''Exit Ghost'' is a 2007 novel by
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer.
Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...
. It is the ninth, and last, novel featuring
Nathan Zuckerman
Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character created by the writer Philip Roth, who uses him as his protagonist and narrator, a type of alter ego, in many of his novels.
Character
Roth first created a character named Nathan Zuckerman in the novel '' ...
.
Plot summary
The plot centers on Zuckerman's return home to New York after eleven years in
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
. The purpose of Zuckerman's journey, which he takes the week before the
2004 U.S. presidential election, is for him to undergo a medical procedure that might cure or reduce his incontinence. While in New York, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, whom he had last encountered during a visit to the writer E.I. Lonoff's house in December, 1956, as depicted in Roth's novel ''
The Ghost Writer
''The Ghost Writer'' is a 1979 novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the first of Roth's novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of the author's putative fictional alter egos, and constitutes the first book in his ''Zuckerman Bound'' ...
''. Zuckerman also agrees to a housing swap with a young writing couple, Billy Davidoff and Jamie Logan, and quickly becomes attracted to Logan. In his hotel room at night, Zuckerman writes a play, ''He and She'', composed of imagined conversations between him and Logan.
Through Davidoff and Logan, Zuckerman meets Richard Kliman, a young, brash
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
graduate who is working on a biography of Lonoff. Kliman was Logan's boyfriend in college. Because of Kliman's zealous interest in a potentially scandalous secret from Lonoff's adolescence, neither Zuckerman nor Bellette wants to help him complete his project. Zuckerman may also be motivated by his own confused feelings about Logan and Kliman.
Although critics once considered that Lonoff, deceased and neglected, was modelled partly on the writer
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseba ...
, he now seems to be based on a number of writers.
Henry Roth is a major influence, as becomes clear in ''Exit Ghost.'' Roth's biographer is Steven G. Kellman. It is known that Philip Roth has read the later novels of Henry Roth, though some of these remain unpublished. The rationale for Henry Roth is that in his novels published after his death he reveals that he had an incestuous affair with his sister when he was young; it also known that Henry Roth suffered from
writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. Mike Rose found that this creative stall is not a result of commitment problems or th ...
for much of his career after publishing ''Call It Sleep'', his only major novel. In ''Exit Ghost'' it is revealed that Lonoff also had an incestuous affair with his sister — which led to his writer's block — and the fact that while content to teach in oblivion, he never published again.
American politics forms a backdrop to the novel. Zuckerman, Davidoff and Logan watch the results of the 2004 presidential election together. Logan, whose father always voted Republican, was enraged and devastated by the results. The older Zuckerman, though not pleased, was more philosophical and was able to place the results into a more historical context.
Title
The
stage direction
In theatre, blocking is the precise staging of actors to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. Historically, the expectations of staging/blocking have changed substantially over time in Western theater. Prior to the movemen ...
, "exit ghost" appears in three of
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's plays: ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'', ''
Macbeth
''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...
'' and ''
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
''. In a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
interview, Roth stated that using this direction as a title "came to me because of ''Macbeth''. Last year in the summer I was going to see a production of ''Macbeth'' here in America, and I re-read the script that afternoon, and I came upon the
scene, ghost scene, and it just leaped out — 'exit ghost' — and that's the title of my book, so I just lifted it." In the novel Jamie and Billy read ''Macbeth'' aloud to each other, marveling grimly at its relevance to
.
The title also refers to that of the first Zuckerman book, ''The Ghost Writer''. At one point, Bellette says to Zuckerman that Lonoff (whom she imagines talking to her from beyond the grave) told her, "Reading/writing people, we are finished, we are ghosts witnessing the end of a literary era."
called the novel "elegiac" and "a kind of valedictory bookend to ''The Ghost Writer'', adding "Mr. Roth has created a melancholy, if occasionally funny, meditation on aging, mortality, loneliness and the losses that come with the passage of time."