patience toward writers

"Roger Straus was legendary for his patience toward writers on his list, blithely letting deadlines pass as long as he felt reasonably certain that someday the wait would prove worthwhile. But even he had a limit, as the epic vagaries of Charles Jackson would eventually bear out. By 1960, as Roger noted, his friend had 'red ink on the books to the tune of $9,398.94,' which didn't include personal loans in the neighborhood of $2,700 ('or at least that is the total of the traceable sums in my file'), though almost to the end he continued to encourage Charlie and help him make ends meet. However, there simply wasn't as much to talk about now that Charlie only made 'an occasional, embarrassed, dutiful allusion' to his stalled novel(s), as he would admit five years later in 'The Sleeping Brain,' where he nonetheless also claimed that his meetings with Roger had remained as frequent and affable as ever. His letters tell a different story: 'Wanna take any bets on my lunch date with Roger tomorrow?' he wrote Sarah in 1961. 'It's still on but momentarily I expect a cancellation.'"

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of                                           Charles Jackson

verboten

"Unfortunately Charlie was not sober, strictly speaking, nor had he been sober for the previous six months. On the contrary: now that he was no longer drinking, he was taking more pills than ever. As he'd later admit to AA (claiming he didn't realize, at the time, that it was verboten): 'I couldn't meet a friend for lunch, I couldn't write a line, I couldn't attend an AA meeting, without the help of these drugs.'"

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of                                           Charles Jackson

the fiction market was simply drying up

"Back in 1953, at any rate, the fiction market was simply drying up, as more and more middle-class readers turned to television for entertainment, while many of the slicks had either reduced or stopped running fiction altogether--an irreversible trend. At the end of that torturous but productive year, [Charles] Jackson had sold a single story (for all of $250) and yet remained philosophical to an almost heedless degree: 'It isn't only that the fiction market grows less and less,' he wrote Brackett; 'the failure was entirely in me, I think. I didn't do [the stories] quite wholeheartedly . . . and I think the reason was partly financial but even more, because my real love is the novel."

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of                                           Charles Jackson

acquired again

Daniel Ross Goodman added this postscript to his opinion piece that the authorized Philip Roth biography should not be judged by its author or subject, and that readers and scholars ought to have access to the book.

Postscript: On May 17^th, it was announced that Skyhorse Publishing had acquired Philip Roth: The Biography, and that it intends to begin distributing it in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats on June 15. Informing the press of its decision, Tom Lyons, the president of Skyhorse, stated that “a biography must be judged by the quality of the writing, the importance of the subject matter, and the value of the scholarship,” and that its editors had concluded that [Blake] Bailey’s book met these criteria. “This is obviously an important and comprehensive book about an author The New Yorker called a ‘literary genius,’ said Lyons. “I’m proud to publish it.”

Read more at the paper of moderately capitalist record.

Although I don't plan on reading the Roth biography—frankly, the reviews and hooplah are enough—I'm glad I stuck with Bailey's earlier Charles Jackson biography, a book I came to because I appreciated his even earlier biography of Richard Yates. Of course, it's unlikely that I would have begun the Jackson biography so soon after the news broke, but I was past a hundred pages in and rather than turn off the professional sporting event or toss the Woody Allen dvds, I read on. The book, and Jackson's life, would appeal to anyone interested in alcoholism, AA, fleeting fame, literary obscurity, writers in Hollywood, pre-Stonewall sexual identities, the American 20th century, small town life, Shakespeare's influence on an American writer, and much much more.

the coal bills of winter

"Already they dreaded the coal bills of winter, and were at a loss what to do for Christmas; Rhoda wrote Phyliss McGinley in Larchmont, wondering if she knew anyone who might be interested in buying a second-hand mink for $1,500, less than half what they'd paid for it in 1947 ('I doubt if, in the last two years, it has been worn more than ten times'). And perhaps something of that sort was arranged, since they seemed to have jolly holidays; indeed, at a New Year's 'kids party,' Charlie proved such a 'cavorting parent' that his twelve-year-old daughter was a little mortified."

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of      Charles Jackson

Charles Jackson to Philip Rahv

"'The story kills me to write it,' [Charles Jackson] confessed to Philip Rahv: 'I've never done anything that takes so much out of me; and during the past month it's gotten me down so that I've become neurotic as hell, nervous, depressed, and even at times have thought the only solution is suicide.'"

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson 

Richard Yates and Charles Jackson

Richard Yates and Charles Jackson can't possibly be to blame for whatever Philip Roth and Blake Bailey said, thought, or did, and Bailey certainly did the literary world a great service by getting Yates's Revolutionary Road and Jackson's The Lost Weekend back in print or in public view. Both writers knew significant adversity well after their acclaimed debut novels were published. Indeed, the writing life rarely gets easier for any of us. When the accusations against Bailey went public, I was past page 100 of his Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson. I'm at peace with my decision to continue reading the Jackson biography; more or less, I'm too overwhelmed with day-to-day stressors during a pandemic to quit an engrossing book. 

The Vying Animal

"The Vying Animal" is another fun take on Philip Roth and his biography.

Philip Roth on Blake Bailey

Enjoy a fun role reversal from the grave; in Harper's Magazine, it's Joshua Cohen on Blake Bailey's new biography of Philip Roth.

biographies of Exley and Yates

A PS that can stand alone as its own post:

If you're in the market for literary biography, I'd recommend books about Fred Exley and Richard Yates although Yates's biographer was able to comb the world for a lot more material and produce a much more comprehensive book. In fact, Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates is rather excellent and satisfying. I loved learning from this book that the Elaine character from Seinfeld is based upon Richard Yates's daughter, and so the suede-leather clown-jacket episode, where Jerry and George drink with Elaine's father in a hotel lobby, is a sensational look at the author himself (although quite exaggerated and fattened up for television). Jonathan Yardley's Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley is still worth a read though; I can see why some reviewers on amazon were disappointed, but I'd say its average of three stars is about right.