Exit Ghost

The Ghost Writer: Introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer who spends a night in the secluded New England farmhouse of his idol, E. I. Lonoff, and meets a haunting young lady whom he imagines could be the paradigmatic victim of Nazi persecution.	Zuckerman Unbound: Zuckerman, with newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent '60s, where he is assumed by fans and enemies to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?").	The Anatomy Lesson: At 40, Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction--pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman is unable to write a line, but the novel provides some of the funniest and fiercest scenes in all of Roth's fiction.
The Prague Orgy: In quest of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s, where he discovers, among the oppressed writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled, an appealingly perverse kind of heroism.	Zuckerman Bound: The latest in the Library of America's collected Roth works brings together his first Zuckerman trilogy, The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Anatomy Lesson, along with the epilogue, The Prague Orgy.	The Counterlife: From New Jersey to England to the West Bank, the characters in The Counterlife, illuminated by the skeptical, enveloping intelligence of Nathan Zuckerman, are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate.
American Pastoral: Swede Levov, legendary high-school athlete and boyhood idol of Nathan Zuckerman, is wrenched overnight out of the American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk when his teenage daughter proves capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism.	I Married a Communist: The rise and fall of Ira Ringold, a big American roughneck who becomes a big-time 1940s radio star, takes the young Zuckerman under his wing, and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthy witchhunt of the 1950s.	The Human Stain: Coleman Silk, an aging classics professor forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist, has a secret, kept for 50 years from all around him, including his friend Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled.

From Publishers Weekly
Philip Roth's 28th book is, it seems, the final novel in the Zuckerman series, which began in 1979 with The Ghostwriter. A 71-year-old Nathan Zuckerman returns to New York after more than a decade in rural New England, ostensibly to see a doctor about a prostate condition that has left him incontinent and probably impotent. But Zuckerman being Zuckerman and Roth being Roth, the plot is much more complicated than it at first appears. Within a few days of arriving in New York, Zuckerman accidentally encounters Amy Bellette, the lady who was once the muse/wife of his beloved idol, writer S.I. Lonoff; he also meets a young novelist and promptly begins fantasizing about the writer's young and gorgeous wife. There's also a subplot about a would-be Lonoff biographer, who enrages Zuckerman with his brashness and ambition, two qualities a faithful Roth reader can't help ascribing to the young, sycophantic Zuckerman himself. As usual, Roth's voice is wise and full of rueful wit, but the plot is contrived (the accidental meeting with Amy, for example, is particularly unbelievable) and the tone hovers dangerously close to pathetic. In the Rothian pantheon, this one lives closer to The Dying Animal than Everyman. (Oct.)
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Reader Reviews
"In a Mobius striptease, the disrobing stripper is always on the point of getting dressed again, and there is no resolution to the revelation. 'A Mobius striptease in written form, Philip Roth's new novel, "Exit Ghost," is purportedly his long-running character Nathan Zuckerman's new novel, narrated in the first person. During the course of Nathan Zuckerman's new novel, Zuckerman raises the question of whether an author's personal biography should ever be drawn into any discussion about his works of art. The answer seems to be that any reader who might want to do so must be a bit of a klutz." Clive James Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth's, alter ego is lucky in one aspect- he does not die as the character did in 'Everyman'. He is , however, forever asking the question should his life be memorialized in book form. Really, it does not matter to me. This book fell short because of the continued quest for truth in advertising. Nathan is 71, lives in upstate Massachusetts, he is a loner and is seemingly satisfied by this lifestyle. He goes to his old stomping grounds, NYC, to undergo a procedure to alleviate the leakage of urine from a prostatectomy. He is hopeful this will be successful. While he is in New York he inadvertently reads an ad to exchange homes for a year. Something clicks and he finds himself in an apartment of a young couple and has made a deal to switch apartments. What does this mean? How did this happen? The rest of the novel essentially revolves around the couple, this decision and an author friend of Nathans. In reality Nathan's life is swimming before his eyes and his sexuality that he has lost is remembered to the full. The novel gets lost sometimes within these story lines and frankly becomes boring. There are conversations that take place in Nathan's mind. Philip Roth has always been fascinated by and with sex. Every book is filled with women that the main character fantasizes about. This is no different, fantasies aplenty. Fulfillment, well wait and see. "Exit Ghost." Great title. The book of a great writer. A great book? Maybe it's just another piece of a puzzle. A great puzzle, and true to life in being so. In these strange and wonderful books that he writes under or about another name than his, Roth has been mapping the geography in an area of life where only his literary heroes ." Clive James A book that is fascinating. It titillates and disappoints. It bores and it refreshes. It is the final chapter of Nathan Zuckerman. Adios. Recommended prisrob 11-30-07 Everyman Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985: The Ghost Writer / Zuckerman Unbound / The Anatomy Lesson / The Prague Orgy (Library of America #175) Comment | | (Report this)