BOOKS: CLAIRE BLOOM'S COMPLAINT

IN A DISHY NEW MEMOIR, THE ACTRESS UNLOADS ON HER HARROWING MARRIAGE TO NOVELIST PHILIP ROTH

Is [love] what binds all these couples we know together--the ones who even bother to let themselves be bound? ...Please, let us not bull__ one another about "love" and its duration. --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

Even the most casual readers of Philip Roth's fabulously inventive novels, those slyly tangled weavings of fiction and autobiography, can get some sense that the author might not make an ideal mate. An unforgettable lover, perhaps; a witty dinner companion, absolutely. But Roth, as Alexander Portnoy's psychoanalyst might put it, clearly has some "issues" about women.

The English actress Claire Bloom may have known all this...

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