Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
WW Norton & Company interrupted the distribution of a best-selling Philip Roth biography after several women accused the author, Blake Bailey, of caring for them as high school students and then having sexual relations with them in their early adulthood. “These allegations are serious,” the publisher said in a statement. “In light of this, we have decided to suspend the transmission and promotion of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ pending further information that may occur.” Bailey’s literary agency, The Story Factory, also dropped the author. Bailey has the Los angeles Times that the “allegations are completely false,” and his attorney said in an email to NOLA.com that Bailey never acted improperly with any student, citing the site’s accusations as a hurtful description of adult behavior. ‘
Before becoming known for his popular biographies of writers such as John Cheever, Richard Yates and Charles Jackson, Bailey was an eighth-grade teacher at Lusher Middle School in New Orleans in the 1990s, where a group of alumni claimed to be inappropriate at they. In a NOLA.com report, three women described sexual encounters with their former teacher in early adulthood, with one accusing Bailey of raping her and saying he wanted her since she was in eighth grade. As a teacher, he allegedly flirted with his students, asked about their love life and left notes in class journals that made them feel special. One woman said she considers him a confidant who they consider mature enough to read books Lolita, which contains a sexual relationship between a middle-aged literature professor and his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Others claim he frequently inquired about the status of their virginity after they left Lusher. The LA Times quoted a former student, Eve Peyton, as describing his behavior in a letter as ‘textbook editing’ and ‘something of an open secret’. “Even those who were hurt by him still loved him on some level,” she wrote. “He was supposed to be our mentor. In many ways he was. And then he used our trust in him against us in the cruelest and most intimate way possible. ‘
The allegations against Bailey appear in the comments section of an April 16 blog post by Ed Champion condemning the Roth biography for being “drenched in casual misogyny” (Champion has his own history of accusations of misogyny). Some critics believe that Bailey is too sympathetic to the portrayal of Roth in his books and the treatment of women in real life. Bailey said in a previous interview with Vulture that the two had never discussed the Me Too movement, although they had “fully discussed” it. [Roth’s] controversial sex life. According to the New York Times, Bailey once claimed that a major reason Roth hired him was that he did not ‘consider too much or judiciously about a view of a man who had this florid love life’. The now interrupted biography was released on April 6 and debuted on The New York Times top seller candles.