391 “I kept being virtuous”: PR int. Saul Bellow, 2 Dec. 1999, PRPP.

  393 “distinct dis-interest”: Joyce Carol Oates to PR, n.d. [c. 1974], PR–LC.

  393 “dealing with a woman”: RM int. PR, 5 Mar. 2005.

  393 “killer of women”: NSM.

  394 “crossed the line into deeply boring”: BB int. BCS, 14 Sept. 2013.

  395 “I’m sad,” he wrote a friend: PR to A. Alvarez, 30 Oct. [1974], Alvarez Papers, BL.

  395 “Empty eyes, a pale face”: James Atlas, journal, 4 Sept. 1987, James Atlas Papers, NYPL–Berg.

  395 “lovely and generous”: BB int. Francine Gray, 22 Mar. 2013.

  395 “dumb lug”: PR to Julius Goldstein, 23 June [1975], PR–LC.

  396 “holding operation”: Reminiscences of RWS, n.d. [c. late 1978], CU–COHC.

  396 Reviews of Reading Myself and Others: Anatole Broyard, New York Times, 5 June 1975; Roger Sale, New York Times Book Review, 25 May 1975.

  397 “a typhoon”: PR to A. Alvarez, 3 May 1975, Alvarez Papers.

  397 “A selling point for his damn building”: Janet Hobhouse, The Furies (New York: New York Review Books, 2004), 194.

  398 “Where is that boredom”: PR to Alvarez, 3 May 1975.

  398 “I don’t want to be the thing”: Hobhouse, The Furies, 201.

  399 “increasingly cruel and hopeless”: PR to “Czech Fund Contributor,” 19 Apr. 1975, Lillian Hellman Papers, Ransom.

  399 “Stalin-era methods”: Dusko Doder, “Prague Presses Dissidents,” Washington Post, June 15, 1975.

  399 “thereby having learned something”: PR to “XX (President of the Czech Writers’ Union),” n.d. [c. June 1975], PRPP.

  399 “Philip, they were trying”: PR—memo.

  399 “muddy Poland”: PR to A. Alvarez, 19 Apr. [1975], Alvarez Papers.

  400 “What is Roth doing here in Czechoslovakia?”: PR—memo. This is how PR usually characterized Klíma’s response re PR’s purpose in Czechoslovakia—“He comes for the girls”—though in a contemporary letter to Julius Goldstein, PR gave a more succinct wording: “Sex.”

  400 “harried and sad”: PR to Goldstein, 23 June [1975].

  400 “I could have done without the slice of pineapple”: PR to CB, 13 June 1976, CB/Theatre and Film Archive.

  400 “Which one of you guys wears the skirt?”: BB int. PR, 13 Oct. 2012.

  400 “Get yourself a girl, Joel”: Ibid.

  401 “Do I have to eat the mandible?”: BB int. Louise——, 13 Nov. 2013.

  402 “I am out of bed”: PR to CB, 6 Jan. 1976, CB/Theatre and Film Archive.

  403 “I can be good for Philip”: RM int. Herman and Nina Schneider, 2 Nov. 1996.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  407 “Her family name is not BLOOM”: Hilda Myra Fell to Harper & Row, 6 Sept. 1982, PRPP.

  408 “And she did not merely survive that”: NFMB, 23.

  408 “who had a bit of a martyr streak”: Stars and Mas, BBC-TV, aired 9 Mar. 1997.

  408 “wasn’t what we would call normal”: Ibid.

  408 “twisting [her] hair in knots”: LA, 15.

  408 “reduced his life to practically nothing”: CPR, 159.

  409 “Wasn’t she wonderful?”: BB int. BCS, 21 Mar. 2013.

  409 “I’m sure he’s a monster”: Stephen Schiff, “Rothballs,” Vanity Fair, Apr. 1990, 78.

  410 “dark, piercing eyes”: CB to PR, 8 Dec. [1975], PRPP.

  410 “deep ambivalence”: LDH, 148.

  410 “I thought I was with a peer”: PR to Jack Miles, 8 Apr. 2012, PRPP.

  411 “What else is there to do?”: PR to CB, n.d. [c. late Apr. 1976], CB/Theatre and Film Archive, BU.

  411 “I was happy and cheerful”: LDH, 154.

  411 “I didn’t come here to be insulted”: PR—memo.

  411 “She was a natural writer”: NFMB, 101.

  412 “He was very hard”: David Dugas, “Claire Bloom Tells Story of Her Drive for Success,” United Press International, 22 Mar. 1982.

  412 “I think it’s the most intelligent book”: PR to Robert Brustein, 8 Jan. 1981, Robert Brustein Archive, BU.

  413 “luxurious, slightly whorish”: PR to JC, 23 Nov. 1977.

  413 “terrible (alas)”: PR to Jack Wheatcroft, 31 Aug. [1976].

  414 “made the rounds”: Memo from PR to Russell Brooks of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, n.d. [c. 1996], PRPP.

  414 “a frail, white-china faced woman”: Kevin Kelly, “The Adolescence of Claire Bloom,” Boston Sunday Globe, 26 Sept. 1976, B1.

  414 “I went into the kitchen”: NFMB, 64.

  415 “falsified beyond recognition”: Ibid., 255.

  416 “over a thousand times”: Ibid., 257.

  416 “the kick of having a multiple self”: Ibid., 263.

  417 “the dark part of [her] sexual nature”: Ibid., 259.

  417 “This is a man led by the penis”: BB int. “Inga Larsen,” 9 Nov. 2014.

  418 “If there was any cruelty directed”: NFMB, 54.

  419 “family hell”: NFMB, 70.

  421 “Anna sat stewing at her place”: Ibid., 67.

  421 “abject woman”: Ibid., 72.

  421 “thrust a letter”: LDH, 157.

  421 “Don’t go for me”: PR—memo.

  423 “So somber, so tragic”: NFMB, 93.

  423 “Maggie sent Anna to me”: Quoted in RGS to RM, 20 Feb. 2007, RGS Papers, UC.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  424 “spawned by the interplay”: CPR, 99.

  424 “philosophical concepts”: RWS to PR, 11 Apr. 1977, FSG Papers, NYPL–M&A.

  424 “And we did a hell of a job”: Reminiscences of RWS, n.d. [c. late 1978], CU–COHC.

  425 “the great and maddening” subject: CPR, 105.

  425 “faking it”: PR to A. Alvarez, 30 Oct. [1974], Alvarez Papers, BL.

  426 Reviews of The Professor of Desire: Vance Bourjaily, New York Times Book Review, 18 Sept. 1977, 1; Robert Towers, New York Review of Books, 27 Oct. 1977; John Leonard, New York Times, 16 Sept. 1977.

  427 “One big quiet room”: PR to Julian Mitchell, 6 June [1977], Julian Mitchell Archive, BL.

  429 “that having your hero come to Europe”: RGS to PR, n.d. [c. Jan. 1979], PR–LC.

  429 “always right”: BB int. PR, 29 Apr. 2013.

  429 “I know are on my side”: RU, 146.

  429 “What they give me is not only”: CPR, 106.

  429 “Speech, debate, excitement”: RGS, typescript draft for an inset piece published with a longer feature about PR in Saturday Review, June 1981, RGS Papers, UC.

  430 “Which may simply mean”: As in PR to A. Alvarez, 2 May 1978, Alvarez Papers.

  430 “astonishingly intelligent”: Quoted in Dennis Hevesi, “Nina Schneider, Author of Children’s Science Books, Dies at 94,” New York Times, 27 Sept. 2007.

  430 “monk or nun”: PR to Tom Maschler, 31 May 1977, UR.

  432 “father/writer theme”: JU to PR, 18 Jan. [1984], PR–LC.

  432 “I’m not under fucking house arrest”: PR to Fredrica Wagman, 15 Oct. 1977.

  433 “There he sat, lean, watchful”: PR@80, 43.

  433 “Fascists, beauties, Spanish War Veteran poets”: PR to Jack Miles, 11 Jan. 1978.

  433 “[s]anctimonious little shit”: Tariq Ali’s column, Time Out, 11–17 Feb. 1983, 12; PR’s 15 Feb. 1978 letter was originally published in Parviz C. Radji, In the Service of the Peacock Throne: The Diaries of the Shah’s Last Ambassador to London (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), 152.

  434 “the frivolous, silly, childish woman”: LA, 146.

  434 “didn’t slide back into fleeing”: NFMB, 109.

  434 “a beautiful portrait in water-colour”: B. A. Young, “Rosmersholm,” Financial Times, 20 Oct. 1977, 3.

  435 “I will never leave her”: David Plante, Worlds Apart (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 63.

  435 “completely devoid of femininity”: CPR, 159.

  435 “I don’t want to play Diana Quick’s mother”: NFMB, 139.

  435 “not to feel the curtain fabric”: LDH, 161.

  435 “Imitate Antonia”: NFMB, 139.

  436 she’d “forlornly” presented him: Ibid., 60.

  436 “was having fierce arguments at dinner parties”: PR—memo.

  437 “The offensive ones”: NFMB, 128.

  437 “I wish my father were alive to read”: Ibid., 188.

  437 “two dreadful months”: PR to James Atlas, 14 Dec. 1978, James Atlas Papers, NYPL–Berg.

  438 “everything you read and everything you do”: CPR, 107.

  438 “Then she touched me”: Veronica Geng, “Love Trouble Is My Business,” New Yorker, 1 Oct. 1984, 33.

  438 “I never read Bible parodies”: Jennifer Senior, “Humor Came Her,” New York, 17 May 1999.

  438 “they love continuing to work at something”: Scot Nourok, “A Conversation with Veronica Geng,” The Writing Self 5, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 7.

  440 “without first having to be strained”: Helen May, “An Interview with Philip Roth,” New York Post, 29 Sept. 1979, 15.

  440 Reviews of The Ghost Writer: Peter Prescott, Newsweek, 10 Sept. 1979, 72; Robert Towers, New York Times Book Review, 2 Sept. 1979, 1; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times, 4 Sept. 1979, C10; John Leonard, New York Review of Books, 25 Oct. 1979.

  441 “Bold, challenging”: WW, 81.

  441 “an insult to the community”: PR, “Philip Roth Replies,” New York Review of Books, 12 Dec. 1974.

  442 “semi-lunatic wise-guy”: PR to Bernard Malamud, 12 Jan. 1984, Bernard Malamud Papers, Ransom.

  442 “a nice note”: PR to Steve Berg, 20 July [1979], Paris Review Archives, Morgan.

  443 “didn’t want him because he was Jewish”: BB int. Jane Brown Maas, 11 Oct. 2012.

  443 “Never, never have I heard him talk”: Deirdre Donahue, “Exploring the Pain of His Father’s Loss,” USA Today, undated clipping [c. 1991].

  443 “I was a good boy for you”: Videotaped conversation between PR and Mildred Martin, c. June 1992, during one of PR’s visits to Lewisburg.

  443 “I just couldn’t finish Portnoy’s Complaint”: Gail Rippey, “Author Pays Tribute to Bucknell Professor,” Lewisburg Daily Item, 2 Apr. 1991.

  443 “as though we were going to be married”: PR—memo.

  444 “I felt as though I’d brought him a gift”: PR to “A. V. and Webster,” 23 Oct. 1979, PR–LC.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  445 “fey performance”: Rosemary Say, “The Man from Whitehall,” Telegraph, undated clipping [c. spring 1981], 16.

  446 “You better go in there”: P, 597.

  447 “He doesn’t listen to what I say”: Ibid., 602.

  447 “Mommy, Mommy, where are you, Mommy?”: Ibid., 609.

  448 “the unreckoned consequences”: WW, 160.

  448 “where nothing goes and everything”: PR, “The Book That I’m Writing,” New York Times, 12 June 1983.

  448 “she gets paid to say things like that”: PR to Mildred Martin, 25 July [1979], PRPP.

  448 “In order for Prague to have”: Mervyn Rothstein, “The Unbounded Spirit of Philip Roth,” New York Times, 1 Aug. 1985.

  449 “the first of the father’s avengers”: PR to James Atlas, 16 Mar. 1981, James Atlas Papers, NYPL–Berg.

  449 Reviews of Zuckerman Unbound: Anatole Broyard, New York Times, 9 May 1981; Edward Rothstein, New York Review of Books, 25 June 1981; Martin Amis’s Observer review was reprinted in The War Against Cliché (New York: Vintage, 2001), 287–89.

  450 “the most intelligent I’ve gotten”: PR to RWS, 4 June 1981, FSG Papers, NYPL–M&A.

  450 “Those who convert literature”: Michiko Kakutani, “Is Roth Really Writing about Roth?,” New York Times, 11 May 1981.

  450 “I’d be delighted”: Boris Kachka, Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 231.

  450 “great speculation”: Stephen Rubin, “A New Executive Editor at Harper and Row,” New York Daily News, 25 Feb. 1981.

  452 “very bright and very competent”: Kachka, Hothouse, 236.

  452 “Look, David”: BB int. David Rieff, 13 Oct. 2012.

  454 “I say ssh a lot”: CPR, 132.

  455 “precious” friendship: LDH, 165.

  456 “I was invisible”: NFMB, 74.

  457 “fit as a fiddle”: BB int. PR, 11 Oct. 2012.

  457 Huvelle “might understand better”: NFMB, 153.

  458 “stroked her mother’s hair”: Ibid., 37.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  461 “winnowing out stuff”: PR to James Atlas, 21 Mar. 1982, James Atlas Papers, NYPL–Berg.

  461 “I was now to be educated”: PR, “How Could They Capture My Hero’s Obsession with Anne Frank?,” TV Guide, 14 Jan. 1984, 12.

  462 “cute, coy, girlish smile”: PR to JT, 2 Apr. 1983.

  464 “What’s this for?”: JT to PR, 12 Mar. 1983, PRPP.

  464 “mentally exhausted”: PR to Herman and Nina Schneider, 20 June 1983, PR–LC.

  464 “As if it’s all been apprentice work”: Curt Suplee, “Philip Roth, at Ease at Mid-Journey,” Washington Post, 30 Oct. 1983, L1.

  465 “Now that he is no longer the enfant terrible”: Hermione Lee, Philip Roth (London: Methuen, 1982), 9.

  465 “(1) I couldn’t stand most”: LH int. Hermione Lee, 26 Sept. 2007. During this taped interview, Lee read aloud parts of her letter from PR dated 4 June 1983; I’m quoting from the interview transcript, since I never obtained a copy of the letter in question.

  465 “ruthlessly” pruning: Hermione Lee to PR, 7 Aug. 1983, PR–LC.

  466 “feminist attack”: WW, 152.

  467 “You’re not getting such good”: BB int. Elizabeth Pochoda, 26 Sept. 2013.

  467 “temporary madness”: PR to David Rieff, Oct. 28, 1983, FSG Papers, NYPL–M&A.

  467 “Portnoy’s Creator Would Like It Known”: Andrea Chambers, “Philip Roth,” People, 19 Dec. 1983.

  467 “Say whatever the hell you want to say”: PR to James Atlas, 12 Aug. 1986, James Atlas Papers.

  467 “Best of luck”: Susan Jacoby to PR, 31 Aug. 1983, PR–LC.

  467 Reviews of The Anatomy Lesson: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times, 19 Oct. 1983; Joseph Epstein, Commentary, Jan. 1984; JU’s review in the 7 Nov. 1983 New Yorker was reprinted in Odd Jobs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 372.

  468 “The job was to give pain its due”: CPR, 140.

  469 “And that’s why I broke Zuckerman’s jaw”: RU, 137.

  470 “So why are you here?”: PO screenplay (included in LOA edition), 570.

  470 “ritual slaughter”: PR to Robert Brustein, 20 Apr. 1985, Robert Brustein Archive, BU.

  470 “thematic architecture”: CPR, 197.

  471 “Zuckerman Bound merits something”: Harold Bloom, “His Long Ordeal by Laughter,” New York Times Book Review, 19 May 1985, 1, 42.

  471 “sink [his] teeth into something”: PR to JT, 12 May 1983.

  471 “He has been called the Woody Allen of words”: “Philip Roth Face to Face with Idith Zertal,” Mishkenot Sha’ananim Newsletter, no. 1 (1984).

  472 “a list a yard long”: PR to RGS, 19 Nov. 1984, RGS Papers, UC.

  472 “fair minded, intelligent, humanist, cultured”: DP.

  472 “I have to tell you”: Ibid.

  473 “It wasn’t Israel as California”: RU, 147.

  473 “the playfully thoughtful air”: WW, 201.

  473 “the sum of all these Jewish antinomies”: Operation Shylock, 181.

  473 “the bits and pieces of crap”: PR to TS, 8 Dec. 1984, TS Papers, NYPL–M&A.

  473 “an ancient Jewish ailment”: WW, 213.

  474 “ ‘If we were in Italy’ ”: NFMB, 187.

  474 “nasty, hateful scene”: Email from PR to BB, 23 Jan. 2016.

  474 “a writer has to be driven crazy”: RU, 150.

  474 “little Jew”: Ibid., 152.

  475 “false starts”: PR to JC, 5 Aug. 1984, PRPP.

  475 “I wrote one section and then I thought”: RU, 145.

  475 “Now I only hope I don’t kick off”: Mervyn Rothstein, “Philip Roth and the World of ‘What If,’ ” New York Times, 17 Dec. 1986.

  476 “Shtetl schtick adapted”: PR int. Saul Bellow, 2 Dec. 1999, PRPP.

  476 “almost invariably his heroes”: WW, 85.

  477 “a Bad Guy Jew”: James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000), 329.

  478 “terse and colloquial”: WW, 282.

  478 “I wish I could say Roth”: Malamud’s unsent replies to Roth re “Imagining Jews” are among his papers at Ransom.

  478 “When a man who can read”: Malamud to PR, 11 Oct. 1974, Bernard Malamud Papers, Ransom.

  478 “a frail and very sick old man”: WW, 283.

  480 “surrounded himself by real dopes”: PR int. Bellow, Dec. 2, 1999.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  481 “emotionally real”: RM to PR, 12 June 1984, PR–LC.

  481 “whole life possible”: Quoted in Martin Gottfried, Arthur Miller: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003), 394.

  481 “carried the sibling rivalry”: RM int. Robert Brustein, 28 July 2008.

  481 Kermit had invented the electric car: RM int. Aaron Asher, 27 Sept. 2005.

  481 “a pile of notes on every page”: Christopher Goffard, “Philip Roth Unbound,” St. Petersburg Times, 4 July 2004.

  482 “I’d never talked to anybody this long”: RM int. RGS, 14 Dec. 2006.

  482 “I gave it my all”: CPR, 205.

  482 “no phantasmagoria, no surrealism”: RM int. PR, 9 Mar. 2007.

  483 Reviews of The Counterlife: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times, 29 Dec. 1986; William Gass, New York Times Book Review, 4 Jan. 1987; JU’s review in the 2 Mar. 1987 New Yorker was reprinted in Odd Jobs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 373–79; Julian Barnes, London Review of Books, 5 Mar. 1987.

  483 “very much a work by a middle-aged writer”: CPR, 210.

  484 “We are all writing fictitious versions of our lives”: Ibid., 253.

  484 “It was as if he regained the world”: Jennifer Senior, “Philip Roth Blows Up,” New York, 1 May 2000, 40.

  485 “the most intelligent woman”: PR to Susan Sontag, 31 Oct. 1986, Susan Sontag Papers, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.