JasonKoivu

Reading Roth makes me so depressed. I grew up on Charlie Brown holiday specials and Mr. Rodgers, so I feel right at home!

In Exit Ghost we have an aging writer, greatly concerned with his failing bladder and memory, worrying his way to an early grave. However, before he's allowed a graceful exit, a young woman comes along and reignites his useless libido. As if that wasn't enough, a young man forces himself upon the writer compelling him to defend a revered and long dead author with feeble rage and indignant righteousness, remnants of his lost youth.

Expect no sweeping dramatics, no whirlwind physical force. This is well-written reality. Whether or not these scenarios actually happened to him, Roth is essentially writing about himself. He and his main character are the same age, come from the same sort of background and have had the same kind of career. When he writes of 9/11 and the death of George Plimpton, you get the sense these are more or less essays by Roth inserted into the novel. The fiction of Exit Ghost may very well be no more than a tweak or two of day to day happenings in his life. It is not as banal as a daily diary by any means, but if you came for excitement you'll find it in short supply here.

What you get with Roth is an easy flow of erudite observations on the minutia of human behavior and the occasional carver's chisel tap upon the great marble block that is mankind. The language is never too flowery to bury meaning in platitudes or too obtuse to go beyond understanding, it's just a matter of whether the reader's mind is prepared for a marathon of thought. And don't expect encouragement along the way. This reads like the middle miles, not the jubilant starting line or the heady finish.

Perhaps I should have read Roth's The Ghost Writer first, since Exit Ghost is its sequel. It seems to stand alone well enough, but reading the initial novel would've perhaps made the characters' lives more meaningful. Perhaps it would've made all the desperate feelings of the inevitability of death all the worse. I'm over 40 and already worried about contracting the big C or copping it from a heart attack in the middle of the night. I don't need stuff like this to add to my concerns!