Not exactly fiction

Blake Bailey’s 880-page Philip Roth bio to arrive in April
By HILLEL ITALIE
July 30, 2021

NEW YORK (AP) — In the Fall 2012, as the willing subject of one of the most anticipated literary biographies in recent memory, Philip Roth joked that he had surrendered power over his own life to author Blake Bailey.

“I trust you have been getting all the windy emails I’ve been sending you,” Roth wrote to his biographer in correspondence shared by Bailey with The Associated Press. “My whole writing life now revolves around you. Anything to make Blake happy. This is madness.”

Bailey’s “Philip Roth: The Biography” is coming out April 6, 2021, W.W. Norton & Company announced Thursday. Its 880 pages are the finished result of an undertaking that pre-dates not just Roth’s death in 2018, at age 85, but Roth’s retirement from public writing after 2010 and the involvement of Bailey. The book is also the outcome of an intricate relationship between Roth, the relentless son of Jews from Newark, New Jersey, and Bailey, a Catholic school graduate from Oklahoma City previously known for his acclaimed books on fiction writers Richard Yates, Charles Jackson and John Cheever, whom Roth knew and admired.

https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-new-jersey-biographies-philip-roth-newark-439de6946ca0da7180b0c7ed3f06c752

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