I declined to review Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth biography because of the grossly sexist review he gave to my Shirley Jackson bio (more below). This is clearly far from the worst of his crimes, but some of the things he wrote are indicative of a certain mindset. (1/x) https://twitter.com/sarahburnes/status/1384851194464673797

Bailey accused me of imposing a feminist agenda on SJ’s relationship with her husband, Stanley Hyman, who supported and sabotaged her work. “Rather cruelly, he made it clear that both her jealousy and her conventional insistence upon monogamy were repellent to him,” I wrote. 2/x

Bailey’s response: “A little adverbial nudge (“cruelly”), lest we forget to deplore the matter as much as Ms. Franklin or even succumb to a nuanced admiration for Hyman’s lack of hypocrisy.” (He refers to the idea that Hyman supposedly would have let SJ sleep with others.) 3/x

I also wrote that Brendan Gill’s calling SJ “a classic fat girl, with the fat girl’s air of clowning frivolity to mask no telling what depths of unexamined self-loathing,” was "unkind." Bailey: “This may seem in bad taste to Ms. Franklin, but it also happens to be astute.” 4/x

Obviously, Bailey’s misogyny manifested in far worse ways. But I put this out there as a sign of how it manifested in his criticism. When presented with a book that pushed back on the ways male critics had defined SJ, Bailey sided with the men. 5/x

Since then, I had no contact with Bailey until last week, when I attended a Zoom event for the Roth bio, at which he gleefully recounted the story of how he convinced Roth he was the man for the job with a crude comment about Ali McGraw (also in @parul_sehgal’s review). 6/x

When I read that story in Parul’s piece (below), my heart broke. It was obvious that this was yet another door closed to a woman. (Mark Oppenheimer reports in his profile that Hermione Lee was considered and rejected.) 7/x https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/books/review-philip-roth-biography-blake-bailey.html?searchResultPosition=4

Bailey also told the anecdote in the @vulture excerpt about Roth’s all but forcing a longterm girlfriend to listen to him jerk off on the phone, even while she was at work. Bailey clearly found this hilarious. Others in the room, men and women, privately expressed discomfort. 8/x

I am sad for the women Bailey (allegedly) abused and assaulted. I am sad that Roth chose Bailey as his biographer based on their shared objectivization of a woman—Roth deserved better than this. I am sad that Bailey’s (also my) publisher ignored an accuser. 9/x

This is long and I will stop. But mostly, I am sad at the ways misogyny is embedded in the literary landscape like the roots of a tree, extending everywhere invisibly below the surface and too often breaking through. 10/10