the last book I read by Philip Roth was "The Breast," a Kafka pastiche (a guy is transformed not into beetle, but giant milk gland) so stupid it made me want to renounce the ability to read. But that was years ago. I've managed to avoid his output ever since.

My impression from the print media, though, is that he's branched out into a kind of anguished post-modernism, writing novels about guys named "Philip Roth," who sometimes resemble Philip Roth and sometimes don't. His latest, "Sabbath," is said to be about an old unrepentant jerk. Many critics found it disturbing, but then again, many critics love to be disturbed.

I have, however, read the excerpt in Vanity Fair from actress Claire Bloom's new book, "Leaving A Doll's House," about her years living with Philip Roth. Ms. Bloom claims that Mr. Roth himself is an old unrepentant jerk.

When they first moved in together in England, he became so distracted by Ms. Bloom's daughter Anna's "laughing and talking" that he couldn't concentrate on his fine writing. So he wrote a letter to Ms. Bloom (while they were living together! in the same house!) telling her that "unless Anna agreed to move elsewhere, he would return to New York ..." Ms. Bloom agreed. Anna was 16 at the time.

Mr. Roth was subject to deep depressions, dark moods, sudden rages. During his time with Ms. Bloom, he also wrote a book, "Deception," about a writer named "Philip" married to a "remarkably uninteresting, middle-aged wife," an "actress by profession" named "Claire." What an artist! What a guy!

Eventually, of course, they married and broke up, precipitating a deluge of faxes to her from Mr. Roth, "demanding the return of everything he had given me during our years together," payment of $150 an hour for the "five or six hundred" hours he had spent going over scripts with her, and for refusing to honor their prenuptial agreement, a fine of "$62 billion—a billion dollars for every year of my life." Well, Ms. Bloom has since worked through her personal issues, tearing Mr. Roth a new asshole in the process, and collecting (I assume) a hefty advance for her book. To my mind, this is dish at its finest.

The interpersonal shenanigans of intercontinental literati are usually good for a peep (though less and less these days). Plus, the strange connection between monstrous behavior and creativity is always interesting to explore. On the low end there's poet Jim "Lizard King" Morrison (who once urinated in a wine bottle, according to dish queen Pamela Des Barres, and told a groupie it was Chablis). On the high end, there's Pablo Picasso, a dickhead genius if ever there was one.

The October issue of Discover, not a magazine where one would expect to find low gossip about literary figures, is devoted to creativity. An article by Jo Ann C. Gutin cites Johns Hopkins psychologist Key Renfield Jamison as "the de facto point person for the art-and-madness link." She lists possible case studies: William Blake, Keats, Shelley, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton, Zola, Mary Shelley, Tolstoy, Gorky, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Oh, and Eugene O'Neill, Michelangelo, Gericault, Edvard Munch, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Mark Rothko, and Georgia O'Keefe. You know — Handel. Charlie Parker.

But Blake (for example) was just eccentric, never cruel. To my knowledge, he never faxed exorbitant divorce demands from Connecticut to a Manhattan townhouse, more's the pity. It seems to me that most of these people were more of a problem to themselves than others. But then most of them weren't covered by the media.

It's my opinion -- not backed up by any study whatsoever — that the link between creativity and madness is largely a 20th century phenomenon, a link seized upon by artists of every stripe (abetted by Freud), because it means they can do whatever goddam obsessive thing that pops into their bright little heads, and discard anybody who gets in the way.

Insane behavior is cool. It all goes back to the Marquis de Sade, you might say. But he spent most of his life in prison or asylums. Led Zepper John Bonham did everything Sade did, maybe more, and not only got away scot-free, he was rewarded for it, until he fell over dead.

Philip Roth, of course, is much more sophisticated than, say, Robert Plant. His drug of choice might be Xanax, not cocaine, and his lifestyle might have more the flavor of emotional distance than debauchery, but there's still that familiar rock 'n' roll expectation: all things exist to meet my needs.

And the funny thing is, everybody conspires with artists to help them with their insane demands, the entire world conspires — from their devoted disturbed critics, their fans, to their so-called loved ones. Claire Bloom kicked her own daughter out of the house to please her guy! The great Mr. Roth made an ultimatum —"The kid or my prose style," and out she went.

In the same issue of Discover, there's an essay by Stephen Jay Gould about creativity and evolution. He defines creativity as "the capacity to originate novel structures and functions." There's such a thing as being too creative. An insect can protect itself from a predator by blending in with a leaf. But what happens when the forest disappears?

What happens when the publishing industry goes away? What happens when all the ex-wives rise up in unison? What happens when New York is no longer the cultural center of the world. Oh wait, that's already happening. What good is your protective coloration now, pal?