Word: roth
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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David Lee Roth, who could barely contain his joy at being back with Van Halen at the MTV awards last month, got just as emotional when he found out his new gig was temporary, circulating a histrionic open letter claiming he had been deceived. Most likely joining the band in his stead: Extreme's Gary Cherone, whose voice Eddie Van Halen has described as "like an angel...
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...
...English actress Claire Bloom may have known all this in 1990, when she and Roth at last wed after 15 difficult and profoundly engaging years living together in London and Connecticut. Yet according to Bloom, nothing prepared her for the mental collapse she says Roth suffered in the early 1990s and for the subsequent psychological torture he inflicted on her--a shattering breakdown that is the climax of Bloom's new memoir, Leaving a Doll's House (Little, Brown; 272 pages...
...hour for the hundreds of hours he spent going over scripts with her and for $62 billion for contesting their prenuptial agreement--have been setting New York City literary circles abuzz, but Bloom waits until she is more than halfway through this memoir to begin dishing the dirt. For, Roth aside, Bloom, 65, has her own moderately interesting story to tell. She starred in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight, played virtually every major classical role on the stage and has acted opposite--and been romantically involved with--some of the great leading men of her era. About these...
...Roth, though, Bloom sacrificed everything. Early in their relationship, for instance, the author told Bloom that he refused to share a home with Anna, and the girl, 18, was promptly kicked out. Then in 1993, Bloom writes, Roth spiraled into a severe, inexplicable depression. He was institutionalized and became deeply paranoid, accusing his wife of trying to poison him, dredging up misdeeds, real and imagined, and, in the end, divorcing her. With this sad memoir Bloom gets the last word--for now. But it is hard not to wonder what will happen when Roth turns his novelist...