I don't think I've read a work of fiction that is such an unflinchingly scathing criticism of George W. Bush's presidency. I Really enjoyed Roth attacking Bush. And I also really enjoyed Roth's character Zuckerman writing down his imaginary conversations with a woman he becomes infatuated with. Zuckerman is an aging reclusive writer who has done his best to avoid people for over a decade. He comes to N.Y. City to for medical reasons and finds himself fantasying about a much younger woman he barely knows. Having these kind of imaginary conversations is quite common but poor Zuckerman fighting the onset of Alzheimer's writes them down so he won't forget them. I just found that so endearing. ( )

Nathan Zuckerman, Roths langjähriger Held und vielleicht sein Alter Ego, kehrt nach New York zurück, um dann für immer abzutreten. Er trifft in Manhattan ein junges Paar, das nach dem 11. September der Stadt entfliehen will, und bietet ihnen einen Wohnungstausch an - nicht ohne Hintergedanken. Ihn fasziniert Jamie, die junge Frau, und ihn überfallen Gefühle, die er längst überwunden glaubte. Durch sie lernt er einen Mann kennen, der die Biographie des vom jungen Zuckerman verehrten Schriftstellers Lonoff schreiben möchte. Auf einmal ist Zuckerman so involviert, wie er es nie mehr sein wollte. Liebe, Trauer, Begehren und Ressentiment, alles ist wieder da.

I haven't read any Roth for a couple of years and this was a good one to come back to. Still concerned with writing, with his legacy, with his mortality, Zuckerman in his last has never been a more transparently, ghostly version of his creator. ( )

I've been reading Philip Roth since college, way back in the previous century. GOODBYE, COLUMBUS; PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT; and, a particular favorite, LETTING GO, which I have read a few times now. So, upfront admission, I'm a fan, although probably not a very good one, since there are many Roth books I still have not read.

EXIT GHOST is purportedly the last of Roth's Zuckerman books, which began with THE GHOST WRITER, back in 1979. This is the ninth of the Z books, but I've only read a couple others: AMERICAN PASTORAL and THE HUMAN STAIN, both of them outstanding. In EXIT GHOST, we find Nathan Zuckerman at 71, at a low ebb in his eventful life as a writer. Impotent and incontinent after a prostatectomy a decade earlier, Nathan comes back from his twelve year sojourn in the Berkshire mountains to NYC to undergo a medical procedure that might correct his incontinence. While he is there he is drawn simultaneously back into his past and into an unwelcome present through some chance encounters with the former lover of E.I. Lonoff (both major players in the first book), and three young wannabe writers. Nathan falls hare, is enchanted by, one of these young people, thirty year-old Jamie Logan. Obviously, given his sexual dysfunction, he knows this can only end in heartbreak and frustration, but he is, nevertheless, drawn to this beautiful young woman of privilege, raised in Texas, where her parents are in the same social circles as the Bushes.

Because this last book is not just about love or sex. It's about the awful state of politics in America today, which Roth attacks through his characters. Set during the presidential campaign of 2004, Dubya gets it with both barrels. Here's a sample from Jamie -

"... this country is a haven of ignorance. I know - I come from the fountainhead. Bush talks right to the ignorant core. This is a very backward country, and the people are so easily bamboozled, and he's exactly like a snake-oil salesman."

Or this, from Richard Kliman, an ambitious young man who wants to write an expose biography of Lonoff -

"That a right-wing administration motivated by insatiable greed and sustained by murderous lies and led by a privileged dope should answer America's infantile idea of morality - how do we live with something so grotesque? How do you manage to insulate yourself from stupidity so bottomless?"

So yes, one begins to get an idea of how amply disgusted Philip Roth has become with our badly broken political system - and this is from a book published NINE years ago. I can't even imagine what he must think of what's happening right now with the circus that is the Trump-Clinton contest. Roth is also clearly unimpressed with the age of the ubiquitous cell phone, as evidenced in Nathan's observations about this phenomenon -

"I did not see how anyone could believe he was continuing to live a human existence by walking about talking into a phone for half his waking life. No, those gadgets did not promise to be a boon to promoting reflection among the general public."

But EXIT GHOST is also very much about aging and what comes with it. We see Lonoff's former lover, Amy, as an old woman with a disfiguring scar on her head from recent surgery for a brain tumor, and now the cancer has come back. And, more than anything, we are privy to Nathan's most private thoughts and humiliations and he deals with the daily problems of incontinence, forced to wear plastic underpants with absorbent pads, to be changed often. So, when the procedure fails to work, he is plunged into a deep depression, yet one more problem that so often afflicts the aged. Discouraged, he thinks -

"What you do not have, you live without - you're seventy-one, and that's the deal."

Nathan also feels his memory and mental faculties slipping, an unthinkable horror for a writer. And yet, judging from the "He and She" mini-plays he sprinkles throughout his narrative, he needn't worry just yet. They are brilliant - sometimes funny, and often ineffably sad. In sum, EXIT GHOST is a beautiful book, often heartbreakingly so.

Philip Roth announced his retirement a couple years ago. One doesn't think of writers retiring, but hey, he's earned it. Be well, Philip, and enjoy. Loved this book. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

I finally decided to pick up "Exit Ghost" after re-reading "Portnoy's Complaint" for the first time in perhaps fifteen years. Alexander Portnoy, and, really, Phillip Roth himself, is a ball of fire in that one, and while I haven't read all of the other Zuckerman books, I wondered how a personality like Alexander Portnoy's might age. "Exit Ghost" does provide a few possible answers to that question. When we meet Nathan Zuckerman, he's more or less withdrawn from the world, from sexual life, and is living more or less as a hermit, relying entirely on his past to give his writing the sustenance it needs. Though the book is, unsurprisingly, full of self-laceration and self-doubt, Zuckerman has, at the very least, the self-knowledge to recognize more-or-less what he was and what he is becoming. An unexpected trip to New York and a couple of chance encounters rock Nathan's boat, sure, but this is hardly surprising: you can count on self-reflection to be the strong suit of most of Roth's characters.

As a book, "Exit Ghost" feels a lot like Roth on autopilot, which is still a pretty good thing. The sentences flow beautifully and the novel is generally well-constructed. Despite the fact that its main character "re-discovers" New York after having been away for about a decade, the book is largely inward-focused. Readers shouldn't turn here to find novel critiques on modern living, and the jabs that Roth aims at modern readers and critics who care more for a writer's biography than for his work feel well aimed, but also out of place in a book that's narrated by a character who's essentially a lightly fictionalized version of its author. In the end, the best reasons for reading "Exit Ghost," besides, of course, its prose, are its characters and its depiction of aging. Roth presents us with the story of two couples: Amy and Manny -- he was a perhaps great writer who was dropped from reading lists long ago, she was his student and his last romance -- and Jamie and Billy, two aspiring writers who are facing challenges that are both different from and similar to those that the younger Zuckerman once faced. While it's clear that Zuckerman's brain is failing him, he still manages, using his sharp eye and deep understanding of human motivation, to pay homage to each of these relationships, which seem both familiar and maddeningly unique, as are most relationships, if you observe them long enough. Each of these characters comes alive, inspiring, by turns, interest, sexual intrigue, affection and, particularly in the case of Amy, a deep sense of pathos. As for Roth's portrait of aging, it's pretty spare: Zuckerman omits all the usual aches and pains to describe only how age has robbed him of his bladder control, his sexual potency and, increasingly, his memory. But it's enough. The sense of loss imparted to the reader as a yet undiagnosed affliction robs him of his short-term memory seems very real indeed. I'm not sure I'd call "Exit Ghost" an important novel: it feels more like an epilogue, a sad, necessary denouement to a long-running series. But it's recommended to Roth's fans, and there are still lots of those out there. ( )