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“Psychoanalysis and Laxatives,” or Democracy in America

Roth and misogyny, highlighted by attacks by Vivian Gornick, Claire Bloom, and Carmen Callil initiate this chapter and its persistent question: did Roth treat women only as one-dimensional sex objects or as fully rounded personalities with agency and power? Roth’s response, in a series of private documents, argues that women, at least in his life, were always respected and treated equally. He itemizes the key women in his professional career, from his early agent Candida Donadio through such late friendships such as Janet Malcolm, Judith Thurman, Zadie Smith, and Nicole Krauss. The issue of Roth and his father and the writing of Patrimony and the function of writing in the midst of trauma expand the chapter, plus his unparalleled productivity in the 1990s. The focus is on Operation Shylock, Sabbath’s Theater, and the American Trilogy—all this against the background of untangling himself from Claire Bloom, complicated by illness and depression. The impact and misrepresentations in Bloom’s Leaving a Doll’s House, however, complicated by Roth’s contradictory behavior with Bloom, created difficulties, personally and professionally. The increasing presence of death in his writing noted in Sabbath’s Theater and I Married a Communist shape the final pages as Roth’s evolving American identity comes into focus.