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  • Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives by John Sutherland’s
  • Ira Nadel (bio)
The Corrections: A Commentary on “Philip Roth” in John Sutherland’s Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (Yale UP, 2012), pp. 690–95.

The prolific critic and literary fact-checker John Sutherland (see Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? [2000] and Is Heathcliff a Murder? [2002]) published Lives of the Novelists in 2012. In over 800 pages, he presents 294 short biographies chronologically arranged by birthdates with a six-page entry on Philip Roth distinguished by its misrepresentations, factual errors, and questionable interpretations. For the author of The Literary Detective (2001), an omnibus volume of three earlier works solving literary puzzles, this is surprising.

Other twentieth-century Jewish writers eclectically included in the volume range from Paul Auster, Saul Bellow, Edna Ferber and Arthur Koestler to Norman Mailer, Dan Jacobson, Nathaniel West, Herman Wouk, Harold Robbins, J. D. Salinger, Jacqueline Susann, and Lillian Hellman. Missing from this “idiosyncratic history” (his words on, 795) are Joseph Heller, Cynthia Ozick, [End Page 106] E. L. Doctorow, Bernard Malamud and I. B. Singer. Few of the other entries, however, have as any errors as that on Roth (690–95).

Eight scattered references to Roth appear in Lives of the Novelists before the main entry, beginning with the first of six epigrams to the book. This is a passage from Exit Ghost (2007) criticizing biographies because they often add elements to explain the subject “that aren’t there and would make no aesthetic difference if they were” (x). This partially applies to Sutherland’s account of Roth, except that the added or absent elements do matter. This is, after all, a reference book supposedly built on fact.

Sutherland initiates his discussion of Roth with biographical tidbits which appear throughout various entries such as John McCain citing Herman Wouk as his favorite author in the 2008 presidential race, while Barak Obama chose Roth (531); or that Deception (1990) is the first Roth novel where he uses his own name, oddly cited in the entry on J.M. Coetzee (729). Of course, the statement is misleading, since Roth previously used himself as the main character in The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (1988) and would do so again in Patrimony: A True Story (1991). “Roth” would also narrate the novels Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993) and The Plot Against America (2004).

Outright errors begin with omission. Reference to Roth’s love of baseball in The Facts (Sutherland’s principal source of information about Roth) refers to The Great American Novel (1973) but fails to give its title, while mistakenly and playfully calling it Roth’s “one formal attempt at the great American Novel” (693). This overlooks its exuberant satire and comic tone, more reminiscent of Twain or Bellow rather than that of Hawthorne or James, and it neglects Roth’s earlier Jamesian efforts, especially Letting Go (1962). An egregious factual error occurs when Sutherland cites the note pinned to the shirt of Ronald Nimkin who hangs himself in Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). It does not, as Sutherland wrongfully cites (692), state that the day’s shopping is in the fridge but that “Mrs. Blumenthal called. Please bring your mah-jongg rules to the game tonight” (Portnoy 120). Such mistakes suggest that someone other than Sutherland likely did the research and offered summaries of novelist’s work.

Other misinterpretations or factual errors include the assertion that Roth was taught by Saul Bellow (he was not) and that Margaret Martinson, Roth’s first wife, had an abortion (she faked her pregnancy by buying a urine sample from a woman in Tompkins Square Park, New York, and spent her supposed abortion appointment at a movie theatre in mid-town watching I Want to Live [1958]). Contrary to Sutherland’s statement on page 694, Roth and Martinson never divorced, prevented by draconian laws in the state of New York referred to by Roth in The Facts (141–43, 149, and 159–60). At one point, Roth even halfheartedly enlisted the help of Senator Robert Kennedy to untangle his divorce proceedings, held up by his wife’s...

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