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Loading... The Ghost Writer (1979)by Philip Roth
None. It took me a bit to get into this book. I didn't think I'd like it at first and couldn't find the point of the whole thing. As I read, Roth wove his magic as he always does and I ended the book with extreme satisfaction. (  ) Cathyvil | Apr 7, 2013 |  It was very strange to read this in Amsterdam, having picked it up in a used bookstore in the U.S. and having no notion of its contents. Roth begins with the themes that manhood begins with attending to consequences, and recognizing the fallibility of one's idols. It then veers engagingly and precipitously into Zuckerman's long fantasy about Anne Frank, raising questions such as what the Holocaust means for the generation of Jews that followed? Can you be free of history, or of fetishizing it? Though a short novel, I found it provocative and compelling. (  ) OshoOsho | Mar 30, 2013 | I just finished reading The Ghost Writer by Phillip Roth. Nathan Zuckerman was a 23 year old up-and-coming writer with four stories published and an author profile in the Saturday Review. He has already ruined his relationship with his family by his autobiographical work, and his relationship with his girlfriend is on the rocks because of adultery and honesty. Visiting his reclusive idol in the Berkshires, Nathan has a chance to evaluate his life and work and finds himself turning his problems into metafiction. I found this book funny in parts and very well-written. I give it a B+! ( ) moonshineandrosefire | Feb 10, 2012 | Discovering the contradictory and strange .Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue, 1979-1985 , Author Roth Philip protagonist Nathan Zuckerman,tensions between literature and life,novels chronicling adventures,subsequent developments Zuckerman extended fictional work in prose that we showing profound knowledge that Nathan also used metaphorically on to gain with effort book recommended, like something that everyone can relate introduction and brief analysis into proper writing. The Ghost Writer was first published in two parts in The New Yorker in 1979,there was any good fiction about is the first novel by Philip Roth to be narrated by Nathan Zuckerman,is a fictional character that appears in the role of narrator and protagonist, of a writer that idolizes. ( ) tonynetone | Oct 7, 2011 | I've read enough Roth now that it's difficult for me to assess how much someone who's not familiar with him would enjoy certain books of his, this definitely being of those. The premise was interesting to me, as a Roth fan, because it was clear that both main characters were based on different versions of him. One, Nathan Zuckerman, was a young writer from Chicago whose begun to get some recognition. He goes to visit his literary idol, E.I. Lonoff, who was supposedly based off of Barnard Malamud (author of The Fixer) but reading it with my knowledge of Roth, Lonoff has a million similarities to the way that Roth lives and writes now. There was also an interesting sub-plot, where a young woman became convinced that she was Anne Frank and that she had actually escaped her attic. I loved this book a million times over and wanted to start reading it again as soon as I'd finished it. ( ) agnesmack | Sep 5, 2011 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0679748989, Paperback)A middle-aged writer recalls his younger self. At 23, Nathan Zuckerman has had four stories published and a small, flattering Saturday Review up-and-coming-author profile (complete with a photo of him playing with his ex-girlfriend's cat), which he purports to scorn. As genuine and polite as he seems, Zuckerman has already hurt his family with his autobiographical art and ruined his relationship with adultery and honesty. Visiting his reclusive idol (famed for his "blend of sympathy and pitilessness") in the Berkshires, the writer watches himself watching himself and attempts to confront his work and life. Instead he finds himself turning reality into metafiction. A quote he happens upon from Henry James only complicates matters further: "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." Events, however, have their revenge, weaving more out of control than even he can anticipate or ask for. Philip Roth is the master of the uncomfortable, and his alter ego a connoisseur of self-involvement, self-loathing, and self-examination. ("Virtuous reader, if you think that after intercourse all animals are sad, try masturbating on the daybed in E. I. Lonoff's study and see how you feel when it's over.")(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:31:11 -0500) The Ghost Writer introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s; a budding writer infatuated with the Great Books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his literary idol, E. I. Lonoff. At Lonoff's, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background who turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's and who may also have been his mistress. Zuckerman, with his active, youthful imagination, wonders if she could be the paradigmatic victim of Nazi persecution. If she were, it might change his life...The first volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound, The Ghost Writer is about the tensions between literature and life, artistic truthfulness and conventional decency - and about those implacable practitioners who live with the consequences of sacrificing one for the other.… (more) |
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