Customer Reviews

Exit Ghost

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

One can only hope that EXIT GHOST is not the final page in the multiple books on the life of Nathan Zuckerman (the thinly disguised author Philip Roth). Though the principal character of nine books since 1979 is now aged 71, leading a reclusive life after the ravages of prostatic carcinoma treatments have left him incontinent and impotent, there is more than a little life in the master storyteller. Philip Roth continues his eloquent writing style in this latest book and still struggles with the enigmas of sexual obsession, distaste for current politics in this country, and the Don Quixote stance against aging and dying. And in doing so he has created a novel with fascinating characters, satisfying plot, propulsive reading style, and much food for thought!

Nathan Zuckerman, in this book, has decided to take a chance on a surgical procedure the will cure or at least improve his embarrassing urinary incontinence, one of the many reasons he has moved from New York City to a rural New England hideaway to write in solitude. But upon arrival in New York he meets a beautiful couple (Jamie and Billy), both writers, who are suffering from the after-effects of 911 and upon encountering their literary hero Zuckerman, coerce him into trading houses: Zuckerman will remain in their New York space and the couple will escape to his New England sanctuary. But other factors arise: Zuckerman meets his old friend Amy Bellette, once the lover of Zuckerman's hero writer E.I. Lenoff, and discovers Amy's resistance to allowing a young writer Richard Kliman to finish and publish a manuscript containing a dark secret of Lenoff, a manuscript he never wanted published; Zuckerman has limited success in his first incontinence surgery; Zuckerman's self imposed sexual exile is awakened in fantasies about the married Jamie, a wondrously written series of imaginary dialogs between the two. All of these complex components are succinctly woven into this 300-page book that doesn't really end, but instead tapers off into an elegy about aging.

The story is great reading: the style is pure Roth. 'The end is so immense, it is its own poetry. It requires little rhetoric. Just state it plainly'. 'Reading/writing people, we are finished, we are ghosts witnessing the end of the literary era - take this down'. Reading Roth is an enriching pastime, one to savor and relish. This is not a book to rush - this is a book to treasure, and once read, to reflect...Grady Harp, November 07

In his latest creation, Roth shows that even a 71 year old incontinent and impotent Zuckerman (Roth in disguise) can still produce amazingly poignant and truly important literature. The book centers around the attempt to regain continence through a new procedure, while at the same time showing that regardless of the state of inoperative reproductive equipment, thoughts of sexuality still meander frequently and aggressively through the male mind.

At the same time, Roth indicates his feeling that we have reached the "End of the age of literature." During his stay in New York City to undergo his procedure, he becomes involved with a reporter who is planning to write a biography about a great, but all but forgotten master American short story author. It seems that the author may or may not have had a deep dark secret that he wanted buried forever. The biographer finds out what he believes is that secret, and plans to reveal it to the world.

Through the book, Roth becomes involved in great sexual fantasy with a beautiful lady half his age. Since he is unable to actually act on those thoughts, due to his physical malady, he fantasizes and creates imaginary dialogue around that particular lady and the wonders of her sensuality and sexuality.

Once again, Roth writes a wondrously autobiographical book which the reader can virtually insert himself, and feel as though he has become Roth in the text. This ability is Roth's special gift. He is able to capture his experiences and feelings and then turn them into words in a manner that is virtually universal. This ability has always characterized his writing throughout his entire career. This book is recommended for all readers, especially those over the age of 50.

As a huge Roth fan, I was disappointed by this one. I recommend reading Christopher Hitchens' review of it: he makes a lot of good points in it.

This is Zuckerman at his most annoying; he is impotent and madly in lust with a young shiksa fox, yet Roth doesn't write the book with sympathy for him, he seems like he doesn't know what he's trying to say. Most of this book is metafictional masturbation in the form of Zuckerman's fantasies written out in play form. This is a tired and cheap conceit which adds nothing of any substance to the novel (we know what Zuckerman wants and thinks like! There's eight other books with him as the main character!).

Hitchens will agree that this book is predictable, unsatisfying, and without any purpose. I give it two stars simply because it is Roth and he couldn't write a one star book if he tried.

I'm sorry. I am a big Phil Roth fan. I was starting to really get into this book, but then it gets very political. What I liked about American Pastoral there were politics involved, but the author did not take sides. I got a point in this book where it felt very snobbishly liberal about the whole George Bush election and whatnot. It really turned me off. Like Roth couldn't help but wear his heart on his sleeve. Call it what you will, I call it author intrusion. I gave up on this one, but not on Roth himself. No, never on Roth himself.

"Exit Ghost" is the second Philip Roth book that I've read. I read the first, "Everyman," a few months ago, and it convinced me that I'd been foolishly wrongheaded about not reading Roth earlier in my life. I had falsely believed that his male-centered themes and characters might hold no interest for me, a woman who came of age during the 1970s feminist movement. But my experience with these two books has taught me otherwise. Roth is every bit the national literary treasure that others proclaim, and he can be read with pleasure by even dyed-in-the-wool aging feminists, like me. Personally, I might not like the main male characters in his books, but Roth takes me deep into their souls and I emerge with a better understanding of the human condition.

"Exit Ghost" is complete in itself. I enjoyed it thoroughly and did not feel confused as if I needed to know some prior information about the character to understand what was happening from another book in the series. But now, that I've read the plot summary of the first book in the series, I am intellectually curious to find out all the hidden parallels that escaped me.

The novel entertained me with its story, but I can't imagine anyone reading Roth purely for the story line. It seems obvious that Roth is read foremost to experience his skill as a writer, and second to hear what this man has to say about major issues of our time. Roth uses his works as a pulpit to preach about important issues that concern him.

In this novel, Roth analyzes the declining state of literature in the modern world and proclaims it dead. At one point, the main character, Nathan Zuckerman, rants: "the predominant uses to which literature is now put in the culture pages of the enlightened newspapers and in university English departments are so destructively at odds with the aims of imaginative writing, as well as with the rewards that literature affords to an open-minded reader, that it would be better if literature were no longer put to any public use."

In an interview with Roth about "Exit Ghost" published in "The Independent" (London, 10/3/07), he says: "Writers have always been extremely marginal to the cultural concerns of American citizens, but there was a moment when there were books that interested the general public that were written by some fine writers... Then the attention of readers has shifted away. They've been overcome by so many other distractions; and the habit of concentration I think has been badly damaged, by the nature of the cultural stimuli. So it feels to me very much like a dying moment, for literary culture in my own country--but you can't have computers and iPods and BlackBerries and blueberries and raspberries, and have time left to sit for two or three hours with a book."

There is another important theme repeated throughout this work: don't judge authors by the conduct of their lives, but rather on the content of their works. Envisioning his own life story in the hands of a future biographer, Zuckerman asks: "How will I have failed to be the model human being? My great, unseemly secret. Surely there was one. Surely there was more than one. An astonishing thing it is, too, that one's prowess and achievement, such as they have been, should find their consummation in the retribution of biographical inquisition. The man in control of the words, the man making up the stories all his life, winds up, after death, remembered, if at all, for a story made up about him, his covert brand of baseness discovered and described with uncompromising candor, clarity, self-certainty, with grave concern for the most delicate issues of morality, and with no small measure of delight."

This is a dark and angry book, full of fury and disgust for the failure of aging bodies, the marginalization of literature in the modern world, and a great deal of modern culture in general. It is powerful stuff. I recommend it highly.

For a glaring example of one of the main themes of "Exit Ghost" one need only read the recent Vanity Fair article about Arthur Miller's institutionalization of his Down Syndrome son. It was an article guaranteed to create a scandal; it was "cultural journalism" - tabloid gossip masquerading as literary investigation. It called into question the character of a great writer (as opposed, sadly, to the great writer's characters, who are forgotten like yesterday's garbage in the wake of a titillating gossip-fest). And, sadly, I, too, played right along. I'm addicted to Vanity Fair. It's fun to peek into the lives of the so-called "beautiful (i.e. monied) people." It's satisfying to see them picked apart for their foibles and follies, while I, an unsuccessful (meaning unpublished) writer gets a little revenge from their ill luck. "Exit Ghost" has made me feel somewhat ashamed for this character defect, which seems to be infecting multitudes in our current world. Mea culpa, Phil. Now, I'm not going to take it back - I still feel the sting of "Exit Ghost's" tongue-lashing. However - one might say that AT LEAST these kinds of stories keep the writers in the forefront of the vast, untutored American public enough that, say, someone might want to go back and read their stuff. I know it sounds like I'm hedging my bets here, but I'd be willing to say that, for instance, Arthur Miller probably picked up some fans along the
way. And another thing: at first, I condemned Miller for his cowardice. I was very angry that a literary idol of mine had fallen of his pedestal. And then - I realized that the finger of judgment was actually pointing right back to myself. I won't go into it, but suffice it to say that the article about Arthur Miller made me realize that I, too, did something once that was comparably unforgiveable and yet human. Now I love him more than ever, because we have a bond. So - there's always a lesson in everything, n'est-ce pas? May Goddess (and Mr. Roth) forgive us all, and that includes the editors of Vanity Fair.

There are lots of ghosts in this exquisite novel, and most of them take the reader back to _The Ghost Writer_, where the young Nathan Zuckerman met E.I Lonoff and Amy Bellette, two characters who haunt the old Nathan. In this tale, Lonoff, long dead, is being exhumed by a Young Turk who wants to make a name for himself by writing a scandalous biography of the writer. Amy, one of the walking dead, her brain riddled with cancer and her memories uncertain, enlists Nathan in a battle to stop the Young Turk. Nathan, who finds himself embroiled not only in this but also in a swansong infatuation with an aspiring writer half his age, is also something of a ghost. For the past ten years, he's retreated into the same Berkshires seclusion that protected his hero Lonoff. He's also impotent and incontinent from prostate surgery, and his memory is failing. Nathan is on his way out, and this novel tells the story of his last spurge of resistance against the long night.

Like his _Everyman_, which I reviewed here when it appeared and which I still consider Roth's masterpiece, _Exit Ghost_ is a melancholy autumn reflection on aging, the narrowing of life and possibilities, and death. Roth's prose is fluid and at times, especially when wrestling with the fragility of life, heart-breakingly beautiful. He also skewers contemporary culture (his meditation on the age of cell phones and the deep loneliness it betokens is brilliant) as well as the current administration.

Ultimately, reading this novel was like visiting an old, fading acquaintance. It reminds one of one's own fragility, it encourages nostalgia, and it prompts taking another look at photo albums--in this case, rereading the Zuckerman novels. How fortunate that melancholy can also be sweet. How else could we possibly get by? Roth once again reminds us of this.

Let me make a confession: I am a Philip Roth junkie. Each year, I look forward to reading a new book by Mr. Roth, who tackles some of the difficult questions that plague us, yet those with which most of us fail to discuss.

In his newest book, Exit Ghost, Mr. Roth gives us an aging, reclusive, incontenent and impotent character in the form of Nathan Zuckerman. As Zuckerman faces his own physical limitations, he must also tackle those salacious thoughts that occupy his mind, so he develops a fantasy world as a way to handle himself.

I do not want to repeat what other readers have said in their reviews. Frankly, I think Philip Roth's voice has become better with age. His words, and his last three books, have changed my own live, which is what a good author is supposed to do. Since Roth gives no interviews nor lectures, I can only hope that he reads some of these reviews.

Philip Roth is the greatest living American voice in literature today. I hope he is given the praise and recognition that he deserves, and it would be a great gift if he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

This book is a disappointment.

Roth can write and think; this we've known for years. He works very hard to craft fine, elegant sentences, and it shows on every page of this book. And so if you like his other stuff, you won't consider this new novel a total waste of time. But he has also been going in circles for a few years in terms of what he has to say about life, and this story (as with many of his other recent works) could almost have been spun out by some Roth imitator from the threads of his past output. Maybe even by the Kliman character in this book. So in a sense Zuckerman has become a stock character as he ages and stumbles toward his bitter, lonely end.

Roth's writing is painfully honest yet jocose, and sometimes very witty and wise; but really who can care for Zuckerman, the self-pitying loner who wastes his precious fading time on earth in stillborn lust and solipsistic sentimentality? Who cares about this guy who would probably sell his soul for one or two transformations of his leaky, rusted faucet into a "lead pipe with wings", as Henry Miller once called it, so that he could steal your wife, and regret only that he didn't bargain better with the devil? And unlike the Zuckerman of the 1970's and 80's or like Micky Sabbath (an earlier Roth character), this incarnation of Zuckerman is not even funny. Who can care about him once the book ends and your pity for this loner wears off? And as for Roth's supposed preeminence among American novelists: the writing itself at this point and perhaps ever, could not hold even a fading, flickering candle to the prose of Cormack McCarthy for poetry, intensity, emotional variety, sustained depth of artistic vision, or relevance to every man.

Having come across both Nathan Zuckerman - Philip Roth's fictional alter ego - and Roth's other work for years, I was eagerly awaiting "Exit Ghost" as the final chapter in Zuckerman's "life". What a final chapter it is, since it is more like a leisurely descent into a tedious half-hearted love affair between Zuckerman and a young Harvard-educated writer who is married to yet another young writer. While Roth still excells in writing fascinating dialogue and crisp prose, there's not much of a story to hang onto here, except for Zuckerman's precarious health, romantic fling, and an unexpected odyssey to look anew at the career of one of his mentors.

Roth incorporates in passing, much of the current cultural and political landscape, making obligatory nods to 9/11, the War on Terror and the 2004 presidential election. But, these are mere "obligatory nods", not thoughtful commentary on the state of our society as I have seen, for example, from acclaimed science fiction writer William Gibson in his recent novels "Pattern Recognition" and "Spook Country" (Indeed who would have thought that Roth's importance as a fictional commentator of our time would be overtaken by the very man who coined the term "cyberspace"?). Forget Zuckerman and Roth, unless you wish to read Roth's compelling alternate history novel, "The Plot Against America".