The decision by publisher W.W.Norton to “permanently”
remove Blake Bailey’s biography of the late novelist Philip Roth from print is
a significant act of censorship and has dangerous implications for democratic
rights.
The publisher said it had decided to do this because
several individuals have accused Bailey of sexual harassment. So far, none have
produced evidence to back their claim up. Bailey’s book, which on the whole has
been well received with be pulped. Bailey’s 2014 memoir will also be dropped. The
publisher has amended its website, so anyone looking for the book gets the
message, “Our apologies! We cannot find the page you are looking for.”
Norton said that it was contacted by email anonymously by
a woman in 2018, who alleged that Bailey had assaulted her. This begs the
question of why act now against Bailey.
Despite saying that “Norton is here for you.” and will “stick
to the business of publishing the best books we can lay our hands on and then
keep our hands on them for as long as maybe.” Or as one writer put it “until
some clique of gender-fixated zealots applies a bit of pressure”. Well Norton
has now folded like a cheap shirt as soon as a few MeToo “zealots” make some noise.
As the writer, David Walsh, points out, “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 establishment public opinion the wrong way can be denounced and dispatched in like manner. The filthy snout of the New York Times has been busily at work in this affair. On April 21, the Times published an article setting out the “sexual assault allegations” against Bailey. There is no reason to give the slightest a priori credence to the claims made in the Times article, which conforms to a pattern of trial-by-media that has been “perfected” since the launching of the #MeToo witchhunt in October 2017. Bailey has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. None of the alleged incidents was ever reported to the authorities”.[1]
Bailey has rejected the allegations calling them “categorically
false and libellous.” His lawyer criticised the publisher’s “drastic,
unilateral decision … based on the false and unsubstantiated allegations
against him, without undertaking any investigation or offering Mr Bailey the
opportunity to refute the allegations.”
As Walsh points out, “The attack on Bailey is
unprecedented since the dark days of McCarthyism when the U.S. government
removed thousands of books by left-wing authors and sympathisers from its
overseas libraries. It continues and escalates a recent process that has
already involved the ruination (or attempted ruination) of individuals such as
the late James Levine, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, Placido Domingo, Aziz Ansari,
Louis C.K., Charles Dutoit, Garrison Keillor and Geoffrey Rush, and the
institutionalisation of censorship.[2]
It would seem that those attacking Bailey are also
attacking the subject of his biography, Philip Roth. Many reviewers of Bailey’s
biography have attacked him for his refusal to attack Roth’s so-called
indiscretions or “mistreatment” of women. That Roth is no longer around to
defend himself has only emboldened those who wish to see his work trashed and
Roth becoming a non-person. Roth accused
his critics of resurrecting the old McCarthyite witchhunt, which he says,
“In some quarters, ‘misogynist’ is now a word used almost as laxly as was
‘Communist’ by the McCarthyite right in the 1950s—and for very like the same
purpose.”[3]
Not everyone has gone along with this right-wing attack on democratic rights. The chief executive of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, has raised concerns that “If we were to apply that standard writ large there would be thousands of books by bigots, misogynists and miscreants that could be removed from circulation on those grounds,” While these books may be picked up elsewhere, once that stigma is attached, there might not be another publisher willing to touch them.”[4]
The attack on Roth and Bailey has a definite right-wing feel
about it. As the working class starts to come into conflict with the ruling
elite, this same elite encourages any form of backwardness to, as Walsh writes,
“ dull popular consciousness and awareness. It inevitably fears any work that
sensitises and alerts the viewer or reader or encourages a searching,
thoughtful approach to public matters. In that sense, every significant attack
on democratic rights is an attack on the working class and its political
progress”.
In a typical attempt to play down the attack on
democratic rights, New Yorker Magazine writer Alexandra Schwartz said, “This is
not a case of censorship, which implies the suppression of ideas but, rather, a
scramble at damage control”.[5]
Unlike Schwartz, I believe this is an attack on
democratic rights and a suppression of ideas. It must be opposed, and Norton’s
censorship should be opposed, and I defend Bailey’s and Roth’s right to
represent the world as they saw it.
[1] Book-burning comes to
America https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/bail-a29.html
[2] Book-burning comes to
America https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/bail-a29.html
[3] https://terenceblacker.com/philip-roth-it-was-my-good-luck-that-happiness-didnt-matter-to-me/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/28/publisher-cancels-philip-roth-biography-after-sexual-abuse-claims-against-blake-bailey
[5] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/blake-bailey-philip-roth-and-the-biography-that-backfired
