Audiobook Review: Remembering Roth, by James Atlas (2019)

 

The audiobook Remembering Roth, written and read by James Atlas, 2019.

Writer and biographer James Atlas, 1949-2019.

The writer and biographer James Atlas was a friend of Philp Roth’s for 40 years. Atlas wrote and narrated an audiobook in 2019 about his relationship with Roth, Remembering Roth, exclusively for Audible.com. Atlas died later that same year, so it’s fortunate that his recollections of Roth were preserved.

After I finished Benjamin Taylor’s book Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth, one of the reviews I read on Goodreads pointed me in the direction of Remembering Roth. While Taylor’s book is mostly all pleasant memories, including a touching deathbed scene between Taylor and Roth, Remembering Roth is a tale written by a friend of Roth’s who had an eventual falling out with the author.

Atlas first met Philip Roth after Roth sent him an admiring letter about Atlas’ biography of the poet Delmore Schwartz. Roth and Atlas became good friends for several years. Atlas says that their relationship changed a bit after Atlas had children and couldn’t hang out with Philip at a moment’s notice. (This was something I noted in my review of Taylor’s book—Taylor clearly doesn’t have a family, because there’s no one complaining about all the time he’s spending with his buddy Philip.)

But the real turning point in Atlas’ relationship with Roth was when Roth suggested that Atlas write the biography of Saul Bellow. (This was when Saul Bellow was still alive.) Atlas became Bellow’s biographer, and over time it became obvious that Roth was nervous about how sympathetic to Bellow the biography would be. When the biography was published in 2000, Roth chose Bellow over Atlas, and attacked the book. It doesn’t seem as though the biography was a hatchet job on Bellow, but Atlas makes it clear in Remembering Roth that by the end of writing the book, while he still admired Bellow’s art, he didn’t actually admire the man very much. From that point on, Roth and Atlas were more of acquaintances than real friends.

An odd connection between James Atlas and Benjamin Taylor: while Atlas wrote a biography of Saul Bellow, and was the editor for the Library of America editions of Bellow’s novels, Taylor has edited collections of Bellow’s letters and non-fiction pieces.

Atlas does a nice job of describing Roth’s impact in person, saying that Roth was the most charismatic man he’d ever met. Roth was a performer, entertaining his friends with anecdotes and stories. Atlas says at the beginning of Remembering Roth: “Our friendship mattered more to me than to Roth. How could it not?” I suspect that’s often the case when one person is famous and the other is not. Atlas was a fan of Roth’s writing years before he ever met Roth, so the relationship was somewhat off-balance from the beginning. That’s not to say that true friendships can’t develop between famous people and non-famous people, it’s just an assessment of status that might ultimately color the relationship.

There’s one odd moment, when Atlas refers to Roth’s “American Trilogy” as American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. Every other reference I’ve seen to Roth’s “American Trilogy” replaces The Plot Against America with I Married a Communist. But then Atlas makes it clear he doesn’t care for I Married a Communist, so maybe to him it’s not part of the trilogy?

Remembering Roth is an interesting work, and it’s short, less than 90 minutes long. I’d recommend it for fans of Roth, as it gives us a feeling for what Philip Roth was like, and why being his friend might have been a challenging task.

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.

Lou Brock: 1939-2020

Lou Brock on the basepath at Busch Stadium during the 1970's.

Lou Brock, ready to hit.

Lou Brock with his Brockabrella and some ice cream, 1976.

Lou Brock throwing out the first pitch at a Cardinals game in 2016.

It’s been a sad couple of weeks for baseball, as another Hall of Famer passed away. Lou Brock died at age 81 on Sunday, September 6th. Brock was one of most exciting players of his era. He’s another player, similar to Tom Seaver, that no one ever had a bad thing to say about. There’s hardly a picture of Lou Brock where he isn’t smiling. Unless he’s on the basepaths, of course. Then he was all business. 

Brock was born in Arkansas and grew up in Louisiana. He was the son of sharecroppers, and he didn’t play organized baseball until he was a junior in high school. He attended Southern University and was signed by the Chicago Cubs in 1960. Brock made his professional debut in Minnesota with the St. Cloud Rox of the Northern League in 1961. That season, Brock led the Northern League in games, runs, hits, doubles, and batting average, hitting .361. He also stole 38 bases. It was the only time he spent in the minor leagues. 

Lou Brock was always known for his speed, but he flashed power at the plate as well. In 1962 he hit a ball into the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, about 450 feet away. The only other players to do that in a major league game since the 1923 remodeling of the Polo Grounds were Hank Aaron and Joe Adcock. (Pitcher Schoolboy Rowe did it in batting practice, as did Luke Easter in a Negro League game.) 

With the Cubs, Brock never quite found his groove. When he got off to a slow start in 1964, they decided to trade him to the St. Louis Cardinals. The trade was a six-player deal, but it’s always summarized as “Brock for Broglio.” (One of the other players involved was Bobby Shantz, who was the AL MVP in 1952 when he went 24-7 for the Philadelphia A’s.) Ernie Broglio was one of the Cardinals’ best pitchers. He won 21 games in 1960, tied for the league lead, and was coming off a season where he went 18-8 with a 2.99 ERA. It was widely guessed at the time that the Cubs had made the better trade. However, the Cubs didn’t know that Broglio was injured, and he would pitch in just 59 games for the Cubs, winning 7 games before his last major league game in 1966. 

At the time of the trade, Brock had been hitting .251 for the Cubs, and he hit a blistering .348 for the Cardinals for the rest of the season, as he helped lead the Redbirds to the NL pennant. Brock hit an even .300 in the World Series, with nine hits, one home run, and five RBIs, as the Cardinals beat the Yankees in seven games. Oddly enough, Brock didn’t attempt any stolen bases during the World Series. 

The Cardinals won the pennant again in 1967 and 1968. Both World Series went seven games, with the Cardinals beating the Red Sox in 1967, and falling to the Tigers in 1968. Brock was a star in both Series, as he stole seven bases in each Series, setting a World Series record that still stands. In 1967 Brock hit .414, and in 1968 he hit .464, giving him a World Series batting average of .391. Brock hit four home runs in the three World Series he played in. 

In 1965, Brock stole 63 bases, 20 more than in 1964. In 1966, he led the NL for the first time in steals with 74. It was the beginning of an incredible run of leading the NL in stolen bases for 8 of the next 9 years. That run was capped off by Brock’s amazing 1974 season, when at age 35, he stole a record 118 bases. Brock also led the league in caught stealing in 1974, with 33, which means that he attempted 151 steals in 1974. That takes guts. Lou Brock got on base 257 times in 1974, so 58% of the time he got on base he tried to steal. 

In 1977 Brock broke Ty Cobb’s career record for stolen bases when he thieved his 893rd bag. In 1978, Brock’s skills sharply declined, as he hit just .221 and lost his starting job in left field. It looked like Brock might not make it to 3,000 hits. He went into the 1979 season at 2,900 hits. Brock announced at the beginning of the 1979 season that it would be his last year. At age 40, he bounced back to bat .304, and he got hit number 3,000 at Busch Stadium on August 13, 1979. Ironically enough, it was against the Cubs. Speaking after the game, Brock said “I’ve always wanted to leave baseball in a blaze of glory. I’ve always wanted to orchestrate my own exodus and I’m doing a pretty good job of it.” Brock was also an All-Star in his final season. 

Lou Brock was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, in 1985. Brock remained an immensely popular figure in St. Louis, where he made his home. 

I met Lou Brock twice at baseball card shows. The first time was when I was a kid, in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. I think it was a card show at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, where Brock was appearing with his old teammate Bob Gibson. I remember that they had run out of 8X10 photos of Brock, so I got his signature on a 4X6 postcard. I don’t remember anything specific about my encounter with Brock and Gibson that day, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything to Bob Gibson, who I was a little intimidated by, because I knew what a fierce competitor he was. (I’ve met Gibson twice since then, and he’s a nice guy. But I still wouldn’t want to face him in the batters’ box.) The second time I met Brock was in 2013. I was struck by what a nice, genuine person he seemed to be. Brock was joking with a girl in line in front of me about how he was a “mean old man,” all the while with a huge grin on his face. I told Brock that I had met him once before at a card show, and he thanked me for coming to see him again. I told him that he had been a teammate of my favorite player, Steve Carlton, and Lou said jokingly, “I didn’t like him after we traded him to the Phillies.” He was beaming the whole time we chatted, and he added an extra inscription to my photo, signing it “To Mark: My friend!” Lou was wearing a very colorful sweater, and he looked great, like he could have gone out on the field that afternoon and stolen another base or two. I’ll always have fond memories my short interaction with Lou Brock. 

Every story I’ve read about Lou Brock has reinforced his niceness: like Tom Seaver, nobody has an unpleasant anecdote about Lou Brock. There’s a funny story about the first time Seaver and Brock met, at the 1967 All-Star Game. Seaver was a rookie that year, and he had only faced the Cardinals once. (Brock had two at-bats against Seaver and collected two singles.) Brock thought Seaver was a clubhouse attendant and said to him, “Hey, kid, get me a Coke!” Seaver replied, “Get your own fucking Coke, I’m on the team.” A stunned Brock asked, “Who are you?” 

Brock would quickly learn who Seaver was, as Seaver was the pitcher that Brock faced more than any other in his career, and Brock was the hitter that Seaver faced the most during his career. In 157 plate appearances, Brock hit .250 off Seaver, with 10 doubles, and one home run. That’s well below Brock’s career average of .293, but it’s more than respectable against one of the greatest pitchers of all time. And Seaver did strike out Brock 21 times. 

Since Brock’s playing days, the stolen base has gone out of fashion in baseball. Rickey Henderson broke Brock’s career stolen base record in 1991. Since then, the closest a player has come to Brock’s total of 938 steals is Tim Raines, with 808. Now that Rajai Davis seems to have retired, the active stolen base leader is Dee Gordon, also known as Dee Strange-Gordon, with 331. I think Brock’s NL record of 938 steals will stand for a long time to come, which is a fitting tribute for such a great player.

Tom Seaver: 1944-2020

 

Tom Seaver, 1944-2020

Baseball, like life, is not perfect. But it can offer us moments of grace and sublime wonder. Tom Seaver was a baseball player who offered us more of those moments than most. I never saw Tom Seaver pitch, I was 5 years old when he threw his last pitch in a major league game, so for all of my baseball fandom he has been one of baseball’s immortals, on that short list of all-time greats. There’s an elegance to Tom Seaver, for me he’s in the category of athletes like Sandy Koufax who exemplify the highest ideals of sportsmanship. To say it concisely, there was always something special about Tom Seaver.

Perhaps the first bit of luck the New York Mets had as a baseball team was in 1966 when commissioner William Eckert picked the Mets’ name from a hat and the team was awarded the right to sign Seaver. (The teams that missed out on Seaver were the Braves, Phillies, and Indians.) After just one year in the minor leagues, Seaver made the Mets’ roster in 1967. He went 16-13, threw 18 complete games, and finished with an ERA of 2.76, winning the NL Rookie of the Year Award.

Seaver had a terrific season in 1969, as he went 25-7 for the “Amazin’ Mets,” who captured the NL East crown with a blistering finish to the season. From August 9^th until the end of the season, Seaver made 11 starts. His record in those 11 starts was 10-0, with one no-decision. Seaver’s last eight starts were all complete games, and three of those were shutouts. Seaver won one game in the NLCS, and won Game 4 of the World Series, defeating the Orioles 2-1 in 10 innings. Seaver won his first Cy Young Award and finished 2^nd in the MVP voting.

Tom Seaver was overpowering during his first decade in baseball. After the 1977 season, he had thrown 2,979 innings and had an ERA of 2.48. He really was Tom Terrific. However, the Mets traded him to the Reds on June 15, 1977, a move that demoralized their fan base.

In Cincinnati, Seaver continued his dominance of National League hitters, as he threw his only no-hitter against the Cardinals in 1978 and led the Reds to the NL West title in 1979. In 1980, Seaver landed on this disabled list for the first time in his career with tendinitis in his right shoulder, missing more than a month of the season. He finished with a 10-8 record and an ERA of 3.64, the highest his ERA had ever been for a season. However, Seaver came roaring back in 1981, as he finished the strike-torn season with a record of 14-2 and an ERA of 2.54. And on April 18, 1981, Seaver became just the 5^th pitcher in history to strike out 3,000 batters, as he whiffed Keith Hernandez. (Just 11 days later, Steve Carlton joined Seaver in the 3,000 strikeout club.)

1982 was a disaster for Seaver. A series of injuries took their toll during spring training and the beginning of the season: a pulled thigh muscle, a bad case of the flu, a back strain, a toe injury. On June 1^st, Seaver’s record was 1-6, with an ERA of 6.04. Seaver pitched his last game of the 1982 season on August 15^th: he faced three batters and didn’t record an out. Seaver didn’t go on the disabled list, but he went back to the drawing board and tried to get comfortable with his mechanics and delivery again. His totals for 1982 were un-Seaver-like, to say the least: he pitched only 111 1/3 innings, the smallest total of his major league career by more than 50 innings, and his record stood at 5-13, the first losing season he’d ever had in the majors. His ERA was a bloated 5.50. In December of 1982, the Reds traded Seaver back to the Mets. But the question was: did he have any gas left in the tank?

Tom Seaver, back with the Mets in 1983.

Seaver’s first game back for the Mets was Opening Day, April 5, 1983. He would face off against Steve Carlton, the ace of the Philadelphia Phillies, who had won 23 games and his record 4^th Cy Young Award the previous season. Seaver threw six innings of shutout ball, giving up just three hits and one walk. He got a no-decision, but the Mets got two runs off Carlton to win, 2-0. 1983 wasn’t an easy season for Seaver, as he finished the year with a 9-14 record with a Mets team that lost 94 games, but his ERA was 3.55, almost two runs lower than 1982. Seaver also threw five complete games and two shutouts. Going into the 1984 season, there was certainly no guarantee than Seaver would make it to 300 wins. He was at 273 victories, but his record over the previous two seasons was a lackluster 14-27.

In a perfect world, Seaver would have finished out his career with the Mets. But it wasn’t to be. At that time, teams could pick players from other teams as compensation if they lost a player to free agency. (This was one of the results of the 1981 players’ strike, which was basically about the owners trying to kill free agency.) Teams could protect their star players, but the Mets left Seaver unprotected, as they didn’t think that other teams would pick a 39-year-old pitcher with a hefty salary. Of course, they were wrong, and the Chicago White Sox picked Seaver in January 1984. And so, the Mets lost Seaver for a second time. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for the Mets to lose Seaver once was a misfortune, but to lose him twice looked like carelessness.

Tom Seaver, wearing a very ugly uniform and pitching for the White Sox.

In 1984, Seaver threw 10 complete games and four shutouts for the White Sox, finishing with a record of 15-11. Now he was at 288 wins, and 300 was within reach. On August 4, 1985, Tom Seaver won his 300^th game, in New York City, at Yankee Stadium. It must have been bittersweet for all those Mets fans to see Seaver wearing those awful White Sox double-knit uniforms that looked like rejects from a beer league softball team. But Seaver won his 300^th game in style, throwing a complete game, winning 4-1.

Tom Seaver's final baseball cards all look very similar: 1987 Topps, Donruss, and Fleer. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Both Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton pitched for the 1986 Chicago White Sox, but unfortunately, not at the same time, thus depriving us of seeing two of the greatest pitchers of their era as teammates in the twilight of their careers. Seaver was still good in 1986—he finished the season with an ERA+ of 106, meaning he was 6% better than the league average pitcher. At the end of June, the White Sox traded him to the Red Sox. Seaver won his last major league game, his 311^th, on August 18, 1986, against the Twins at the Metrodome. As fate would have it, the Red Sox faced the Mets in the World Series. Seaver was left off the post-season roster, due to a knee injury. In a perfect world, Seaver would have been pitching for the Mets, helping them to their second world championship, 17 years after the first.

Seaver became a free agent after the 1986 season. He kept himself in shape, partially by playing squash every day, but he didn’t receive any contract offers. As the 1987 season began, the Mets’ starting rotation suffered several injuries, and the club reached out to Seaver about a possible comeback. Seaver pitched in exhibition games against the Triple-A Tidewater Tides team. When he was hit hard in several outings, he made the decision to hang it up. Again, in a perfect world, Seaver would have had one final hurrah with the Mets, but it was not to be.

But it’s petty to dwell on these little points, the almost-weres, and might-have-beens, when there are so many fantastic things that Tom Seaver accomplished on the pitching mound. Seaver’s accomplishments speak for themselves: 3 Cy Young Awards, 5 20-win season, 5 times leading the league in strikeouts, 3 times leading the league in ERA, a 12-time All-Star. A first-ballot Hall of Famer, with 98.84% of the vote, a record that stood for more than 20 years. Only five voters failed to write down Seaver’s name on their ballots. Three of those writers submitted blank ballots, as they were protesting Pete Rose’s ineligibility, one writer was recovering from open-heart surgery and overlooked Seaver’s name, and the other writer claimed to never vote for a player in their first year on the ballot. Seaver’s almost-perfect HOF ballot is a measure of how he was viewed by those inside baseball. There was never a blemish on the Seaver record.

In retirement, Seaver threw himself into starting a vineyard in California. It was a success, of course, as was everything Seaver applied himself to. For those of us who read the articles about Tom Seaver over the last few years, knowing about his health struggles added a poignancy to the sunset of his life. Seaver had suffered from memory loss, partially due to Lyme disease, and then in 2019 the announcement was made that Seaver was suffering from dementia and would make no more public appearances. The 50^th anniversary of the “Amazin’ Mets” went on without its star pitcher and clubhouse leader. Seaver passed away on August 31, 2020.

Why, as I type this last paragraph, do I suddenly have tears in my eyes for a man I never knew, a great pitcher that I never even saw play? Because Tom Seaver embodied excellence in everything he did, whether it was throwing a baseball, providing play-by-play commentary, growing grapes, or raising a family. There were no scandals or dark secrets with Tom Seaver, and for that reason he was an idol of millions.