Exit Ghost

I just finished reading Exit Ghost, Philip Roth's final Zuckerman novel. I have to say I didn't like it as much as I had hoped. I loved American Pastoral so much, and the Roth I've read since then has just kind of disappointed.

Not that Exit Ghost isn't very good. But it didn't do anything for me. I found the premise contrived: Zuckerman spent 11 years in total isolation in the Berkshires following prostate surgery. The self-imposed isolation just didn't resonate as realistic to me. It seemed like a set up, like an idea. It made the character less real to me.

He returns to NY for a minor surgical procedure and gets sucked into a little drama surrounding a couple with whom he is considering house switching, and a former lover of a former mentor. In between are snippets of imagined dialogue that are supposed to be part of the last piece of fiction Zuckerman writes. Imagined dialogues with the young woman of the NY couple, the young woman with whom he has become desperately infatuated. A significant theme concerns the value of literature in the contemporary world, and the meaning of the distinction between fiction and fact.

I guess I just didn't find the story compelling. The writing was excellent; the story, not so much.