FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2008, file photo, author Philip Roth poses for a photo in the offices of his publisher in New York. A biography of the late author, "Philip Roth: The Biography" by Blake Bailey, comes out April 7. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)NEW YORK – The life of Philip Roth was a story. Blake Bailey's “Philip Roth,” a volume Roth had imagined in some form for more than 20 years, comes out April 6. AdThe “real” Philip Roth has been a quest for countless critics — and the author himself — since his 1969 bestseller “Portnoy's Complaint” left many readers believing that Roth and his lusting narrator were one and the same.

NEW YORK In the Fall 2012, as the willing subject of one of the most anticipated literary biographies in recent memory, Philip Roth joked that he had surrendered power over his own life to author Blake Bailey. This is madness.Bailey's Philip Roth: The Biography is coming out April 6, 2021, W.W. Norton & Company announced Thursday. But Roth and Miller, the nephew of Roth's friend Arthur Miller, had different ideas for the book and parted ways in 2009. Why should a gentile from Oklahoma write the biography of Philip Roth? Bailey remembered Roth asking him. Roth also lists recommended subjects, everything from his former landlady, to the mores and ethos of Bucknell to the McCarthy era of the 1950s.