I have about as much respect for my therapist as I do for any living person, so when this one in a million Phoenix intellectuals gave me "Exit Ghost" by Phillip Roth to read, I said, OK. No prob. Gotta be something to it. All righty.
So why give this to me? I believe she thought I'd love the style, the introspection offered by serial character Nathan Zuckerman, now a 71 year old semi-recluse finding his New York all over again 11 years after leaving. Perhaps she thought he could impart wisdom on me, also, give the trials and tribulations he finds. And to show me life doesn't end after you turn 30(?). OK, I'm probably reaching now.
Roth's Zuckerman is a direct type of guy who digs into his gut to pick out exactly how he's feeling, and while it's not always profound, it is striking in its honesty while being philosophically intriguing...in this aspect: The concept of the young replacing the old, the old's animosity toward the young and the young's animosity toward the old, and the ultimate despair of the old who know they are to be replaced anyhow (the old represented as Zuckerman, Lonoff, the young represented in a slew of characters, most deviously Kliman, the upper 20s Harvard grad who is running head first into becoming Zuckerman's hero's (EI Lonoff's) biographer). We see Nathan, back in New York to resolve a problem of incontinence, be coaxed back to civilization in NYC, and before you know it he's made an agreement with a married couple to trade places for a year. Bitingly (as I get back to the youth replacing the elderly diatribe) we see Nathan fall head over heels for the young married woman he is to trade places with, Jamie Logan. Though he is old (more than twice her age), impotent, and 11 years removed from his life in the city, he cannot help but to be drawn in by her beauty (showing the old man to shell still vibrant desires) to the point he is tortured into writing a play using "He" and "She" to bring to life their intimate relationship that never existed in but one simple conversation. As this goes on, he is trying to fend off Kliman (who he insecurely asserts is Jaime's lover, to make his angst all the more potent) and his insistence in EI Lonoff's big secret (incest), trying to run him off biographing his reclusive hero and shaming his name (as Zuckerman sees it), and in the meantime he lets loose many a thoughts on this new world from his opinions on cell phones (take away from all contemplation) to elections (couldn't care less anymore). We see a turning of the page with Zuckerman's leaving back to the country, ready to call all off, a page turned on his time and as we get to know him psychologically we see all the hurt that can contain. It's not the change he's scared of...it's the recklessness in which it is performed. The gall of a 28 year old trying to understand and chronicle someone not even alive during his lifetime (no matter his intentions, which are not terrible really)...this young world thinks it knows everything! And yet Zuckerman found himself identifying with the head-first approach of Kliman, the youthful vigor and excitement, recognized it from his younger life. So yes, the page turned, and it is a bit bitter, but there is nothing one can do. We are all young once, right? We all learn. I'm trying, too...maybe that's what my therapist was trying to get to me.
"Exit Ghost" was an enjoyable enough read. The prose are quite direct -- Roth refuses to sugar coat the failure of the mind and body in the aging protagonist, but also allows Zuckerman to retain his immense dignity, and know when to pull himself back and out of the fray of the young and restless. Should I admire Zuckerman? He surely stands his ground, does what he believes in, in protecting the frail former lover of Lonoff (Amy Bellette), as well as what he believed about Lonoff, from Kliman. Should I loathe him? He could be so condescending, bitter, and utterly morose in his contemplations, so out of touch with the world to try to judge it so harshly. But I shouldn't do any of those things. I think I _get_ him. I wonder if Roth'd kick a 26 year old for saying that, but I dug his words, I dug his sticking to his guns and his ability to admit to the aging process and instead of woe-is-me-ing he keeps his notebooks so he shan't forget, he tries to stop up his wang best he can. He tries to improve, too, he admits the biggest lessons come late, he's open to the surprise of falling deeply for this Jaime, yet another muse in a world that can seem so devoid these days. He's not a crotchety asshole -- though I bet if you met him for just a moment in time he could come off like one -- but a seasoned old man who is wary of the bullshit. And he writes and writes before more escapes him, trying to hold it all in. I _get_ that. You can't tell me I don't.
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