuguese whores? Portuguese pimps?’”

Roth was simply writing what he knew, and he refused to idealize his characters. Instead, he painted them as the complicated people human beings actually are.

“Epstein” is the above-mentioned story about a Jewish middle-aged married man who begins an affair with a neighbor. It’s not that compelling of a story. Perhaps Roth was trying to stretch and show that he could successfully channel an older man’s voice.

“You Can’t Tell a Man By the Song He Sings” is a rather dull story. It’s about a man who remembers an ex-con he went to high school with. It’s not very interesting or dramatic. But the end has a connection to one of Roth’s later works, as it’s revealed that a teacher they tormented was later fired during the Red Scare because he had been a Marxist in 1935. The subject of the Red Scare is one that Roth would return to much later in his 1998 novel, “I Married a Communist.” 

“Eli, the Fanatic” is the tale of a young Jewish lawyer who is hired by other young upwardly mobile Jews in his suburban community to put pressure on an Orthodox Jewish school to move away from their town. The suburban American Jews don’t want anything to do with the Orthodox Jews, who are displaced persons from Europe, scattered by World War II. It’s an interesting contrast between the two groups, who are in opposition, even though they are both Jewish. 

 “Goodbye, Columbus” is a very good first book, and it clearly showed that Roth had a lot of talent. The title novella is still a good read today, more than 50 years after it was first published, and it finds Roth dealing with many of the subjects that would inform much of his later writing-sex, class, family, and what it means to be a Jew in modern American society.