Philip Roth (equals) Toxic

Radar Magazine is back from the dead, and the new ish came Tuesday. I love Radar, despite the way they’ve screwed me. I paid for a year’s issues, and received two (possibly three) before version 2.0 folded. Apparently, I must pay an additional $10 if I want my subscription honored, which is… frustrating. The main story this issue is “Toxic Bachelors,” a coterie represented on the cover by a boxered body with Colin Farrell’s head pasted on. Who else—aside from “usual suspects” like Jack Nicholson, James Woods, Charlie Sheen, Tom Sizemore and Charlie Rose (?! disgusting)—is on the list? The Plot Against America‘s Philip Roth! Sez Radar:

The man who called women “monkeys” and “shikse cunts” in Portnoy’s Complaint displays similar restraint in real life, according to former Playmate Alice Denham, who claims in her memoir that the “sex fiend” author once engulfed her at a party in a “full athletic grope.” Roth’s ex-wife, actress Claire Bloom, was asked to sign a prenup that allowed the literary lothario to “terminate the marriage at will, with the apartment and all his possessions reverting to him.” When Bloom broke the agreement, he faxed her a legal letter demanding $62 billion. According to one family friend, Roth also tried to “kill three birds with one stone” by making a pass at a friend of Bloom’s teenage daughter. More recently, he has been known to crow that he seduced Nicole Kidman during the making of The Human Stain. As a friend of Bloom’s told New York magazine, Roth “is basically impossible, and should not have relationships.”

Can’t say I’m surprised, and somehow, despite the philandering his work implies, can’t see the same being written about John Updike. Go Updike!