Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' Closes Zuckerman Cycle

In 'Exit Ghost,' Philip Roth concludes the Zuckerman cycle that began in 1979 with 'The Ghost Writer.' The novel follows Nathan Zuckerman, now 71, impotent and incontinent, who returns to post-9/11 New York from an eleven-year seclusion in the Berkshires for surgery. There, he encounters Amy Bellette, the former mistress of his mentor E.I. Lonoff, now disfigured by age and brain cancer. A younger writer, Richard Kliman, serves as a double, while Jamie, a thirty-something writer, reawakens Zuckerman's desires, which he can only fulfill through writing. The novel explores the struggle between desire and the aging body, using intertextuality and introspection to question the nature of writing and the double. Roth's characteristic indecency—the lyrical, epic, or stark depiction of desire—permeates the work, which ends with Zuckerman fleeing back to the countryside after writing a final fantasy scene.