Philip Roth

Exit Ghost

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Book Notes: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth

There are some uncanny similarities between the character Lonof in Philip Roth’s Ghost Writer and me. Of course, his characters are largely based on his own life, so that is to say there are some eerie similarities between Roth and me. That is why I think he resonates so strongly with me. Of course, I don’t presume to have his talent or intellect, but there are similarities, nonetheless. Here are a few.

  1. “I crossed the river to New Jersey three days a week.”  I, too, crossed the river to New Jersey every week to go to work in South Jersey when I lived in Philadelphia.
  2. “At eight each morning, our crew was driven to some New Jersey mill town to sell magazine subscriptions door to door.” I did the same thing, but in Kentucky.
  3. “The problem with Santa Claus.” I had a similar experience. I suppose many of us did, but it is the first time I saw it described in a novel.
  4. “…Berkshires…Tanglewood.” I lived in the Berkshires when I was 15, and I have been to Tanglewood many times.
  5. “I turn sentences around. That is my life.” Me too.
  6. “I always read books with pen in hand…my attention is not n what’s in front of me.” I always read with a pencil.
  7. “I have the evening’s reading still ahead of me. Without my reading, I am not myself.” Neither am I.

Deception by Philip Roth

/ Benn Bell / 1 Comment

A Book Review

Reading Philip Roth is like eating Indian food. You have to have a taste for it, and I confess I have a passion for both. I just finished reading Deception and found it to be by turns clever and brilliant. I think the reason I like Roth so much is that sometimes I think he is writing my story. He cleverly entangles his real life with his fictional life. He mixes Nathan Zuckerman and Philip Roth in a froth of delightful storytelling.

Deception is told in all dialogue, which is not an easy feat in itself. The reader must pay close attention to who is speaking. It details his adulterous affair with a British woman while he is temporarily living in England. He is concerned that his wife might find out and take pains to keep their liaison a secret. The British woman is also married. He intertwines this story with encounters with other women including his wife who discovers his notebook and accuses him of having an affair which he denies, and therein ensues a hilarious argument about how the affair is in his imagination and the notes are for a book that he is writing. One may ask, who is he deceiving, his wife or the rest of us?  The scene reminded me of a similar incident that happened to me a while back. I also keep a notebook and one day my partner at the time happened to pick it up and read it while I was out. We had the biggest fight of our relationship over what she read in that notebook! It was over soon after that.

The novel Deception is Philip Roth at his best. Highly recommend!

My Life as a Man

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A Well-Known Seducer of College Girls

Image courtesy of Goodreads

My Life as a Man, a novel written by Philip Roth, comes from Roth’s middle period, after Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint, but before American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain.  Roth has written some 30 odd books, not all of them odd but some pretty strange, and he is possibly America’s best writer, if not one of the most prolific. Beats me why he never won the Nobel, for he was surely deserving. 

I’ve read most of his later works and all of his earlier works and I am slowly catching up on his middle period. I don’t profess to be an expert on Roth, but I certainly like his writing I and return to him over and over again.

This book, My Life as a Man, is a story within a story, or two stories within a story, then Peter Tarnopol’s (narrator) true story. It concerns his marriage to Maureen Tarnopol who tricked him into marrying him and has become his arch-enemy. Maureen, in their divorce proceedings, described him as, “…a well-known seducer of college girls.”

Peter Tarnopol is a promising young writer who is also a college professor who teaches creative writing. He occasionally gets involved with his young students who become grist for his mill. He teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Wisconsin and Hofstra College on Long Island. He was a patient of Dr. Otto Spielvogel, a Manhattan psychoanalyst, from 1962-1967. Spielvogel considered Peter Tarnopol to be among the nation’s top young narcissists in the arts.

As usual, Roth draws from his own life and previous fiction and writes about what he knows best.

It is a rollicking satire teetering on the edge of tragedy as Roth brilliantly tells the tale of his marriage and his many peccadillos.

Roth writes in an attempt to make art out of his calamitous life and to spin gold out of straw. Is it him or his characters, or is it Memorex? You be the judge. For him, (Tarnopol), “…writing is a vain attempt to get myself to feel like something other than a foreigner being held against his will in a hostile and alien country.”

For Philip Roth, life is a Kafkaesque nightmare whereupon the dreamer ruminates on the possibility of being transformed into a gigantic cockroach. Upon awakening, he heeds the advice of Gustave Flaubert who suggests leading a regular and orderly life and being violent and original in his writing. This is a lesson Philip Roth seems to have taken to heart.

Zuckerman Unbound

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Book Blurb

Not the best Philip Roth book but pretty good. It always amazes me how Roth can take the ordinary and turn it into literature or a simple idea like what happened to him after he became famous after publishing Portnoy’s Complaint and spin gold out of it. Pure genius! And quite funny too, I might add. I had several laugh out loud moments as I was reading this book. Highly recommend!

EXIT GHOST

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With the passing of Philip Roth the world has lost a lion of literature.

All my favorite writers are dying off. John Updike, Saul Bellow, Edward Albee, and now Philip Roth. Who will take their place? No one. There is literally no one who can  fill the shoes of theses giants.  With the passing of Philip Roth follows the death of the Great American Novel.

No more….