Earlier this year, Blake Bailey’s long-awaited biography of Philip Roth hit the shelves with an underwhelming clunk, amidst a series of appalling allegations against the biographer. And some of us are still getting over it. And by us, you know exactly who I mean. At a tote bag-straining 880 pages, it was to be our Deathly Hallows. Instead, it was about as toxic a book as J.K. Rowling might release now. Since I became too uncomfortable to read it in our present cultural moment, I've been on quite a journey:
