Martin Garbus, Prominent First Amendment Lawyer
“I heed the cry of the women insulted and injured. However,
I am also anxious about the nature of the tribunal that is adjudicating these
charges. As a civil libertarian, I am anxious because there doesn’t seem to be
a tribunal. What I see instead is a publicised accusation instantly followed by
peremptory punishment.
Philip Roth
“The history of my discontent, as I remember it”
Philip Roth
“The purging of Bailey’s book sets a sinister example,
intended to intimidate artists, biographers and scholars alike. The message
being sent is clear: any influential figure who rubs up against establishment
public opinion can be denounced and dismissed in like manner.”
David Walsh
When Blake Bailey’s excellent 900-page biography of the
writer Philip Roth was published in 2021, it should have been the standard work
on Roth’s life for some time to come. Unfortunately for Bailey, we were already
amidst the #MeToo movement's vilification of Roth, his work and worldview. Roth
was cognisant of the fact that some women had been abused, saying, “I heed the
cry of the women insulted and injured. But I am also made anxious by the nature
of the tribunal that is adjudicating these charges. I am made anxious, as a
civil libertarian, because there doesn’t seem to be a tribunal. What I see
instead is a publicised accusation instantly followed by peremptory
punishment.”[1]
Bailey became a casualty in this war against Roth for essentially
defending Roth’s right to his worldview. Bailey fell afoul of his publishers' “morals
charge” after accusations of sexual abuse were levelled at him via social media.
Some of Bailey’s former eighth-grade students at Lusher High School in New
Orleans came forward with allegations that he had groomed them for sex. Two
women, including one of his former students at Lusher, subsequently accused him
of rape.
Although no formal charges were made against Bailey, it did
not stop his so-called friends in the literary scene, who “fell over one
another”, disassociating themselves from Bailey. His biography was then pulped
by his publisher, W.W.Norton, an act that is akin to book burning carried out
by the Nazis in the 1930s.
As David Walsh wrote, “ In a significant act of censorship,
with chilling implications for democratic rights, publisher W.W. Norton has
announced its decision to “permanently” remove Blake Bailey’s biography of
American novelist Philip Roth (1933–2018) from print. Several individuals have
accused Bailey of sexual wrongdoing, including rape, dating back to 2003. None
of them has come forward with any evidence to back up the claims. Bailey’s
880-page book, well-received critically and considered one of the essential
works of the year in its field, will be pulped. Norton also reported its
dropping of Bailey’s 2014 memoir. In a statement dripping with hypocrisy,
Norton’s president, Julia A. Reidhead, asserted that “Mr Bailey will be free to
seek publication elsewhere if he chooses.” Overnight, Bailey has become a
“non-person.” he has ceased to exist.[2]
Most of Bailey’s friends and fellow writers stayed silent when
he was made a “non-person. It was not until the World Socialist Website
marshalled some resistance that people started to speak out. Several prominent
writers, historians, and film people contacted by the WSWS condemned W. W.
Norton’s treatment of Bailey. Novelist, memoirist and short-story writer James
Morrison wrote, “Even if Blake Bailey were charged, tried, and convicted of a
crime, it would still be indefensible for W. W. Norton to pulp his book. Can
American readers not have the option to think for themselves? The “#MeToo
movement” might have accomplished something if it had facilitated the
prosecution of cases involving harassment or assault. Still, it has resulted in
something like its opposite: a bizarre spectacle of social panic, moral
shaming, and public burning, based on unfounded accusations in the media.
Norton’s cancellation of Bailey’s book is not the action of a free institution
in a democratic society. It is the procedure of craven functionaries deep in a
politburo.[3]
Author, editor and blogger Kathleen Spaltro said, “Thomas
Aquinas clarified that the aesthetic value of art has nothing whatever to do
with whether the artist is a good person. The artist may be a good person, or
not, but that is the moral question faced by the artist as a person, not as an
artist.
Film critic, film historian and author Jonathan Rosenbaum: Cancel
culture, perhaps the most poisonous and befuddled offshoot of “political
correctness,” is a totalitarian expression of impotence, not any real exercise
of political power. It’s a way of saying that because one can’t defeat racism
or misogyny or abuse in the real world, at its sources, one can pretend to
defeat it symbolically, by canceling words, sounds, images and other forms of
communication, thus pretending that the people and communicators one
disapproves of can be “canceled” (i.e., ignored and suppressed). It’s an insult
to the principles of free expression that can only be practised by defeated
bigots who’ve given up on free expression and democratic processes, and by
gamblers who prefer to cheat.”
It took a while for Bailey to understand what had happened
to him. Canceled Lives is his attempt to process and collect his thoughts and
to answer his detractors. Patrick Mullins describes the new book's journey: “Originally
titled Repellent, it was scheduled to be published in April 2023. Speaking
circumspectly, Bailey has explained that the executors of Roth’s estate, Andrew
Wylie and Julia Golier, objected to the inclusion of Bailey’s conversations
with Roth in the manuscript, arguing that the publication of these exchanges,
which supposedly made up the bulk of the book, would violate the agreement
Bailey signed as Roth’s authorised biographer. And so Repellent was reworked,
becoming Cancelled Lives, and Bailey’s dealings with Roth were transformed into
an account of his father’s death braided with chapters narrating Bailey’s
disgrace.”[4]
There are many themes running through Canceled Lives. One
being Bailey’s sexual activity. Bailey was no angel, and some of his
relationships were questionable at best. There seems to be a period in his life
where his penis did most of the thinking, but this does not mean he deserved
what happened to him.
He writes, “The worst of what I was accused of wasn’t true.
I did nothing illegal and nothing vicious. I’m not a rapist, I did not
deliberately groom anybody; these were long-time friends. You have enterprising
reporters calling hundreds of your former students, hundreds of the people
you’ve mentioned in your acknowledgements. People, for various reasons, are
eager to get their shots”.
A strong theme of the book is death. Bailey discusses the
life and early death of his older brother, Scott, who committed suicide in his early
thirties after a life of drug addiction and crime. Bailey harshly describes
Scott’s suicide as doing “himself and his loved ones a favour ”. Bailey spent a
significant amount of time researching his book on Roth, so much so that he
must have ended up with deep feelings for Roth.
He tells how he witnessed Roth’s final moments alongside
Roth’s former lovers and closest friends surrounding his hospital deathbed. It
is not surprising that the book provides little information about his
relationship with Roth. Given how much he had to process in his own life and to
come to terms with so many devastating attacks on him. Perhaps it is just as
well, as he was while Roth was still alive, unable due to disclosure
limitations imposed by the Roth estate on Bailey.
As Walsh intimates in his work on Bailey, most of the
attacks on Bailey are less about his sexual proclivities and more to do with
the fact that he wrote a perceptively objective biography of Roth and, in the
end, defended both Roth and his political worldview against his detractors in
the #MeToo movement.
In a recent video call, David Walsh spoke with Bailey about
his new book, "The Sexual Witch Hunt," and democratic rights, as well
as briefly discussing the subject matter of his various biographies. Bailey
thanked the World Socialist Website for its support, saying, “You could be
speaking for me, and you did, after everything blew up. I was enormously
grateful for the courage of it. Very few people spoke up. People wrote me
private notes expressing their outrage, or at least chagrin, about how
viciously and relentlessly I was attacked. But I can’t think of anyone offhand
who was as outspoken publicly as you were. And if I didn’t say it emphatically
enough before, let me say now that I was very grateful for that.[5]
It is striking that the Trotskyist movement has been left to
lead the defence of Bailey and his democratic rights in the pages of the World
Socialist Website. The campaign to defend Bailey has cut across the right-wing
attack on him led by the #MeToo movement. It is worth noting that the movement
has been ably assisted by numerous pseudo-left media organisations that have
joined the attacks on both Roth and Bailey. These so-called leftists have shown
their support for banning books and removing them from bookshelves. The next
logical step for these organisations will be to join the book burning.
Bailey’s new book, Cancelled Lives—My Father, My Scandal,
and Me, is a stunning response to his detractors and slanderers, and it
deserves a broad audience. Unlike too many of the #MeToo victims, Bailey has
decided to fight and set the record straight. This is an entirely welcome and
healthy development, a contribution to the cleansing of the cultural
atmosphere. Bailey has the right to see the world as he sees fit.
[1]
www.the-tls.com/lives/autobiography/canceled-lives-blake-bailey-book-review-nat-segnit
[2]
Book-burning comes to America-https:ww.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/bail-a29.html
[3]
Writers, biographers protest W.W. Norton’s decision to “permanently” remove
Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth from print-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/04/bail-m04.html
[4]
Okay, you’re hired-insidestory.org.au/okay-youre-hired/
[5]
A conversation with Blake Bailey, Philip Roth biographer and author of
Cancelled Lives: My Father, My Scandal, and Me: “I said ... I’m not going to
take this lying down”
