Exit Ghost (Vintage International)
by Philip Roth
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Book Reviews of Exit Ghost (Vintage International)
Book Review: A Testosterone-Age Writer's Narcisistic Fantasies
Summary: 1 Stars
In this short novel, Philip Roth exposes his narcissistic preoccupation with his own declining virility and the declining image of the Great Testosterone Writer in modern society. Roth's character is, of course, Roth himself, with the usual name change. His virility has nothing to do with love, intimacy, tenderness, or procreation. It has to do with conquering---in this book a beautiful, intelligent, capable, highly educated and talented woman who could be his granddaughter. How insufferably boring.
Roth pretends to care about Social Issues, giving us tedious liberal clichés about the current national political scene, but he admits that he really doesn't care about anything but the state of his copulatory capacity.
Roth's preoccupation with the Great Artist takes the form of the book's protagonist attempting to stop a young literary critic from revealing the sordid past of a deceased Great Writer. We know the Great Writer is a Great Man whose writings are simply an externalization of his Great Soul and his Unquenchable Artistic Spirit, because the young woman who lived with him when he died spent the next forty years Cherishing His Memory, rather than living a life of her own. From the afterlife, this Great Writer offers us a manifesto holding that the lowly hoi polloi that comprise the reading public should uncritically revere the Great Writer, and abandon the quest to interpret, criticize, analyze, or personalize this Nietzschian superman.
Perhaps my problem with this book is that I read a novel to learn what the author has discovered about life and the Universe, and I really don't care about his or her personal life, unless this has been in some sense an exceptional life. The only thing exceptional about Roth is his literary success.
Book Review: Scary brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been reading Philip Roth my entire adult life. Exit Ghost is as brilliant, poignant and important as anything Roth has written--possibly more so. It is straightforward, universal and true.
Aside from his perfect understanding and description of the death of literature in this society, Roth captured with similar perfection the desperation of the thinking population trying to survive under the W Bush administration. (And is there a relationship between those catastrophes?) As he has done in other recent works, he deals with the subject of aging both realistically and sensitively. And the overlying Jewish themes--the holocaust, the American Jewish experience and the outsider--cast another uniquely Rothian tint over the whole story.
I saw some comments on the use of the dialog scenes. Yes, they may seem superfluous--until you get to the twist in the story. Then it's the whole point!
This book has so much integrity that you can pick up any line that seemed obvious at the beginning of the book, and understand it in an altogether different context after the Lonoff story, e.g., "Why invite the unanticipated, why court any more shocks or surprises than those that aging would be sure to deliver without my prompting?"
Ghost may have exited, but Philip Roth is very much alive and writing as significantly as ever, thank God.
Book Review: More of a SCRAPBOOK than a NOVEL...
Summary: 3 Stars
I enjoyed reading most of this book, in fact I finished it in about two days. There are many many flashes of Roth's prodigious literary talent throughout to keep it from being a dull read...but there are also many spots where the writing feels tired and forced. It's clear that this is far from Roth's best work...it feels more like a recycling of already well-worn themes and devices that he's done much better with in previous novels. There is the "old man watching his life and health slip away but remaining defiantly and madly rebellious somehow" which began in "Sabbath's Theater;" the dialogue-based sexual transgression-as-flirtation bit which "Deception" was a brilliant exercise in; the "did this really happen or not, well you'll never know because this is WRITING and I'm a forever unknowable WRITER" meta-fiction riddling of "The Facts;" and of course there's the typical madly self-obsessed, self-reflexive narrative (in exquisite prose of course) of the early Zuckerman novels. Oh yes, and a rambling paean to the recently (2003) deceased George Plimpton towards the end. If this book were a DVD, it'd quite likely just be a collection of "deleted scenes" jumbled together!
Whew, I'm so glad I didn't buy this book...thank the gods for public libraries!
Book Review: Zuckerman does not equal Ghost....just a tad diminished
Summary: 4 Stars
This is only my second Roth novel and my first of his Zuckerman series. Roth does not protect himself. He puts his guts on the page. I like that about him. Zuckerman has become impotent and incontinent and has been Thoreauing it in an isolated cabin when circumstances lead him back to New York City where he runs into his deceased writing mentor's lover, now 70 something and with a brain tumor that disfigures her ancient face. She's confused and rambling around in the past. He also meets a young couple who have advertised in the `New York Times Review of Books'. The wife, Jamie, catches his mind and his useless lust. He and the couple arrange to trade their homes for a year which gives Zuckerman an excuse to spend more time with Jamie. She introduces him to an obnoxious, Zuckerman wannabe, her ex-boyfriend. This near stalker wants to write an inflammatory biography of Zuckerman's mentor. He and Zuckerman meet and scream abuse at one another. I'm not sure how he did it but Roth made me care very much for these less than attractive characters. I felt a well of compassion open for them.
It's probably best to read the Zuckerman books in order but "Ghost" holds up on its on as well.
Book Review: Roth Sneaks In, Zuckerman Sneaks Out
Summary: 4 Stars
Until introduced to the Zuckerman series by Phillip Roth, one might think that writing about writers would be fairly droll. Perhaps, this is why Roth has had Nathan Zuckerman return to New York City, from an 11-year strict and secluded writing life, for the last novel that Roth's semi-autobiographical character is to appear in. No longer accustomed to, for reasons of utter dissatisfaction of the activity as a whole, making connections with people, Nathan Zuckerman nevertheless finds himself creating that very emotional attachment that he had cast off when he decided to go into a work-intensive solitude.
Exit Ghost has quite the unique quality about it, it is simultaneously engaging and apathetic. Nathan Zuckerman's internal thoughts grab your interest with their detached bitterness. It's quite akin to someone quickly running up towards you and grabbing you by your neck, gaining your complete attention, and then whispering devilishly clever comments into your ear at a volume that teeters on the edge of being inaudible.