Old and new reasons to destroy books

Author Philip Roth in New York on September 15, 2010.ERIC THAYER / REUTERS

The publishing house WW Norton has announced that it will suspend the promotion and distribution of the biography of Philip Roth due to accusations of several women against its author, Blake Bailey.

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• The stain in the biography of Philip Roth

Roth's Authorized Biography was one of the most talked about books of the season in America. Among the reasons is his importance as a novelist. Also the controversial aspect of his work. Sometimes a very rich literature was reduced to a couple of scenes; others, the behavior of his characters was attributed to the author. The biography offered the possibility of linking the work with life, the narrators with the author. Some, like Cynthia Ozick, have praised the book. Others have criticized the author's leniency with his biography.

Shortly after the accusations - which allude to acts ranging from the morally reprehensible to the criminal - surfaced, Bailey was expelled from his literary agency and the publisher distanced itself. The accusations may be true, but neither the agency nor the publisher affirms that this is the case: their decision is preventive. What operates, as David Rieff has written, is a presumption of guilt; they have "put a retroactive morality clause in Bailey's contract." Guilt doesn't matter, reputation matters. Hypocrisy can be criticized or the timing, that questionable behaviors were often known and tolerated for years, that some behaviors or their suspicion are punished and others are not, in a scheme where Woody Allen is worse than Rudolf Hess. But it only leads to melancholy.We are faced with a combination of capitalist damage control and a Foucauldian conception of power.

In the end there is a kind of censorship: you can publish but you are excluded from the legitimation bodies.

As has always been the case, from the Inquisition to the Hays Code, the veto is justified with the best of intentions.

We use many things without questioning the ethical quality of those who make them.

It is possible that the aspiration to separate the author's work is utopian: we study and consume cultural products thinking of authors, we admire some more than others for their moral position.

It does not seem that the new orthodoxy is going to disappear anytime soon, but in this case, as in many others, the measure does not repair the alleged victims, does not clarify what happened and deprives interested persons of valuable work.