A day after The New York Times published a review of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike, the Times followed with a letter they received from Philip Roth, who took exception with one of the claims made in the review:
To the Editor:
In his review of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike (Arts pages, April 9), your reviewer allows that “Mr. Roth has denied” a claim made about him that would have seemed to me unlikely enough on its surface not to bear gratuitous repeating in The Times.
Your reviewer writes, “Claire Bloom, after her divorce from Philip Roth, said Updike’s negative review of Mr. Roth’s ‘Operation Shylock’ (1993) so distressed Mr. Roth that he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital.”
For the record, in the weeks and months immediately after Updike’s March 15, 1993, review of “Operation Shylock” in The New Yorker, I was teaching two classes in literature at Hunter College, giving readings from my book “Patrimony” in Lansing, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Cambridge, South Orange and at the New York “Y,” and completing work on the first chapters of “Sabbath’s Theater.”
On March 19 I enjoyed my 60th-birthday celebration at the home of friends in Connecticut and in early June drove to Massachusetts to receive an honorary degree from Amherst College.
PHILIP ROTH
New York, April 9, 2014
New York, April 9, 2014