Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"What do I know, other than what I can imagine?", August 24, 2004
Philip Roth, in this first of the Nathan Zuckerman novels, published in 1979, introduces Nathan as a twenty-three-year-old graduate of the University of Chicago who has had four short stories published and is looking for a mentor. Having contacted famed writer E. I. Lonoff, a writer living in rural New England with his wife of 35 years, he has accepted Lonoff's invitation to visit, but a snowstorm arises and Zuckerman finds himself spending the night with Lonoff and his wife. His observations about the life of Lonoff leads him to imagine many stories--about Lonoff's past, his possible relationship with a young former student, and about his life in the countryside. In addition, Zuckerman also reminisces about his own past, his relationships with his family, his feelings toward his own writing, his possible obligations to Jewish history, and the imagined past of Amy, Lonoff's former student, who resembles Anne Frank.
Though Zuckerman is full of hopes for a broader relationship with Lonoff, he soon discovers that his idol is a petulant and insecure man who has used and, in some cases, emotionally abused, those around him, all in the name of "art." Spending a sleepless winter night on the couch in Lonoff's den, Zuckerman investigates Lonoff's library, especially Lonoff's collection of the writings of Henry James, whom Lonoff admires so much, tries to write a letter to his estranged father (who is appalled by one of Nathan's recent short stories, which, he feels, feeds anti-Semitic prejudice), and ponders the relationship between genuine creativity, editing and revision, and the possible responsibilities of a writer beyond his own creative impulse.
A story about the writing of stories, this novella explores the fictional lives writers create from their own lives and the sacrifices they make. As Lonoff's wife says of Lonoff, "Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of." Lonoff himself says, "I turn sentences around...That's my life." And Henry James says in a motto Lonoff has framed in his den, "We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and passion is our task." When Zuckerman leaves Lonoff's house the next morning, he no longer sees Lonoff as an idol, but Zuckerman is still committed to his destiny as a writer, anxious to go to a writers' retreat to work on some new stories. Thoughtful, imaginative, and great fun to read, The Ghost Writer is one of Roth's most tightly organized and revelatory works, essential reading for anyone interested in the creative process. Mary Whipple
|
|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exploring creative writing as art, religion, drudgery, and sacrifice , November 19, 2007
I recently read "Exit Ghost," the last book in the Zuckerman series, and vowed I would read the first book in the series, "Ghost Writer," because I wanted to uncover whatever parallels I might find that would further my enjoyment and understanding. Let me say from the beginning that I thoroughly enjoyed both books. There is hardly a page of Roth's writing that doesn't amuse, fascinate, enthrall, or generally cause my brain to flare up with pure intellectual delight. Roth is surely a national literary treasure.
"Ghost Writer" is a novella about authors, the process of creative writing, and the nature, meaning, and techniques of fiction itself.
The overall plot of "Ghost Writer" is simple, but it masks layers of thematic complexity. The story concerns accomplished, successful 43-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, reminiscing about his first meeting as a 23-year-old aspiring author with his idol, the famous, but reclusive writer E. I. (Manny) Lonoff. Zuckerman manages to get an invitation to the author's home in the Berkshire countryside. There he meets Lonoff, his wife, Hope, and Lonoff's beautiful young assistant, Amy Bellette. It is obvious from the conversations he hears directly, as well as those he overhears in private, that bald, hefty 60-plus-year-old Lonoff appears to be having some type of strange love affair with his beautiful college-age assistant, and that his wife is well aware of this fact. Zuckerman is strongly attracted to Amy and has wild fantasies about her past as a Jewish war orphan, as well as about her current relationship with Lonoff. During his visit, a winter storm arrives making travel difficult. Lonoff politely invites the young writer to spend the night on the day bed in his study. Zuckerman accepts, but is too excited to sleep. During his long night alone in Lonoff's study, we enter Zuckerman's mind as he speculates, fantasizes, and toys with all the random resonant chords of memory that float up to his consciousness, and spin out of his fertile mind as fully perfected stories.
Over the course of the evening and the next morning, Zuckerman begins to see that his idol is not a very good human being. Lonoff may be a great writer, but he has completely sacrificed his life, and the lives of those near and dear to him, for the sake of his art. He is monomaniacally self-absorbed--a man who lives entirely through his art.
Zuckerman also learns that Amy Bellette actually believes that she is Anne Frank hiding from the world under a false name because, if the world knew that she was alive, the impact and validity of her literary art would be put in question. Thus, even though she is obviously under some type of crazed self-delusion, Amy is also another artist sacrificing her life for her art. On Lonoff's desk is a quote from yet another literary giant of self-sacrifice, Henry James: "We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
Toward the end of the novella, Hope Lonoff packs her bags and walks out on her husband of 35 years. She is fed up with the fact that her husband is having an affair with his young assistant. Roth creates a priceless scene of total rage. The voice is spot-on perfect! And, for one who failed to read Roth for more than 30 years precisely because I felt he had no message that a feminist like myself might want to hear, I was amazed to read breath-taking accuracy in Hope Lonoff's raging dialog. This dialog has my vote for being one of the best tongue-lashings in contemporary fiction from a wife against a cheating husband. While exiting their home with her bags packed, she faces Lonoff, Amy, and Zuckerman and rages: "she thinks it will all be the religion of art up here. Oh! Will it ever! Let her try to please you, Manny! Let her serve as the backdrop for your thoughts for thirty-five years. Let her see how noble and heroic you are by the twenty-seventh draft... Yes, have her run hot baths for your poor back twice a day and then go a week without being talked to--let alone being touched in bed...I'm going to Boston. I'm going to Europe. It's too late to touch me now. I'm taking a trip around the world and never coming back. And you!...You won't go anywhere, you won't see anything, you won't even go out to dinner...There is his religion of art, my young successor--rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of, and you will now be the person who he is not living with."
So, not only is this novel about the art and the process of fiction, it is also a work about one very important day in the life of a budding young creative writer--the day he meets, and subsequently rejects his literary idol, and in the process, comes into his own literary manhood. No longer an insecure, budding author needing a mentor, he leaves Lonoff's house a self-secure adult--a man certain of his successful life ahead as a creative writer, and equally confident that he will be able to achieve this goal while still maintaining a whole life. Unlike Lonoff, Zuckerman will be a writer that will still be connected to the world, and therefore in a better position to translate that connectivity into artful prose.
There are many parallels between "Ghost Writer" and "Exit Ghost." If you haven't read the last book in the Zuckerman series, "Exit Ghost," I do not want to spoil it by telling you how the themes and characters in "Ghost Writer" reappear, but trust me, the effect is intellectually dazzling! In the end, the Zuckerman series comes full circle...as only great fiction can.
I heartily recommend reading these two books. I read them out of order; personally, I don't think it matters in which order they are read. And, yes, for the curious out there, I certainly do plan to read the rest of the books in this series...but not all at once. With this author, I would rather savor each book with a half a dozen or more lighter books by other writers in between. I do that with all the authors I love best. It makes coming back to the best all that more satisfying.
|
|
|
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly, the "madness of art", November 20, 1999
By A Customer
In "The Ghost Writer", Philip Roth explores the tension between literature and life through the eyes of Nathan Zuckerman, who looks back to his younger days when as a budding writer, he meets for the first time his literary idol, E.I.Lonoff, his wife Hope and a young girl (Amy Bellette) who appears to be Lonoff's house guest. With great skill and imagination, Roth draws us into the intriguing debate on the responsibility of an artist towards society. Is Nathan morally on safe grounds to publish a novel about the life of his family when he knows that the dirty linen he exposes will cause offence to his relatives and his community ? Is Lonoff (a literary giant though he is) deserving of Nathan's worship when he is willing to spend his entire life "writing and rearranging sentences" but shamelessly neglects his long suffering wife and children ? Are the artist's rights in the name of truth and art ultimately a selfish privilege which asks that we blind ourselves to the larger costs, whatever they are ? These are difficult issues concerning the "madness of art" which Roth handles subtly and without seeming pedentic or preachy. The last section of the novel is an absolute gem. It develops unexpectedly into a teaser which sets up a head-on collision between art and life and leaves the reader wondering about the true identity of Amy. Roth has written a highly intelligent novel that will surely stand the test of time. Highly recommended.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Philip Roth
by Philip Roth
by Philip Roth
by Philip Roth
See all 100 books citing this book
