Review of “Exit Ghost” by Philip Roth
I don’t think there is an award for writing that Philip Roth hasn’t won. In 1997 he won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. He has won The National Book Award twice and received the National Medal of Arts, among many other prestigious awards.
And I can see why.
Exit Ghost is the story of a writer in his seventies who has spent the last 11 years in seclusion, in a house in the woods. Mr. Roth does such a marvelous job of describing the life of a recluse, even making it attractive. No longer does Nathan Zuckerman have to deal with people and all their messy stuff. The author finds a fine contentment in the simple life of writing and the mind.
But he is prompted to return to New York City in hopes of relieving his troubled prostrate with collagen injections. You see, this man is incontinent and must wear a diaper. But he is also impotent. The injections aren’t supposed to bring back his libido, just help him stop dribbling all over himself. In fine Philip Roth fashion, we are privy to the private hell of a senior citizen who is trying to keep his personal dignity.
Nathan’s plan is to have the treatment and return immediately back to his solace in the woods. However, life intrudes, as it always has a way of doing when you rejoin civilization, and Nathan finds himself, to his horror, embroiled in a struggle with passion, falling instantly in love with a woman half his age he knows he can neither have nor satisfy. If that isn’t enough, a cutthroat journalist, who is bent on writing a biography of Nathan’s favorite, but long time dead author of short stories, backs Mr. Zuckerman into a corner, claiming to hold a deep dark secret about the dead author that Nathan does everything in his power to make sure isn’t revealed.
This book touched me on so many levels. A window into the young mind of an old man, it expresses beautifully the struggles of the aging and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the heart and mind of the elderly often refuse to accept their fate. I would suggest this book to anyone who is older or empathetic to the plight of the writer, the elderly, or the love lorn.
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