{"id":64783,"date":"2014-01-10T17:37:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T22:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=64783"},"modified":"2014-01-10T21:31:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T02:31:32","slug":"the-sicilian-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/10\/the-sicilian-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sicilian Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Martin Lopatka, via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Dear Mr. Ross,<\/p>\n

Thank you for sharing with us your review of Claudia Roth Pierpont\u2019s Roth Unbound<\/i>. The piece is colorful and sharp, and it is with regret that we say it does not suit our needs at this time.<\/p>\n

Too much of the writing reflects back to the writer himself\u2014to you yourself. (And, inexplicably, to your father.) While we certainly don\u2019t mind personal inflection, and even tolerate the insertion of an occasional \u201cI,\u201d a review must be grounded more firmly in the subject or book under consideration. (And less so in the reviewer\u2019s father.)<\/p>\n

Critiques such as yours are redolent of ego. We say this not as admonishment, but as something of which you may want to be aware as you continue what looks to be a promising writing career. We wish you the best of luck in placing this piece elsewhere, and will be happy to consider your queries in the future.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
The Editors
The New York Review of Books<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The difficulties began when I attempted to write, for The New York Review of Books<\/i>, a review of Claudia Roth Pierpont\u2019s critical biography of Philip Roth. My intention was simple: to demonstrate that I appreciated Roth\u2019s work with a higher degree of sophistication than Pierpont. But articulating my Sophisticated Appreciation was tough to do. At first this didn\u2019t bother me\u2014an inability to articulate one\u2019s Sophisticated Appreciation, I reasoned, may itself be proof of how complex and nuanced that appreciation is.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been invited to submit to NYRB<\/i> based on the success of an essay I\u2019d written about Philip Roth for The New Yorker<\/i>\u2019s Web site. (An NYRB <\/i>editor had e-mailed me to commend its \u201csubstantial humorousness,\u201d and asked me to pitch an idea his way.) I wanted badly to be published in NYRB<\/i>. I had some friends who\u2019d been published in NYRB<\/i>, and I was jealous of them. Moreover, my father is an avid NYRB<\/i> reader\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s so wonderfully stuffy,\u201d is his line; \u201cthe official periodical of leather armchairs and lowballs of Scotch\u201d\u2014and placing an essay in its pages, I believed, would recompense him for having twice paid my tuition to the universities where I\u2019d learned to appreciate things sophisticatedly. (He would be pleased, too, to learn that I\u2019d written something that wasn\u2019t about him, as opposed to everything else I\u2019d published\u2014excepting the Roth piece\u2014since finishing graduate school.)<\/p>\n

NYRB<\/i>\u2019s editors expected six thousand words from my desk. Yet for several days I was too nervous to begin. More than anything else, the review would need to establish for NYRB<\/i>\u2019s readership how intelligent I was\u2014establishing the writer\u2019s intelligence seemed the purpose of most NYRB<\/i> reviews, and I have always liked to fit neatly into prevailing systems. If it didn\u2019t prove my intelligence, though, my review could only prove my lack thereof, and nothing was more terrifying to me than the idea of being exposed as intellectually inadequate. <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Although I was unsure what to say about Philip Roth, I knew what I would say about Pierpont\u2019s biography of him\u2014even before I\u2019d read it. I would say that her biography was unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Evidence indicates that among the essential criteria for landing a review in NYRB<\/i> is the ability to quote with offhand-seeming ease from Nabokov\u2019s Lectures on Russian Literature<\/i>; with this in mind, I paged through my copy of the Lectures<\/i> until I\u2019d found a passage that succinctly discredited Pierpont\u2019s book:<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate tampering with the precious lives of great authors and I hate Tompeeping over the fence of those lives,\u201d Nabokov says. \u201cI hate the vulgarity of \u2018human interest,\u2019 I hate the rustle of skirts and giggles in the corridors of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I leveraged these words correctly, I could indicate that Pierpont\u2019s biography, and any literary biography, was superfluous and irresponsible.<\/p>\n

Roth Unbound<\/i>, bound in its manila envelope from FSG, sat on my bedside table. I hoped it wouldn\u2019t be good. I hoped it would be bad. I hoped it would be bad so I could say terrible things about it. But even as I wanted to say terrible things about it, I knew I couldn\u2019t. Pierpont is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker<\/i>, and I, too, would like to contribute to The New Yorker<\/i>, and not just to its Web site, which is of course read only by undignified nonsubscribers. I sensed it wouldn\u2019t be politic to broadcast Pierpont\u2019s inadequacies in my review; editors of The New Yorker<\/i> read NYRB<\/i>\u2014I\u2019d heard that somewhere\u2014and would not take kindly toward my having slandered one of their writers. So Roth Unbound<\/i> remained in its envelope for a long while as I considered how to go about tactfully reproving it, and how to convey my Sophisticated Appreciation of Roth.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

After several days, I came up with an appropriate first sentence: \u201cPhilip Roth is the greatest American author of the last fifty years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phrase was deceptively resonant. By confining Roth\u2019s greatness to fifty years, one would sense the reviewer\u2019s expertise with the whole of American literature, and trust him (me) to properly adjudicate who belonged where in the canon\u2019s hierarchy; likewise, by limiting Roth\u2019s greatness to the domain set of American authors, the reviewer\u2019s fluency with international literature would be implied. I was off to an auspicious start. Moreover, I\u2019d begun to hit on something that indicated my Sophisticated Appreciation.<\/p>\n

While researching my essay for The New Yorker<\/i>\u2019s website, I\u2019d discovered a discontinuity in Roth\u2019s work: his avatar, Nathan Zuckerman, had graduated from high school in both 1949 and<\/i> 1950. (\u201cI left [high school] in forty-nine,\u201d he says in Zuckerman Unbound<\/i>; but in American Pastoral<\/i> he attends his high school reunion, which explicitly convenes 1950\u2019s graduates.) I thought it would be clever to suggest that, rather than being an error on Roth\u2019s part, this temporal hiccough was intentional, a knowing parallax of time, which only Roth\u2019s keenest readers would recognize. As they struggle for moral and sexual freedom, Roth\u2019s characters are also caught up in a struggle for temporal liberation. This constituted the most absolute freedom conceived of in the last half century of American literature. If I developed the thought deeply enough\u2014I could sense it lurking, like a shark about to crest\u2014something profound was sure to arise.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

\u201cHow goes the Roth review?\u201d my father asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ducks,\u201d I said, \u201care beginning to align.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, excellent. Excellent. Is that where you want your queen?\u201d<\/p>\n

We were in his living room, playing chess, as we always do, regardless of whether or not we are actually playing chess. He hadn\u2019t yet removed his necktie\u2014he\u2019s an attorney, a specialist in corporate securities fraud\u2014but was going around in his socks, which were from Paul Smith\u2019s boutique and patterned with black and yellow triangles. A copy of Roth\u2019s The Counterlife<\/i> was on the couch beside us; my father, after not having read him for a decade, had asked me to lend him a Roth novel he might like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing about Roth\u2014and I\u2019d totally forgotten,\u201d he said now, moving his rooks back to their starting corners (I should not have wanted my queen there), \u201cis that unlike a James Joyce, whom you sense, in the Dubliners<\/i> stories, as this very observant presence hanging out in the parlor doorway\u2014the thing about Roth is that he\u2019s in the room<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has an immediacy,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that part about the different kinds of Jews\u2014how delightful is that? What\u2019s it go like? \u2018The Jew that I was was neither more nor less than the Jew I wished to be.\u2019 Ha! \u2018I was not Jewish survivor or a Jewish socialist or a believing Jew, a scholarly Jew, a Jewish xenophobe.\u2019 And on and on. I don\u2019t remember it exactly.\u201d (He was going nearly verbatim.)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Moloch in whom I sit lonely,\u2019\u201d I said, \u201c\u2018Moloch in whom I dream angels.\u2019 Moloch the this. Moloch the that. Moloch the something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes! Howl<\/i>! I hadn\u2019t thought of that. Roth\u2019s very Howl<\/i>-y sometimes. It\u2019s musical.\u201d<\/p>\n

We continued to play, but I was preoccupied, trying to figure out how to include mention in my review of Roth\u2019s musicality and in-the-roomness\u2014my father, as he often did, had hit on essential entities that I\u2019d overlooked. What a cruel, effective brand of psychological abuse he\u2019d perpetrated on me: to esteem intellect, to bear a son who esteems intellect, to remain intellectually superior to that son.<\/p>\n

I tried out the King\u2019s Indian Attack, but hamstrung a bishop early on and forfeited the match.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

There\u2019s an electric piano in my bedroom. It is a metaphor for whatsoever I may choose. I am also adept at playing it. I studied the Suzuki method. My ear is accurate in pitch. I prefer Beethoven to Bach.<\/p>\n

My deadline for NYRB <\/i>was approaching. I\u2019d read, by this point, most, quite nearly all, of Roth Unbound<\/i>. But what to say?<\/p>\n

I looked hopefully at my electric piano.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe harmonious chords of Roth\u2019s fiction,\u201d I wrote, were, in Roth Unbound,<\/i> \u201cdistilled down to their single tones.\u201d By writing about him, Pierpont had sapped Roth of his \u201cmusicality,\u201d of his \u201crecursively musical sense of timing\u201d wherein phrases repeat themselves \u201clike echoes in the orchestra halls where Roth sits.\u201d All we were left with, in learning of his life, was \u201cthe cold, tuneless theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phrasing was coming together the way good phrasing comes together. Whether what I wrote was true mattered less than whether it was logical, persuasive. My fingers trembled as I typed\u2014exactly as they trembled when I practiced Beethoven\u2019s \u201cGrande Sonate Path\u00e9tique.\u201d Here and there, to grant legitimacy to the bad things I was saying, I said nice things about Roth Unbound<\/i>, too (plus, I was mindful of the New Yorker <\/i>editors who would read my review; they would want to see nice things written about their contributor\u2019s book). I was distracted only by the occasional daydream regarding where in the next issue of NYRB <\/i>my review would be placed\u2014up front, where serious readers begin? Or in the middle, by the staples, so the issue would naturally open up to my critique? I hoped up front. More prestige.<\/p>\n

I remembered, for once, to run a spell-check. The review would soon be available to NYRB<\/i>\u2019s subscribing readership and my Facebook friends. I attached the document to an e-mail and clicked \u201csend.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

(\u201cWhen’s your Roth thing coming out?\u201d my father asked, weeks later. I looked down at the board. Victory\u2014not mine\u2014was four moves away. \u201cReally soon, I think,\u201d I said.)<\/p>\n

Max Ross has written for <\/em>The New Yorker\u2019s Page-Turner and the <\/em>New York Times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Mr. Ross, Thank you for sharing with us your review of Claudia Roth Pierpont\u2019s Roth Unbound. The piece is colorful and sharp, and it is with regret that we say it does not suit our needs at this time. Too much of the writing reflects back to the writer himself\u2014to you yourself. (And, inexplicably, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":504,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[199,344,478,11876,99,4638],"class_list":["post-64783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-biography","tag-chess","tag-criticism","tag-fathers","tag-philip-roth","tag-the-new-york-review-of-books"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Sicilian Defense by Max Ross<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 10, 2014 \u2013 Dear Mr. Ross, Thank you for sharing with us your review of Claudia Roth Pierpont\u2019s Roth Unbound. 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