Joel Diggory

Philip Roth is the Hugh Hefner of the American novel: he is the playboy of fiction; he has built a house of pleasure. But now, according to some, it is time to demolish that house.  A new biography of Roth is about to come out, and some of the details in it are the ammo that Roth’s critics have been waiting for: they have been pounced on as proof that he is a 'misogynist' and that there should be no place for him in the era of MeToo. So what is Roth said to have done, according to Blake Bailey’s new authorised biography? Bailey describes Roth getting bored with his English wife, and going looking for Chinese prostitutes in Mayfair instead. He describes Roth getting older, and his girlfriends getting younger.

She is the darling of the nation, the star of the inauguration, the first US National Youth Poet Laureate: she is Amanda Gorman, the person who serenaded America and the new president with a SLAM poem. Naturally, of course, Gorman's poems have become best-sellers, and she was praised by just about everyone. Now though, she appears to have gotten lost in translation. Gorman's verse is stuffed with clichés, so you can't imagine it would take a particularly good writer to translate her. But Dutch publisher Meulenhoff managed to find an International Man Booker-winner to do so: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Gorman herself approved of this decision. Now, though, the wisdom of the internet has spoken, and Rijneveld has resigned. Why? Because Rijneveld is white.