Both Zuckerman and Lonoff are Jewish men, concerned with writing the male, post-war Jewish experience. The evening visit and the morning after comprise the entire novel. Lonoff, the elder statesman author who has invited Nathan to spend an evening in his countryside home. When Roth published The Ghost Writer in 1979, he would’ve been between the ages and stages of Nathan Zuckerman, his recurring protagonist who appears in this novel, and E. All of this tells me that he sought to write literature that resounds with a particular kind of timelessness, one that comes from turning very deeply inward to craft a singular human story over a long period of time.Īnd The Ghost Writer mostly reads like that. Roth has said in interviews that in his career of 31 novels and numerous short stories, he more or less wrote the same book over and again. I knew that from roughly 1959 to 2012 he secluded himself in the rural Northeast so that he could do nothing but write at a remove from the world.

I knew he was Jewish and from New Jersey. Despite having not read these or any of his other novels before, between criticism over the years, the many think pieces about Roth’s retirement in 2012, and having been an English major once upon a time, I knew enough about him to sketch a biography. Before this assignment, I had never read Philip Roth.īefore we go any further: this is not a hate essay about how the misogyny in Philip Roth’s novels makes them not-great literature, or makes me feel bad about liking the one I read for this series, The Ghost Writer.Īmong the titles in Philip Roth’s canon that I did not choose to read for this assignment are: The Professor of Desire (1977), When She Was Good (1967), The Breast (1972), and The Great American Novel (1973), none of which, allegedly, were titled satirically. As in, it’s lucky Philip Roth got in when he did because it seems probable that if he were writing today a lot of his manuscripts would be tossed out by the women - white, specifically, as Marlon James pointed out - who make up the majority of today’s publishing industry. Reading a book after the publication buzz has died down lets you see how it stands up without the protective gauze of “coverage.” Reading a canonical book knowing the reputation(s) it bears, is worthwhile because - even though it has stood the test of time - it is likely out of sync with the worldview of the current day, and is therefore a trickier test of your perspective (George Orwell’s work being a stark exception these days). Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.

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