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Aging Roth publishes new novel, ‘Exit Ghost’

Enter Philip Roth. The year is 1959 and the young American writer has just published his debut novel, “Goodbye Columbus,” igniting one of the most fruitful, forceful and wild careers in American letters. With the publication of “Exit Ghost” nearly 50 years later, Roth is still at it, but this most recent book reveals his age on many levels.

Courtesy Photo - Haughton Mifflin.

The title is a reference to his earlier work, “The Ghost Writer,” which introduced Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s literary alter-ego and narrator for many of his subsequent books. Zuckerman, 71 years old in “Exit Ghost,” decides to leave his isolated, austere life in the Berkshires for a trip to New York City on the eve of the ’04 election.

The novel, with its haphazard plot and uncharacteristically lean prose, is not so much about the encounters Zuckerman has in New York as it is about his old age — the “organic rebellion staged by the body against the elderly.” Zuckerman tries, in vain, to counter this through his visit to the city. But as Roth would have it, Zuckerman finds salvation hard to come by, and that any respite from the horrors of old age and death are, at best, imagined.
“Exit Ghost” most closely resembles Roth’s preceding novel, “Everyman,” in its brevity and its focus on senescence and mortality, but the similarities go only so far. Where “Everyman” was tightly organized, “Exit Ghost” feels messy and digressive, which softens its impact. Even the quality of the prose — something Roth has a natural handle on — felt sub-par in the first half of the novel.

Most interesting is the tension Zuckerman feels between a desire to passionately involve himself in all corners of life and a counter-urge to disengage and become a mere observer. It’s a tension that he never quite resolves; he’s lonesome in his cabin in the Berkshires, and his supposedly invigorating trip to the city leaves him feeling out of touch and ancient.

While this is not one of Roth’s greater novels, it does have its redeeming qualities. Roth conveys a sense, at times rather powerfully, of the damage old age can wreak. Incontinence, impotence and a deteriorating memory are Zuckerman’s biggest ailments, and his humiliation is passionately evoked. The prose feels smoother in the second half of the novel. In keeping with the other Zuckerman books, it blurs the line between life and fiction, and it also answers some questions left unresolved in earlier books.

The most striking aspect of “Exit Ghost” is its tone: tired, resigned, even grouchy at times. In this sense it reads like an old man. The symmetry between narrator and writing is unfortunate, however, because the Zuckerman of previous novels had a life-force and effusiveness about him that has almost disappeared in this novel. Zuckerman’s old age has sapped away his vitality and Roth’s old age has sapped away the vitality of his prose.