What do you think?
Rate this book
Siamo ancora qui. La mia amicizia con Philip Roth
Philip Roth raccontato dal suo migliore amico attraverso le opere, i rapporti umani, le passioni e le idiosincrasie, fino agli ultimi giorni della sua vita. La storia di un’amicizia fra due scrittori, fra due anime diverse. Un Roth che esula dal consueto ritratto per essere osservato in un ambito più domestico, più intimo. Un piccolo libro pieno di momenti delicati e gemme di saggezza, che riesce a scavare nell’opera complessa di Roth, rinnovando il significato dei suoi romanzi e mostrando quanto siano ancora importanti nell’America di oggi. “Philip aveva cercato diligentemente una donna giovane e bella che si occupasse di lui come Jane Eyre si prendeva cura del vecchio signor Rochester. Quello che ottenne invece fui io”. Benjamin Taylor, scrittore, saggista, sensibile conoscitore della letteratura, è stato, fra tutte queste cose, anche il migliore amico di Philip Roth: lettore, ascoltatore, confidente speciale, il più vicino al celebrato romanziere di Newark soprattutto nell’ultimo periodo della sua vita, quello dei bilanci e, fatalmente, del declino fisico. In questo libro – ritratto affettuoso ma sempre schietto e mai retorico – Taylor narra la storia di un’amicizia privilegiata attraverso il percorso letterario di Roth, dagli anni ruggenti del Teatro di Sabbath a quelli dei grandi romanzi che consolidarono la sua fama internazionale, fino al “magistrale saluto” di Nemesi; ma lo fa affidandosi soprattutto ai percorsi eccentrici della memoria, che introducono il lettore in una dimensione privata, tra vizi, slanci, idiosincrasie. Così, mentre si leggono (o rileggono) alcune delle sue righe più belle, si possono gustare squarci inediti di un Roth che inventa parenti mai esistiti, che mangia in infime bettole di Manhattan, che infierisce per l’ennesima volta sull’ex moglie, che riaggancia il telefono senza salutare; o che passeggia per le strade di New York stupendosi ancora del mondo, e affronta l’inevitabilità della morte come un moderno Socrate.
112 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 2020
23 people are currently reading
1616 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Taylor
13 books36 followersBenjamin Taylor is the author of a book of essays, Into the Open, and two novels, Tales Out of School, winner of the Harold Ribalow Prize, and The Book of Getting Even, a 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award Finalist, a 2008 Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year, and a Ferro-Grumley Prize Finalist. In October 2009, The Book of Getting Even appeared as El Libro de la Venganza in Spain, where it was named a best book of the year by El Pais. In November 2010, Viking Press released Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Taylor. Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, a travel memoir from Marian Wood Books, is scheduled for 2012. Taylor is a graduate of Haverford College and Columbia University where he earned the doctorate in English and comparative literature. He has contributed to magazines including Bookforum, BOMB, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New Leader, The Georgia Review, Raritan, and others. A longtime member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty at The New School, he has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, Bennington College and the Graduate Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
June 26, 2020
In his Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth, Benjamin Taylor tells us of twenty years of dinners, visits, and heartfelt discussions. Roth was of course famous for his fiction, a prodigious output of more than thirty books spanning fifty years. But behind the public Roth was the private Roth: ”Philip. . . could seem a beguiling but remote citadel: august, many-towered, lavishly defended. Those who reached the inner keep met there someone quite different from the persona devised for public purposes. Still vitally present at home was the young man he’d remained all along, full of satirical hijinks and gleeful ventriloquisms and antic fun building to crescendos. Imaginary relatives were a specialty. I recall for example Paprika Roth, a retired stripper living in the Florida Panhandle. A glint in the eye told you hilarity was on the road.” (p. 4)
For those who’ve delved behind the public Roth, he was also famous for his friendships. Taylor and Roth became friends in the last twenty years of Roth’s long life. Roth’s friendship with Taylor, like his friendships with Louise Erdrich, Edna O’Brien, the gun-toting, Rush Limbaugh-listening handyman for his Connecticut home, and others, may seem unlikely: Taylor, twenty years younger than Roth, a child of Fort Worth to Roth’s Newark, gay to Roth’s aggressively hetero. Roth accumulated friends throughout his long life. Several months before his death, I attended a 92nd Street Y symposium on the newly published Philip Roth: Why Write — Collected Nonfiction 1960-2014, which featured as discussants both Ben Taylor and Blake Bailey, the author of Roth’s forthcoming authorized biography. Knowing that Roth was poorly, the symposium became a celebration of Roth’s life friendships: proudly sporting an old Weequahic High School letter jacket — yes, the kind with a wool body and leather sleeves — was a high school classmate and lifelong friend of Roth’s. Here Taylor describes their twenty years of conversations: ”Our conversation was about everything — novels, politics, families, dreams, sex, baseball, food, ex-friends, ex-lovers. But our keynote was American history, for which Philip was ravenous, consuming one big scholarly book after another. He became a great writer in the course of the eighties and especially the nineties when his novels became history-haunted.” (p. 18)
What’s special about Here We Are is Taylor’s clear-eyed and balanced appreciation of Roth. Taylor enjoyed Roth’s erudition, his raucous humor and quick wit, and his warmth and support. He also respected Roth’s legendary disciplined hard work as a writer and his willingness to stand back from his own work, both before and after publication. Roth describes his first published short stories as ”’I won’t be reading any of that juvenilia again to confirm my low opinion of it.’ / But how did he get from there to the assurance of Goodbye, Columbus? / ‘I improved, though not out of all recognition. As you might expect your dentist to improve.‘”” (p. 40, emphases added) Roth, ever the striving dentist, recognized what was present and what was absent in his fiction. ”Early on he told me this: ‘What I care about is individuals enmeshed in some nexus of particulars. Philosophical generalization is completely alien to me — some other writer’s work. I’m a philosophical illiterate. All my brain power has to do with specificity, life’s proliferating minutiae. Wouldn’t know what to do with a general idea if it were hand-delivered. Would try to catch the FedEx man before he left the driveway: ‘Wrong address, pal! Big ideas? No, thanks!’’” (pp. 30-31)
To his credit, Taylor eschews hagiography: he presents us with Roth the unforgiving, Roth the vengeful, and Roth the petty. ”[His] appetite for vengeance was insatiable. Philip could not get enough of getting even.” (p. 160) ”To say Philip stopped writing is inaccurate. He stopped making art. But his old way of coping with any embattlement, to sit down at the keyboard, continued in the years of his retirement. The underside of his greatness swarmed with grievances time had not assuaged. He couldn’t stop litigating the past and produced over a thousand pages of — well, what to call it? — self-justification in those years. . .” (p.158). Not surprisingly, his grievances extended to his two former wives. Bluntly, Philip was allergic to the idea that he could have been at fault in either of his unhappy marriages and to the idea that the party of the other part might, in both cases, have had grievances worth considering. His own angle of vision was complete and unfailing. Other accounts were distortions.” (p. 50)
Benjamin Taylor’s Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth is a lovely memoir of a close friendship, made all the more special by Taylor’s honesty.
4.5 stars
For those who’ve delved behind the public Roth, he was also famous for his friendships. Taylor and Roth became friends in the last twenty years of Roth’s long life. Roth’s friendship with Taylor, like his friendships with Louise Erdrich, Edna O’Brien, the gun-toting, Rush Limbaugh-listening handyman for his Connecticut home, and others, may seem unlikely: Taylor, twenty years younger than Roth, a child of Fort Worth to Roth’s Newark, gay to Roth’s aggressively hetero. Roth accumulated friends throughout his long life. Several months before his death, I attended a 92nd Street Y symposium on the newly published Philip Roth: Why Write — Collected Nonfiction 1960-2014, which featured as discussants both Ben Taylor and Blake Bailey, the author of Roth’s forthcoming authorized biography. Knowing that Roth was poorly, the symposium became a celebration of Roth’s life friendships: proudly sporting an old Weequahic High School letter jacket — yes, the kind with a wool body and leather sleeves — was a high school classmate and lifelong friend of Roth’s. Here Taylor describes their twenty years of conversations: ”Our conversation was about everything — novels, politics, families, dreams, sex, baseball, food, ex-friends, ex-lovers. But our keynote was American history, for which Philip was ravenous, consuming one big scholarly book after another. He became a great writer in the course of the eighties and especially the nineties when his novels became history-haunted.” (p. 18)
What’s special about Here We Are is Taylor’s clear-eyed and balanced appreciation of Roth. Taylor enjoyed Roth’s erudition, his raucous humor and quick wit, and his warmth and support. He also respected Roth’s legendary disciplined hard work as a writer and his willingness to stand back from his own work, both before and after publication. Roth describes his first published short stories as ”’I won’t be reading any of that juvenilia again to confirm my low opinion of it.’ / But how did he get from there to the assurance of Goodbye, Columbus? / ‘I improved, though not out of all recognition. As you might expect your dentist to improve.‘”” (p. 40, emphases added) Roth, ever the striving dentist, recognized what was present and what was absent in his fiction. ”Early on he told me this: ‘What I care about is individuals enmeshed in some nexus of particulars. Philosophical generalization is completely alien to me — some other writer’s work. I’m a philosophical illiterate. All my brain power has to do with specificity, life’s proliferating minutiae. Wouldn’t know what to do with a general idea if it were hand-delivered. Would try to catch the FedEx man before he left the driveway: ‘Wrong address, pal! Big ideas? No, thanks!’’” (pp. 30-31)
To his credit, Taylor eschews hagiography: he presents us with Roth the unforgiving, Roth the vengeful, and Roth the petty. ”[His] appetite for vengeance was insatiable. Philip could not get enough of getting even.” (p. 160) ”To say Philip stopped writing is inaccurate. He stopped making art. But his old way of coping with any embattlement, to sit down at the keyboard, continued in the years of his retirement. The underside of his greatness swarmed with grievances time had not assuaged. He couldn’t stop litigating the past and produced over a thousand pages of — well, what to call it? — self-justification in those years. . .” (p.158). Not surprisingly, his grievances extended to his two former wives. Bluntly, Philip was allergic to the idea that he could have been at fault in either of his unhappy marriages and to the idea that the party of the other part might, in both cases, have had grievances worth considering. His own angle of vision was complete and unfailing. Other accounts were distortions.” (p. 50)
Benjamin Taylor’s Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth is a lovely memoir of a close friendship, made all the more special by Taylor’s honesty.
4.5 stars
June 13, 2021
“Mentre ci congedavamo gli ho detto: ’Sei stato la gioia della mia vita ‘.
‘E tu della mia’, mi ha risposto.
Mi sono chinato. Per un attimo ha posato la sua mano sulla mia testa”.
Il racconto di un’amicizia, il ritratto di un Roth intimo e privato.
Il valore della scrittura come disciplina e abnegazione.
La riflessione costante sul problema fondamentale dell’essere umano: la morte, la nostra e altrui sparizione.
(“L’incessante estinzione. Che idea! Quale maniaco l’ha concepita? Eppure, che bella giornata è oggi, un dono del cielo, un giorno ideale in cui non manca nulla”-P.Roth)
Un delicato, toccante memoir.
‘E tu della mia’, mi ha risposto.
Mi sono chinato. Per un attimo ha posato la sua mano sulla mia testa”.
Il racconto di un’amicizia, il ritratto di un Roth intimo e privato.
Il valore della scrittura come disciplina e abnegazione.
La riflessione costante sul problema fondamentale dell’essere umano: la morte, la nostra e altrui sparizione.
(“L’incessante estinzione. Che idea! Quale maniaco l’ha concepita? Eppure, che bella giornata è oggi, un dono del cielo, un giorno ideale in cui non manca nulla”-P.Roth)
Un delicato, toccante memoir.
June 29, 2020
Sometimes at a funeral there will be that person whose central place confuses you. You’ll recognize the surviving spouse, siblings, and children, but then there will sometimes be that mysterious friend who’s given the same standing. Sometimes that person, recognizing the potential discomfort that comes with being elevated beyond other mourners, will be considerate enough to explain the backstory. Other times, the person stands presumptuously, implicitly blaming you for not recognizing the special nature of the friendship.
Benjamin Taylor is presumptuous here. He puts himself forward as a chief mourner of the great Philip Roth, and he takes it for granted that his memories of their friendship are a balm to those many of us who have mourned him after knowing him only from a distance.
Not long ago, I read and enjoyed James Atlas’s Remembering Roth – another of the short memoir/biographies of Roth that we are getting as we await the promised seminal biography from Blake Bailey. In it, Atlas told the story of how he’d been swept into Roth’s circle the way a lot of people were. Roth would find something to admire in a younger writer’s work, would send a note, and then their friendship would erupt.
Just as often, though, as Atlas tells it (and as others suggest), Roth would grow prickly and distant. He didn’t write such people out of his life, but he’d let a friendship lose its luster. Atlas is especially good at recording the slow-growing sadness of realizing that he was getting pushed out of an inner circle he’d been fortunate to be part of for a decade or so. There was always someone new, someone full of promise and without baggage to fill the vacated place.
Taylor, it turns out, was more or less the last man standing when Roth died. I understand there were others – Adam Gopnik was a famous late-life intimate – but, as we get the story here, Taylor is the central one.
And, whether that claim is true, his descriptions of it are almost cringe-worthy. On the last page – though it’s hardly the first time he says something so self-serving – he records saying to Roth, “You have been the joy of my life.” And then he quotes Roth’s answer, “And you of mine.” I’ll believe Roth said it, and I’ll believe he meant it. But I won’t believe he never said it to anyone else, and I won’t believe he’d have looked at his life differently a week before or a week after. We know enough about Roth’s mercurial moods to know that much of his power came from living within such moments.
As such, it’s an awkward and uncomfortable experience to have Taylor record such sentiments without putting them into a larger context. He never tells the story of his friendship with Roth; he merely basks in it. And that leaves the rest of us feeling like excluded mourners.
I could forgive some of that awkward tone if there were more substance or more new information here.
To Taylor’s partial credit, we do learn (for what I think may be the first time) that Roth did indeed continue writing after he stopped publishing. He has volumes of late-life material that some publisher will likely release some day. We also get some brief snippets of Roth’s private correspondence with Taylor, and some of the lines are genuinely memorable. One, for instance, is Roth’s observation, “Hawthorne, that visionary pessimist, had it right: Our enemies are forever the legions of purifiers and pleasure-haters.”
And then there’s Roth’s reported claim that he slept with Ava Gardner sometime in the 1980s. Here’s how Taylor records that in what may be the most uncomfortable moment in a short book filled with them. “ ‘And why are you gay men so beguiled by Bette Davis? You don’t look twice at Ava Gardner, who was, to put it mildly, more attractive. She had an enduring sexiness, even in London. In the eighties. When I had her.’ (I tell you this, reader, in strict confidence – as it was told to me.)”
As for substance, Taylor seems a solid reader of Roth though not an extraordinary one. He offers quick critical observations every now and then, but he rarely explores or supports them. One of my favorites, and potentially the most substantive claim in the book, turns on how Roth – who could not bring himself to believe in an afterlife – dealt with what it means to lose somebody, and to be lost oneself. As Taylor puts it, “Philip’s solution was to rename mortality and declare himself indestructible till death. It’s not a bad gloss on what’s always been the ultimate human problem.”
That kernel of insight might have served as the heart of a worthwhile book here. I’d have wanted to see Taylor slow down, give context to, and reflect on Roth’s fading years.
Instead, we’ve gotten something that awkwardly celebrates a friendship that, as it might have meant a lot to Roth and surely did to Taylor, doesn’t really concern itself with those of us who had our own readerly relationship to the man.
Benjamin Taylor is presumptuous here. He puts himself forward as a chief mourner of the great Philip Roth, and he takes it for granted that his memories of their friendship are a balm to those many of us who have mourned him after knowing him only from a distance.
Not long ago, I read and enjoyed James Atlas’s Remembering Roth – another of the short memoir/biographies of Roth that we are getting as we await the promised seminal biography from Blake Bailey. In it, Atlas told the story of how he’d been swept into Roth’s circle the way a lot of people were. Roth would find something to admire in a younger writer’s work, would send a note, and then their friendship would erupt.
Just as often, though, as Atlas tells it (and as others suggest), Roth would grow prickly and distant. He didn’t write such people out of his life, but he’d let a friendship lose its luster. Atlas is especially good at recording the slow-growing sadness of realizing that he was getting pushed out of an inner circle he’d been fortunate to be part of for a decade or so. There was always someone new, someone full of promise and without baggage to fill the vacated place.
Taylor, it turns out, was more or less the last man standing when Roth died. I understand there were others – Adam Gopnik was a famous late-life intimate – but, as we get the story here, Taylor is the central one.
And, whether that claim is true, his descriptions of it are almost cringe-worthy. On the last page – though it’s hardly the first time he says something so self-serving – he records saying to Roth, “You have been the joy of my life.” And then he quotes Roth’s answer, “And you of mine.” I’ll believe Roth said it, and I’ll believe he meant it. But I won’t believe he never said it to anyone else, and I won’t believe he’d have looked at his life differently a week before or a week after. We know enough about Roth’s mercurial moods to know that much of his power came from living within such moments.
As such, it’s an awkward and uncomfortable experience to have Taylor record such sentiments without putting them into a larger context. He never tells the story of his friendship with Roth; he merely basks in it. And that leaves the rest of us feeling like excluded mourners.
I could forgive some of that awkward tone if there were more substance or more new information here.
To Taylor’s partial credit, we do learn (for what I think may be the first time) that Roth did indeed continue writing after he stopped publishing. He has volumes of late-life material that some publisher will likely release some day. We also get some brief snippets of Roth’s private correspondence with Taylor, and some of the lines are genuinely memorable. One, for instance, is Roth’s observation, “Hawthorne, that visionary pessimist, had it right: Our enemies are forever the legions of purifiers and pleasure-haters.”
And then there’s Roth’s reported claim that he slept with Ava Gardner sometime in the 1980s. Here’s how Taylor records that in what may be the most uncomfortable moment in a short book filled with them. “ ‘And why are you gay men so beguiled by Bette Davis? You don’t look twice at Ava Gardner, who was, to put it mildly, more attractive. She had an enduring sexiness, even in London. In the eighties. When I had her.’ (I tell you this, reader, in strict confidence – as it was told to me.)”
As for substance, Taylor seems a solid reader of Roth though not an extraordinary one. He offers quick critical observations every now and then, but he rarely explores or supports them. One of my favorites, and potentially the most substantive claim in the book, turns on how Roth – who could not bring himself to believe in an afterlife – dealt with what it means to lose somebody, and to be lost oneself. As Taylor puts it, “Philip’s solution was to rename mortality and declare himself indestructible till death. It’s not a bad gloss on what’s always been the ultimate human problem.”
That kernel of insight might have served as the heart of a worthwhile book here. I’d have wanted to see Taylor slow down, give context to, and reflect on Roth’s fading years.
Instead, we’ve gotten something that awkwardly celebrates a friendship that, as it might have meant a lot to Roth and surely did to Taylor, doesn’t really concern itself with those of us who had our own readerly relationship to the man.
August 23, 2021
Me l'ha regalato un amico, e forse non l'avrei mai comprato. Sono ancora arenata sulla monumentale e chiacchierata biografia di Roth, ogni tanto ne leggo qualche capitolo ma non sono poi così entusiasta. Invece questo piccolo libro è il racconto di Roth fatto dal suo migliore amico, più giovane di lui e decisamente addolorato per la sua morte. Ne risulta un racconto commovente e divertente, ben scritto e pieno di citazioni di opere. Non cambia la vita di nessuno ma a me ha fatto compagnia e l'ho trovato ben scritto e scorrevole.
Birretta leggera in accompagnamento, alla tua Phil, per sempre.
Birretta leggera in accompagnamento, alla tua Phil, per sempre.
May 24, 2020
My connection with author Philip Roth takes me back more than a half-century. While visiting relatives in Winnipeg, Canada, in the summer of 1961, a member of the group remarked about a book he was reading. It so impressed him that he went out to his car, returned with it, and read aloud portions of the novella describing a Jewish wedding in Newark, New Jersey. I listened attentively, but it would be a few years before I myself would read GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, a collection of stories that remains vivid in my memory.
In its early stages, my interest in Roth’s writing was based upon his ability to focus on Jewish-Americans and how they were living in their post-World War II homeland. As the years passed, I avoided some of his more controversial novels but did marvel at his ability to consistently produce provocative fiction. Unlike some of his contemporaries who stopped writing later in life, Roth soldiered on and published his 31st and final book, NEMESIS, at age 77. While he would never be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, his honors did include the Man Booker Prize, two National Book Awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
HERE WE ARE is not a Philip Roth biography. Benjamin Taylor met Roth long after he had established himself as an iconic American writer. Over several years they became friends and began spending time with each other in a relationship that Taylor observed “[w]as not like a marriage, still less like a love affair. It was as plotless as friendship ought to be. We spent thousands of hours in each other’s company. He was fully half my life. I cannot hope for another such friend.”
Call HERE WE ARE what you wish. It is a brief but enjoyable journey through the life of a legendary author that seamlessly moves from discussing Roth’s works to relationships with such fellow writers as Saul Bellow and John Updike. This is not ponderous literary analysis, but a light and thoughtful examination of a great writer and how he performs his craft. More than anything, Taylor has produced a book about conversations and companionship.
Roth’s career had no shortage of influences and critics. His early writing was attacked by a number of Jewish readers and intellectuals as that of a cynical young man who had turned his back on his religion. Roth denied the accusation: “I was brought up in a Jewish neighborhood and never saw a skullcap, a beard, sidelocks --- ever, ever, ever --- because the mission was to live here, not there.” Responding to those who labeled him a self-hater, he wrote his fourth book, PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT, which ironically remains the best-selling novel of his career.
A major portion of HERE WE ARE recounts philosophical life discussions between Roth and Taylor. As he aged and no longer wrote for publication, Roth continued writing and sharing thoughts with Taylor on his failed marriages, past relationships and declining health. Many wide-ranging conversations and observations between them populate this less-than-200-page portrait, a touching recreation of a lasting friendship. For me, it is also a reminder that there are still some Philip Roth novels I have yet to read --- and now is as good a time as any to start.
Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
In its early stages, my interest in Roth’s writing was based upon his ability to focus on Jewish-Americans and how they were living in their post-World War II homeland. As the years passed, I avoided some of his more controversial novels but did marvel at his ability to consistently produce provocative fiction. Unlike some of his contemporaries who stopped writing later in life, Roth soldiered on and published his 31st and final book, NEMESIS, at age 77. While he would never be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, his honors did include the Man Booker Prize, two National Book Awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
HERE WE ARE is not a Philip Roth biography. Benjamin Taylor met Roth long after he had established himself as an iconic American writer. Over several years they became friends and began spending time with each other in a relationship that Taylor observed “[w]as not like a marriage, still less like a love affair. It was as plotless as friendship ought to be. We spent thousands of hours in each other’s company. He was fully half my life. I cannot hope for another such friend.”
Call HERE WE ARE what you wish. It is a brief but enjoyable journey through the life of a legendary author that seamlessly moves from discussing Roth’s works to relationships with such fellow writers as Saul Bellow and John Updike. This is not ponderous literary analysis, but a light and thoughtful examination of a great writer and how he performs his craft. More than anything, Taylor has produced a book about conversations and companionship.
Roth’s career had no shortage of influences and critics. His early writing was attacked by a number of Jewish readers and intellectuals as that of a cynical young man who had turned his back on his religion. Roth denied the accusation: “I was brought up in a Jewish neighborhood and never saw a skullcap, a beard, sidelocks --- ever, ever, ever --- because the mission was to live here, not there.” Responding to those who labeled him a self-hater, he wrote his fourth book, PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT, which ironically remains the best-selling novel of his career.
A major portion of HERE WE ARE recounts philosophical life discussions between Roth and Taylor. As he aged and no longer wrote for publication, Roth continued writing and sharing thoughts with Taylor on his failed marriages, past relationships and declining health. Many wide-ranging conversations and observations between them populate this less-than-200-page portrait, a touching recreation of a lasting friendship. For me, it is also a reminder that there are still some Philip Roth novels I have yet to read --- and now is as good a time as any to start.
Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
June 14, 2021
La vita interiore di Philip era gigantesca. Insaziabili appetiti emotivi - per la rabbia come per l’amore - si trascinavano su sentieri dove ribolliva di disgusto o desiderio. “C’è troppa roba in te, Philip. Tutte le tue emozioni sono fuori misura”.
“Ho scritto proprio perché queste emozioni non mi ammazzassero”.
Dopo aver iniziato la lettura dei suoi libri con Pastorale americana qualche anno fa e averlo capito solo in parte, solo nel riconoscerne insomma l’oggettivo valore letterario, ho ripreso la lettura dei suoi libri riuscendo a fare il passo in più che mi ha permesso di definire davvero Philip Roth con la banale ma efficace etichetta di “uno dei miei scrittori preferiti”. Questo memoir di Benjamin Taylor è un’occasione preziosa per sbirciare nella vita quotidiana di Roth e capire da dove vengono alcuni personaggi e episodi dei suoi libri, quindi mi è piaciuto moltissimo. Ha un solo difetto: è troppo corto!
“Ho scritto proprio perché queste emozioni non mi ammazzassero”.
Dopo aver iniziato la lettura dei suoi libri con Pastorale americana qualche anno fa e averlo capito solo in parte, solo nel riconoscerne insomma l’oggettivo valore letterario, ho ripreso la lettura dei suoi libri riuscendo a fare il passo in più che mi ha permesso di definire davvero Philip Roth con la banale ma efficace etichetta di “uno dei miei scrittori preferiti”. Questo memoir di Benjamin Taylor è un’occasione preziosa per sbirciare nella vita quotidiana di Roth e capire da dove vengono alcuni personaggi e episodi dei suoi libri, quindi mi è piaciuto moltissimo. Ha un solo difetto: è troppo corto!
October 24, 2020
Here We Are is a beautiful, exceptional book. Benjamin Taylor was a friend of Philip Roth's for decades. I was cautiously pleased that Taylor had written a memoir about Taylor's friendship with Roth. However, I was also apprehensive about picking up a friendship memoir (some "friends" decide a memoir is the perfect time to bash the dead soul all the while telling the reader they are just being honest) but I was rewarded with loving, warm memories of laughter, tragedy, pain, growth and lasting friendship. I'll go so far as to say you should read Here We Are even if you've never read a Philip Roth book. Here We Are is that good.
I was very sad when I learned that Roth died. He was one of the authors I could count on to punch me with his prose, plots and characters. I began reading Philip Roth as a young woman and have followed him through the years. His writing is not for everyone, so beware should you decide to dip your eyes into one of his books. He is irreverent, bawdy, delightful. Now that he is gone, I will re-read a book of his every couple of years to satisfy my Roth need.
I was very sad when I learned that Roth died. He was one of the authors I could count on to punch me with his prose, plots and characters. I began reading Philip Roth as a young woman and have followed him through the years. His writing is not for everyone, so beware should you decide to dip your eyes into one of his books. He is irreverent, bawdy, delightful. Now that he is gone, I will re-read a book of his every couple of years to satisfy my Roth need.
July 28, 2020
As a fan of Roth’s and a lover of nontraditional platonic relationships, this book seemed to me to capture the spirit of a man as he navigated his complicated life through the lens of another man that knew and loved him more than any other person on the planet. He is that man that should have won the Nobel Prize, that man that captured life as an American, a Jew, a Lover, an Athiest, a skeptic, an antifascist, and so much more; better than anyone else – even Updike (strike me down, gods of literature).
This book is not a long one, and could easily be read in one sitting. It is a poetic portrait of Roth’s career, but also a poetic memoir of the friendship that blossomed between Roth and Taylor; their loves, navigating their lives, and also the timeline of his oeuvre as it is released into the world. Taylor’s prose is light in words and heavy in meaning. His relationship with Roth is clearly and beautifully succinct, tracing their early years through several moments of panic in the back of an ambulance as Roth gives directions to the driver on how to get to his preferred hospital. This is a book of pure love. One that uses his literary releases and marriages as a roadmap to a semblance of nirvana; a nirvana that by the end of his life was the perfect settlement of time, place, and relationships that could only be his.
As a writer, I was interested in his career, of course. The book advances that are no longer, the homes, the book tours... But for Taylor, these are ignored as the meaningless trappings of his career. Taylor treats us to the true emotional vibrations of a life, the inspirations and the powertrain of his true Great American Novels, and the workings of experience that lead to a life that makes his one that feels like it matters – as if every C rating that hangs in the window of their favorite Manhattan deli is a worse fate than the four divorces that brought us together for the sandwich we’re enjoying for whatever time we have left.
This is a spectacular portrait of true love; that of a writer and a dear friend.
This book is not a long one, and could easily be read in one sitting. It is a poetic portrait of Roth’s career, but also a poetic memoir of the friendship that blossomed between Roth and Taylor; their loves, navigating their lives, and also the timeline of his oeuvre as it is released into the world. Taylor’s prose is light in words and heavy in meaning. His relationship with Roth is clearly and beautifully succinct, tracing their early years through several moments of panic in the back of an ambulance as Roth gives directions to the driver on how to get to his preferred hospital. This is a book of pure love. One that uses his literary releases and marriages as a roadmap to a semblance of nirvana; a nirvana that by the end of his life was the perfect settlement of time, place, and relationships that could only be his.
As a writer, I was interested in his career, of course. The book advances that are no longer, the homes, the book tours... But for Taylor, these are ignored as the meaningless trappings of his career. Taylor treats us to the true emotional vibrations of a life, the inspirations and the powertrain of his true Great American Novels, and the workings of experience that lead to a life that makes his one that feels like it matters – as if every C rating that hangs in the window of their favorite Manhattan deli is a worse fate than the four divorces that brought us together for the sandwich we’re enjoying for whatever time we have left.
This is a spectacular portrait of true love; that of a writer and a dear friend.
September 23, 2020
Benjamin Taylor writes about the final years of Roth's life, their friendship and musings. What I found most interesting about Roth is despite his career of writing about the character of the self hating Jew he was, in fact, a lover of the Yiddish language and had a good relationship with his family.
May 23, 2021
Avrei voluto continuasse per altre 500 pagine.
"Adesso è adesso e siamo ancora qui, e questo mi basta. Finché siamo vivi siamo immortali, no?" Philip Roth
"Adesso è adesso e siamo ancora qui, e questo mi basta. Finché siamo vivi siamo immortali, no?" Philip Roth
August 20, 2022
Si può ritrarre a parole un gigante della letteratura come Roth, raccontandone l’intimità senza avere a proprio favore l’interpolazione del tempo e dell’oblio? È una sfida enorme, che richiede la sfacciataggine di voler riempire d’altre parole una stanza che è già satura di frasi, pagine, libri.
L’approccio a questo problema da parte dell’autore di questo memoir mi sembra devozionale. Ammaliato dall’amico – mito, maestro, amato – più grande, Taylor ne traccia una brevissima mitografia e lo fa con l’ardore e la cecità di un tenero devoto. Ai suoi occhi, sinceri e inumiditi, Philip è perfetto, anche e soprattutto nei difetti: non si può fargliene una colpa, è ovvio, ma solo inginocchiarsi al suo fianco, stringerlo un po’ e starlo a sentire mentre rievoca qualche ricordo di quello stato di grazia oramai trascorso, in cui i due si erano trovati a condividere attimi di intimità. E come un fervido credente, lui lo cita, quasi lo avesse imparato a memoria, quasi potesse convertire il mondo raccontandone gli insegnamenti.
Taylor lo dice di sfuggita, senza affrontare la questione, quasi fosse una ferita mai guarita, ma forse di quel Roth, algido, tremendo e affascinante, era un po’ innamorato. In questo ricordo si avverte con forza che il contatto era ben più di una semplice amicizia, sebbene i confini, soprattutto dalla prospettiva di Roth, restino vaghi. Ne consegue che questa, proprio a causa della loro estrema famigliarità, non può essere una biografia, quando un vero e proprio diario del lutto, un tentativo di Taylor di dare ordine all’improvviso caos vuoto in cui la perdita dell’amico lo ha costretto.
Avrei voluto fosse più articolato e che l’autore avesse il coraggio di farsi più carico delle proprie parole. Di certo ha riacceso in me la scintilla per uno scrittore a cui devo molto.
Se avessi avuto a casa Il teatro di Sabbath, ieri notte, lo avrei iniziato subito.
[3,5 stelle]
L’approccio a questo problema da parte dell’autore di questo memoir mi sembra devozionale. Ammaliato dall’amico – mito, maestro, amato – più grande, Taylor ne traccia una brevissima mitografia e lo fa con l’ardore e la cecità di un tenero devoto. Ai suoi occhi, sinceri e inumiditi, Philip è perfetto, anche e soprattutto nei difetti: non si può fargliene una colpa, è ovvio, ma solo inginocchiarsi al suo fianco, stringerlo un po’ e starlo a sentire mentre rievoca qualche ricordo di quello stato di grazia oramai trascorso, in cui i due si erano trovati a condividere attimi di intimità. E come un fervido credente, lui lo cita, quasi lo avesse imparato a memoria, quasi potesse convertire il mondo raccontandone gli insegnamenti.
Taylor lo dice di sfuggita, senza affrontare la questione, quasi fosse una ferita mai guarita, ma forse di quel Roth, algido, tremendo e affascinante, era un po’ innamorato. In questo ricordo si avverte con forza che il contatto era ben più di una semplice amicizia, sebbene i confini, soprattutto dalla prospettiva di Roth, restino vaghi. Ne consegue che questa, proprio a causa della loro estrema famigliarità, non può essere una biografia, quando un vero e proprio diario del lutto, un tentativo di Taylor di dare ordine all’improvviso caos vuoto in cui la perdita dell’amico lo ha costretto.
Avrei voluto fosse più articolato e che l’autore avesse il coraggio di farsi più carico delle proprie parole. Di certo ha riacceso in me la scintilla per uno scrittore a cui devo molto.
Se avessi avuto a casa Il teatro di Sabbath, ieri notte, lo avrei iniziato subito.
[3,5 stelle]
December 22, 2020
Here We Are Now is short portrayal of a literary friendship. Benjamin’s Taylor’s friendship with Philip Roth was in the latter decades of his life. Taylor was with him when he died in May 2018. Taylor shares the intimacy of candid conversation with the author; disappointment about not receiving the Nobel prize, another friendship with Saul Bellow, marriage to Claire Blum, other women, and more. Interesting facts includes learning that Alexander Portnoy’s Dr. Spielvogel was inspired by a psychoanalyst that Roth was seeing.
The book provides a guide for someone wanting to reread Roth, or decide where to begin, or chose past classics that were missed. Roth’s last longer novel was Plot Against America (2004). Like Joseph Conrad, he then chose shorter books, such as the Nemesis. This marked the pivotal time in his oeuvre where I became a regular follower, reading his past books, as well as awaiting what may be next.
The book provides a guide for someone wanting to reread Roth, or decide where to begin, or chose past classics that were missed. Roth’s last longer novel was Plot Against America (2004). Like Joseph Conrad, he then chose shorter books, such as the Nemesis. This marked the pivotal time in his oeuvre where I became a regular follower, reading his past books, as well as awaiting what may be next.
November 9, 2024
This book was awful. I am not familiar with Philip Roth, but I assumed this biography/memoir would give context into who was being written about, some background. Even some context, but I found this book wordy, and followed no clear direction. Bounced around in time, random stories and tales of what felt like a cranky old man taking advantage of a younger "friend" who just let him behave badly. Had the book not been so short, I likely would have considered not finishing. I kept thinking at some point the author would give details and facts of his subject, the basics to guide a reader who isn't familiar, but could use this book to perhaps learn and in turn read books by this author. This book did none of that. It was wordy and pretentious and made the author, who is the subject of this book and whom I've never heard of, become someone I have zero desire to read any books of. I've loved biographies my entire life, and often, they are about people I don't know or am not familiar with, and they manage to draw me in and grab my attention. This book did none of that.
September 24, 2020
Philip Roth had acclaim and renown as a brilliant writer from the moment his first book Goodbye, Columbus appeared in 1959. Despite decades of literary fame and winning just about every literary prize imaginable (except for the Nobel Prize) Roth never became a public figure the same way that authors like Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal did. You weren’t going to find Roth on Johnny Carson, kibitzing about his latest novel. There remained an aura of mystery around Philip Roth.
Roth’s official biographer, Blake Bailey, will publish his tome about Roth in April 2021. Until then, for a look at the man behind the novels, we have Benjamin Taylor’s memoir Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth. Published in May 2020, Here We Are gives us some sense of what Philip Roth was like as a person.
Taylor and Roth first met in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that they really became friends. They remained close until Roth’s death in 2018. One of the more vivid parts of the book is Taylor recounting how many people came to see Roth in the hospital during his final days. Ex-lovers of Roth’s showed up at his deathbed! That’s like a scene, well, out of a Philip Roth novel:
“Lying on the hospital bed, Zuckerman inhaled sharply. There stood Jennifer. Sweet, proud Jennifer. He didn’t know it at the time they met, but she would be his last lover. It was at one of his readings. An upscale bookstore on the Upper West Side, filled with millennials noshing on overpriced bagels. He looked up from a paragraph, and suddenly, she was there. In the fourth row, her auburn hair falling loosely around her shoulders, her dress revealing a hint of décolletage. They chatted after the reading as she got her book signed. She told him how much she had liked his book about his friend Swede Levov. She seemed slightly shy; she told him she was a writer herself. ‘I’d be interested to read your work,’ he told her. It wasn’t a lie. He asked for her email address, and she rummaged around her too-large purse, searching for a pen. He laughed ‘There’s pens right here, on the table.’ ‘Of course, how silly of me!’ She mimed smacking herself on the forehead. He told her she should wait around for him; he’d like to talk to her more. After he finished signing for the long line of people, they went out for a drink. They became lovers that night.
“To see her here now, in the hospital, seemed to him like a great cosmic joke. She seemed so vital, the very picture of healthful youth. His eyes, dark and still expressive, darted around the hospital room before they drew her in. Even now, he still strained to get a look at her calf muscles.”
What Here We Are is missing are the mundane, quotidian details that would paint a more vivid picture of the friendship between Roth and Taylor. With a two-decade age gap, the relationship inevitably tilts towards mentor and protégé. Taylor is a writer as well, a fact that he barely brings up in the book. You need to be brutally honest when you’re writing a memoir, and yet Taylor holds too much about himself back. We learn little about Taylor throughout the book. Presumably, Taylor doesn’t have a husband, or a long-time partner, as he’s able to spend so much of his time hanging out with Philip. He seems to be practically at Roth’s beck and call.
Here We Are humanizes Roth, which means that we see his bad side as well—the pettiness, continually seeking revenge on those who have seemingly wronged him. Why is it that so many writers seem intent on holding onto grudges? Taylor informs us that even after Roth announced he had stopped writing fiction in 2012, he was still writing non-fiction aimed at settling scores. Roth gave Taylor two manuscripts, “Notes for My Biographer” and “Notes on a Scandal Monger” that were takedowns of Roth’s first official biographer, Ross Miller, who Roth decided was not up to the task, and Roth’s ex-wife, the actress Claire Bloom, who had published Leaving a Doll’s House, a memoir of her life with Roth that put him in a most unflattering light. (Sidenote: Claire Bloom was married to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth. Interesting pairing.) After Roth’s death, Taylor deposited the manuscripts at the Princeton University Library, so perhaps future scholars can page through them and see if there’s anything interesting.
Taylor reveals more about Roth’s health problems than I was previously aware of. Taylor tells us that Roth had three spinal fusion surgeries in the last 15 years of his life. (p.163) Yikes. In 1982, when Roth was 49, doctors told him that he had “a fraction of normal cardiac function.” (p.164) Roth spent the next few years dreading that his heart might suddenly stop. Finally, in 1989, Roth had a quintuple bypass. (Why this wasn’t done in 1982, I don’t understand.) Taylor posits that this bypass gave Roth a new lease on life and was to some degree responsible for the late-career blossoming of his talent. I think Taylor is onto something. Presumably freed from some of the dread about his health, Roth let his imagination run wild again, and set off on his most triumphant run of novels.
Taylor also lets us know that Roth slept with the actress Ava Gardner in London. Taylor writes in an aside, “I tell you this, reader, in strict confidence.” (p.75) Which is a ridiculous thing to write, since he’s writing it in a book! Anyway, this solves a minor mystery for me, as it now becomes clear that Ava Gardner was the model for Caesara O’Shea, the fading movie star Nathan Zuckerman has a one-night stand with in Zuckerman Unbound.
For fans of Roth, I’d also recommend James Atlas’ audiobook Remembering Roth, published through Audible. It’s another story of a younger writer’s friendship with Roth, and how it eventually soured.
Roth’s official biographer, Blake Bailey, will publish his tome about Roth in April 2021. Until then, for a look at the man behind the novels, we have Benjamin Taylor’s memoir Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth. Published in May 2020, Here We Are gives us some sense of what Philip Roth was like as a person.
Taylor and Roth first met in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that they really became friends. They remained close until Roth’s death in 2018. One of the more vivid parts of the book is Taylor recounting how many people came to see Roth in the hospital during his final days. Ex-lovers of Roth’s showed up at his deathbed! That’s like a scene, well, out of a Philip Roth novel:
“Lying on the hospital bed, Zuckerman inhaled sharply. There stood Jennifer. Sweet, proud Jennifer. He didn’t know it at the time they met, but she would be his last lover. It was at one of his readings. An upscale bookstore on the Upper West Side, filled with millennials noshing on overpriced bagels. He looked up from a paragraph, and suddenly, she was there. In the fourth row, her auburn hair falling loosely around her shoulders, her dress revealing a hint of décolletage. They chatted after the reading as she got her book signed. She told him how much she had liked his book about his friend Swede Levov. She seemed slightly shy; she told him she was a writer herself. ‘I’d be interested to read your work,’ he told her. It wasn’t a lie. He asked for her email address, and she rummaged around her too-large purse, searching for a pen. He laughed ‘There’s pens right here, on the table.’ ‘Of course, how silly of me!’ She mimed smacking herself on the forehead. He told her she should wait around for him; he’d like to talk to her more. After he finished signing for the long line of people, they went out for a drink. They became lovers that night.
“To see her here now, in the hospital, seemed to him like a great cosmic joke. She seemed so vital, the very picture of healthful youth. His eyes, dark and still expressive, darted around the hospital room before they drew her in. Even now, he still strained to get a look at her calf muscles.”
What Here We Are is missing are the mundane, quotidian details that would paint a more vivid picture of the friendship between Roth and Taylor. With a two-decade age gap, the relationship inevitably tilts towards mentor and protégé. Taylor is a writer as well, a fact that he barely brings up in the book. You need to be brutally honest when you’re writing a memoir, and yet Taylor holds too much about himself back. We learn little about Taylor throughout the book. Presumably, Taylor doesn’t have a husband, or a long-time partner, as he’s able to spend so much of his time hanging out with Philip. He seems to be practically at Roth’s beck and call.
Here We Are humanizes Roth, which means that we see his bad side as well—the pettiness, continually seeking revenge on those who have seemingly wronged him. Why is it that so many writers seem intent on holding onto grudges? Taylor informs us that even after Roth announced he had stopped writing fiction in 2012, he was still writing non-fiction aimed at settling scores. Roth gave Taylor two manuscripts, “Notes for My Biographer” and “Notes on a Scandal Monger” that were takedowns of Roth’s first official biographer, Ross Miller, who Roth decided was not up to the task, and Roth’s ex-wife, the actress Claire Bloom, who had published Leaving a Doll’s House, a memoir of her life with Roth that put him in a most unflattering light. (Sidenote: Claire Bloom was married to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth. Interesting pairing.) After Roth’s death, Taylor deposited the manuscripts at the Princeton University Library, so perhaps future scholars can page through them and see if there’s anything interesting.
Taylor reveals more about Roth’s health problems than I was previously aware of. Taylor tells us that Roth had three spinal fusion surgeries in the last 15 years of his life. (p.163) Yikes. In 1982, when Roth was 49, doctors told him that he had “a fraction of normal cardiac function.” (p.164) Roth spent the next few years dreading that his heart might suddenly stop. Finally, in 1989, Roth had a quintuple bypass. (Why this wasn’t done in 1982, I don’t understand.) Taylor posits that this bypass gave Roth a new lease on life and was to some degree responsible for the late-career blossoming of his talent. I think Taylor is onto something. Presumably freed from some of the dread about his health, Roth let his imagination run wild again, and set off on his most triumphant run of novels.
Taylor also lets us know that Roth slept with the actress Ava Gardner in London. Taylor writes in an aside, “I tell you this, reader, in strict confidence.” (p.75) Which is a ridiculous thing to write, since he’s writing it in a book! Anyway, this solves a minor mystery for me, as it now becomes clear that Ava Gardner was the model for Caesara O’Shea, the fading movie star Nathan Zuckerman has a one-night stand with in Zuckerman Unbound.
For fans of Roth, I’d also recommend James Atlas’ audiobook Remembering Roth, published through Audible. It’s another story of a younger writer’s friendship with Roth, and how it eventually soured.
July 23, 2020
Benjamin Taylor’s Here We Are is about as entertaining and true account of an artist's life as I have read. Many share with me that Phillip Roth was one of the finest writers of the last century. His explosion of art in his later years is unprecedented in American literary art. Taylor handles those years in this brief work.
Taylor gets close to Roth without fondling. We get to know the man and yet we keep a respectful distance. From the non-lamented Harry Golden to Now Voyager, Roth digs and continues to explore in his last years. Above all, he is “Beware of sanctuary….” We should be grateful for this wonderful book.
Taylor gets close to Roth without fondling. We get to know the man and yet we keep a respectful distance. From the non-lamented Harry Golden to Now Voyager, Roth digs and continues to explore in his last years. Above all, he is “Beware of sanctuary….” We should be grateful for this wonderful book.
May 20, 2020
A beautiful little memoir of a remarkable friendship with Mr. Roth; Roth’s vitality-his humanity , his perspicacity and his radiant humor project from the page-as does the author’s. So many wonderful Roth quotes are preserved here! Essential for every Roth reader, and Roth’s observations on art, on America, on LIFE, are for an even broader crowd. Recommended!
May 26, 2020
Taylor's love of Roth's work and the man himself makes this slender remembrance of the legendary author a complete charmer. The book covers late-stage Roth, retiring and then dying, but Taylor's vivid portrait makes us see a man who never lost his immense intelligence and wit and talent. Taylor was lucky to be Roth's friend, and Roth was lucky to be his.
Read
October 31, 2024As an armchair Roth scholar I already knew most of the biographical details, but not rendered with such intimacy. Final pages are very moving.
(I did spend most of the time thinking ‘did they really speak like this?’)
(I did spend most of the time thinking ‘did they really speak like this?’)
October 1, 2020
“The fantasy of purity is appalling.”
February 27, 2021
Who knew Philip Roth had a close and devoted friend like Benjamin Taylor? Taylor does him proud in this brief memoir of their bond. Packed with revealing bits about Roth's tastes: his observations on art, literature, his own books, other authors (Bellow, Updike) and his view of the theatre (not worth his time.) Very little about his two marriages. Taylor is a strong and engaging writer and even those not familiar with Roth's work would enjoy this book.
August 9, 2020
I’ve read a fair bit of criticism of this account: Taylor’s pompous; maybe he wasn’t Roth’s best friend; he doesn’t fully let us in to their friendship. To which I say: maybe a little; all right, maybe he was amongst his best friends - I know Roth wanted to be buried next to Norman Manea which seems a good qualification for best friend status - unless that was another Roth ruse; and - what d’you expect?.. it was their friendship, not yours.
I loved the book. Lyrical - almost poetic - pithy, and apparently true to the warrant Taylor was given ie to tell the unvarnished truth. Well, insofar as Roth, the master of disguises, gave him that. There’s plenty of criticism of Roth - in particular that he got a lot of material out of his ex-wives, but would never acknowledge his part in the breakdown of those relationships. For him, those break-ups were a zero sum game - he couldn’t see it differently - even though he hated cant in others. Anyway, all sufficient to make you think Taylor has been pretty candid.
There’s terrific insight into what Roth made of his own work, which I found fascinating. That Goodbye, Columbus was the first proper thing he wrote - but no more then that. I knew he rated Portnoy almost as juvenilia - but for those of us who accessed Roth through this door it was good to see he thought highly of it (for what it was). He no doubt preferred the run of acclaimed later works he turned out, including Sabbath’s Theatre - also risqué but in a more complex, mature way.
We learn something fascinating from Roth in Taylor’s account: he thinks himself no philosopher, just a chronicler of the particular, of detail, especially human predicament. That, I have no doubt, is why many of us adore his writing. The point being, of course, that without the particular there would be no philosophising. As for the latter, I get plenty enough from Roth, despite his protestation. There are many more grand examples in Taylor’s book and Roth’s canon - but for me, this neatly sums up our condition:
“Philip says that if it were Aristophanes rather than Yahweh that the Jews worship, he’d be in schul three times a day”.
Amen, to that!
I loved the book. Lyrical - almost poetic - pithy, and apparently true to the warrant Taylor was given ie to tell the unvarnished truth. Well, insofar as Roth, the master of disguises, gave him that. There’s plenty of criticism of Roth - in particular that he got a lot of material out of his ex-wives, but would never acknowledge his part in the breakdown of those relationships. For him, those break-ups were a zero sum game - he couldn’t see it differently - even though he hated cant in others. Anyway, all sufficient to make you think Taylor has been pretty candid.
There’s terrific insight into what Roth made of his own work, which I found fascinating. That Goodbye, Columbus was the first proper thing he wrote - but no more then that. I knew he rated Portnoy almost as juvenilia - but for those of us who accessed Roth through this door it was good to see he thought highly of it (for what it was). He no doubt preferred the run of acclaimed later works he turned out, including Sabbath’s Theatre - also risqué but in a more complex, mature way.
We learn something fascinating from Roth in Taylor’s account: he thinks himself no philosopher, just a chronicler of the particular, of detail, especially human predicament. That, I have no doubt, is why many of us adore his writing. The point being, of course, that without the particular there would be no philosophising. As for the latter, I get plenty enough from Roth, despite his protestation. There are many more grand examples in Taylor’s book and Roth’s canon - but for me, this neatly sums up our condition:
“Philip says that if it were Aristophanes rather than Yahweh that the Jews worship, he’d be in schul three times a day”.
Amen, to that!
October 29, 2021
— so grateful for this book.
‘Email me tomorrow, Ben. At my email address up here in the country.’
‘I said that we’ve been through that already. That email addresses aren’t location-specific. Your email is in the ether, not at any street address. He hangs up without goodbye, as so often. When was this? Around 2012? Soon enough he was reading iPhone for dummies and getting abreast of the new technology.’
— finished this last night, and what a beautiful book this was. it will fill your heart with gratitude for the beauty and impact of these written words. in this book, Benjamin Taylor lovingly memorialize his dear and beloved friend, Philip Roth, by giving us a glimpse into some of his most treasured memories. i laughed at some of those funny anecdotes the author so vividly shared, and felt great sadness at the approach of those final lines which will reveal the undeniable reality of the reason for this book: his friend, Philip Roth is no longer with him, (with us,) and it is simply sad. the author reminds us though - and again, so beautifully; with optimism - that ‘memory is where the living may rejoin the dead.’ after reading those lines, one understands that lost ones are never too far, and that his friendship with Roth will continue to endure because he has never parted with it.
.
‘Email me tomorrow, Ben. At my email address up here in the country.’
‘I said that we’ve been through that already. That email addresses aren’t location-specific. Your email is in the ether, not at any street address. He hangs up without goodbye, as so often. When was this? Around 2012? Soon enough he was reading iPhone for dummies and getting abreast of the new technology.’
— finished this last night, and what a beautiful book this was. it will fill your heart with gratitude for the beauty and impact of these written words. in this book, Benjamin Taylor lovingly memorialize his dear and beloved friend, Philip Roth, by giving us a glimpse into some of his most treasured memories. i laughed at some of those funny anecdotes the author so vividly shared, and felt great sadness at the approach of those final lines which will reveal the undeniable reality of the reason for this book: his friend, Philip Roth is no longer with him, (with us,) and it is simply sad. the author reminds us though - and again, so beautifully; with optimism - that ‘memory is where the living may rejoin the dead.’ after reading those lines, one understands that lost ones are never too far, and that his friendship with Roth will continue to endure because he has never parted with it.
.
April 19, 2021
In lieu of the major new biography of Roth that has just been published, I decided to pick up this charming little book by Benjamin Taylor, who has been as much of a friend to Roth as we can imagine Roth would ever allow. Taylor presents Roth as a witty, entertaining, often cantankerous, and challenging friend. Perhaps more insight here than we'll get in a major biography? I don't know, but I certainly enjoyed Taylor's ultimately touching memoir of a distinctive friendship.
August 5, 2021
Ciao, Philip.
January 3, 2021
With the passing of time, and as you become older, you are set in your ways. There are some things you cannot change, and perhaps don’t wish to either. And somewhere down the line, much against your will (I think), you end up making new friends, and somehow, they stay. Them coupled with the ones who know you and who you know inside-out. I thought this book would be about that – a friendship.
Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth by Benjamin Taylor is exactly what the title says or should’ve been. It started off with so much promise – the first two chapters of a rather small book, and then you got to see the promise only in the last two chapters and that was that. I expected more. I expected glimpses into their friendship, but all I got was Benjamin Taylor gushing over Roth’s works. Well, it is a literary memoir, but then why tell us that it is a friendship with Roth, and then not reveal enough to feel something.
This is the second book read this year, and once again not very impressed by it. The writing like I said shines in places, and leaves you wanting more. Taylor speaks of Roth and his thoughts on being Jewish in the world. Of his characters, his parents (very briefly), his wives (again not too much other than speaking of Claire Bloom), and about being an atheist and such. But never does he speak of what it was to be his friend and vice-versa, except till the very end. Taylor knows so much about Roth, and yet the reader is left with nothing. There are several literary references – more than enough books (Roth’s and others’) that are mentioned. It makes for a great reading list but that’s about it.
Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth by Benjamin Taylor is exactly what the title says or should’ve been. It started off with so much promise – the first two chapters of a rather small book, and then you got to see the promise only in the last two chapters and that was that. I expected more. I expected glimpses into their friendship, but all I got was Benjamin Taylor gushing over Roth’s works. Well, it is a literary memoir, but then why tell us that it is a friendship with Roth, and then not reveal enough to feel something.
This is the second book read this year, and once again not very impressed by it. The writing like I said shines in places, and leaves you wanting more. Taylor speaks of Roth and his thoughts on being Jewish in the world. Of his characters, his parents (very briefly), his wives (again not too much other than speaking of Claire Bloom), and about being an atheist and such. But never does he speak of what it was to be his friend and vice-versa, except till the very end. Taylor knows so much about Roth, and yet the reader is left with nothing. There are several literary references – more than enough books (Roth’s and others’) that are mentioned. It makes for a great reading list but that’s about it.
June 27, 2020
Literary friendships, those between writers, are a fascinating area, one that merges the personal with the art perhaps more than other relationships. I should say upfront that I got this book in a GR giveaway (thanks Penguin!) having limited exposure to Philip Roth (recently read "Patrimony," and watched the HBO version of "Plot Against America"). That means that my own relationship to Roth is neutral. Taylor's book is a compact elegy, starting with the lead up to Roth's death, and ending with it. There is a clear bond between these two men, though Roth, being the older, wiser, and more famous dominates, with Taylor the observer. It was fascinating, for example, to learn that Taylor is gay, and though he describes their relationship through what it isn't, the dynamic is never quite illuminated. Taylor's admiration is clear, as is the intimacy of their interactions. He points to examples of how the Roth's books stemmed from autobiographical sources, things that Taylor learns from their regular dinners at a bad Italian restaurant that was Roth's favorite- he called it "The Meatball." The book, however, isn't quite a full meal.
August 30, 2022
Here we are indeed, and I got to say I was not a fan of this book. One of the reasons why I didn’t enjoy this book as much, was because I came in thinking it would be something like The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (which I LOVED). However it was nothing like it. Whereas Didion brings universality to the loss of her husband, Taylor doesn’t really expand beyond the dinners and visits he had with Phillip Roth. Similarly, if you are not familiar with Phillip Roth (I was not), I do not think this book provides any sort of ground to stand on. Rarely did I find in this memoir the kind of friendship I am familiar with. Rarely did anything transcend the scope of one person’s lifetime. And rarely did I find myself enjoying it. I’m sure this book means a lot to people who enjoyed Philips Roth’s work, but as someone who is not familiar with it, this book didn’t quite work.
August 28, 2023
Here We Are is such a beautiful meditation on friendship, I read it in a day. It's written by Philip Roth's best friend, Benjamin Taylor. Still on my Philip Roth kick, but I pick and choose, avoiding his earliest novels, his slighter novels, and the crazed later novel, Sabbath's Theater. The books I've focused on so far are works of genius, American Pastoral, The Counterlife and The Ghost Writer. Next in line are Patrimony and The Human Stain.
As a memoir, Here We Are is a classic. Never in my memory, has anyone brought anyone else so alive in a work of non-fiction. Tayler creates such a vivid impression of Roth, he jumps through the pages and shakes your hand, in all his perversity, hilarity, brilliance, petulance, generosity, vindictiveness, physical suffering and stoic acceptance of pain. This book evoked many emotions in me including envy for the connection between these two men.
As a memoir, Here We Are is a classic. Never in my memory, has anyone brought anyone else so alive in a work of non-fiction. Tayler creates such a vivid impression of Roth, he jumps through the pages and shakes your hand, in all his perversity, hilarity, brilliance, petulance, generosity, vindictiveness, physical suffering and stoic acceptance of pain. This book evoked many emotions in me including envy for the connection between these two men.
July 2, 2020
We spent thousands of hours in each other's company. He was fully half my life. I cannot hope for another such friend. ... To talk daily with someone of such gifts had been a salvation.
Slender biography of Philip Roth by one of his closest friends. I have long regarded Roth to be one of the best chroniclers of the human condition - this book codified why I have felt so. Reading it felt like I was part of a dinner conversation between Roth, Taylor and a bunch of their other literary friends. I am going to jump back to Roth - start with Goodbye Columbus and see how much funnier my life will be!
Slender biography of Philip Roth by one of his closest friends. I have long regarded Roth to be one of the best chroniclers of the human condition - this book codified why I have felt so. Reading it felt like I was part of a dinner conversation between Roth, Taylor and a bunch of their other literary friends. I am going to jump back to Roth - start with Goodbye Columbus and see how much funnier my life will be!
July 3, 2020
A glimpse into the private sphere of the legendary American writer, Philip Roth, by his friend Benjamin Taylor. I love how the story of the friendship is woven with excerpts from Roth’s books and learning about Philip’s thoughts on different things alongside what he was doing after “Nemesis.”
My favorite quote from the book is “he’s invisible to me now but omnipresent, like the stars at noon.”
Philip has gained immortality as writers do with their work as they live on in the minds of those who read and admire him, but this can be extended to all of us. We live on in those who survive us whether that is family, friends, or others.
I am glad that Philip had a friend in Benjamin.
My favorite quote from the book is “he’s invisible to me now but omnipresent, like the stars at noon.”
Philip has gained immortality as writers do with their work as they live on in the minds of those who read and admire him, but this can be extended to all of us. We live on in those who survive us whether that is family, friends, or others.
I am glad that Philip had a friend in Benjamin.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews