According to the description of the incident we are shown in the article, Max, the student simply described the scene as "a rape scene"- there is nothing in what we are told of the exchange that provides any reason to think Roth was being accused of "romanticiizng rape".

If what Roth wrote there was an encounter where a professor forced himself sexually on a young woman, presumably a young woman who was in his class and therefore on the weaker end of a power relationship, what possible justification could he have had for being outraged when a young woman- he must have realized the age difference between this young woman and himself mirrored the age difference between the characters in that scene- described it as what it was? What other response could he have expected?

And what right did he have to humiliate the young woman for describing the scene in a way many if not most of his readers would have described it? How did Roth EXPECT people to describe that scene, and how could he expect any valid, honest conversation about his work to happen if he was going to emotionally annihilate anyone who made comments outside his personal comfort zone?

Why would he be surprised or enraged at her response at all, when he was the one who wrote the scene and should have known full well that her calling it a "rape scene" was entirely accurate?

Yes, Philip Roth was an exceptional writer, but there is a limit to what genius excuses and in this era, while no one expects artists to be saints, it's not asking too much to expect then to avoid being total monsters, especially to those who have entirely reasonable and justified responses to their work.

"The artistic temperament" can no longer be taken as a "get out of consequences free" card, exempting the artist from any expectation of having to behave like at least a moderately decent human being.

You'd think Roth, hearing her use the term "rape" would at least realized it was possible that the young woman or some she knew, may have experienced something like what the young woman in that scene was subjected to, and realized that that was likely a common experience among woman in the room.

Roth had no business acting offended or even pretending he was blindsided about this, and it was fairly likely not the first time he'd heard the scene described in that way. He should have realized he'd need to engage responses like that and take responsibility for what he had written there. Nothing in that young woman's comments were inappropriate or disrespectful to Roth as a writer or a person, and a guy from Jersey who presented himself as a street smart "tough guy" should, quite frankly, have "manned up" about it.

if this happened when Roth was 69, it would have occurred in 1992 or 1993. This was not in the unenlightened, pre-feminist past and rape and the way rape was handled in literature was a well-known topic of contemporary discussion. It's not as if he was giving the talk on the Las Vegas Strip in 1958, with Frank Sinatra as his opening act. Roth is brilliant and his advice on writing remains sound, but he could hardly plead ignorance on these issues.