The Student of Desire

MASTURBATING HEROES dot Philip Roth's novels like so many used kleenex on the floor. But his 11th book, The Ghost Writer, would not be lightly tossed aside. It delves into the mind of a Jewish writer and surfaces only after revealing the harsh compromises that must be made to attain great stature as an author. One imagines Roth secreting himself one night in I.B. Singer's bedroom closet all the while scribbling a short story about what he sees. In the morning he discovers in his lap a small masterpiece, part autobiography, part fancy; but it is the whole truth about the Jewish fiction writer.

The writer's self-sacrificial nature, insistent Jewish guilt, and sexual desire all torment Roth's hero, a young short story writer named Nathan Zuckerman. Nathan's dilemma concerns the purpose of his art: is his ultimate responsibility to himself or his Jewish heritage? Even the writer of the Bible must have paused to consider the personal and social consequences of his creation. In the end, Nathan, like Roth, chooses to write for himself and let the kleenex fall where they may. "There is obviously no simple way to be great," says Nathan.

Nathan--Alexander Portnoy disguised by a U. of Chicago education--arrives at the New England home of his aging mentor, newly popular short story writer E.I. Lonoff, whom he has never met. Here he embarks on an intellectual journey to discover both the mystery behind Lonoff's ghost-like absence from the "real world" and the secret to Lonoff's uncanny ability to characterize the Jewish anti-hero in his stories. Along the way, Nathan encounters Hope, Lonoff's lonely, bitter and jealous wife, and the enchanting Amy Bellette, his precocious and loving student.

With E.I. Lonoff, Roth brings to life a compelling and intricate character. Lonoff, in a self-destructive pursuit of the perfection of his art, exemplifies the life of a great writer for Nathan, for whom quelling desire in the interest of better art is a new phenomenon. "There is his religion of art, my young successor: rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful art out of," wails Hope.

But as protagonist, Nathan reveals an even more intriguing mind. He is the young, modern Jew, acutely aware of the horror of the Holocaust yet eager to spare his writing any Jewish self-pity. His stories are icy, even mean, much to his parents' chagrin. Nathan's battle with his family over a story they deem insulting to Jews must echo a similar fight Roth himself waged with his relatives over Portnoy's Complaint.

Most of all, however, Nathan wants to be a great writer and The Ghost Writer reflects the intensity of his desire. It closely examines that desire, offering a stimulating tour of the maturing writer's mind, ground Roth knows only too well. His writing about writers stands unparalleled. In a perfectly turned monologue, Lonoff bitterly details the tedium of a writer's day:

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

Later, during the night he spends in Lonoff's study, Nathan climbs atop a writing desk and a Henry James novel, then presses his ear to the ceiling to better eavesdrop on a pathetic love dialogue between Lonoff and Amy. Safely descending his makeshift ladder, he laments,

Oh, if only I could have imagined the scene I'd overheard! If only I could invent as presumptuously as real life! If one day I could just approach the originality and excitement of what actually goes on!

Yet Nathan stretches to the far-fetched in his attempt to imagine real life. Several plot contrivances mar the novel. But its richness and vitality cannot be overstated. It reads quickly, much like a longish (180 pages) short story, and so stimulating a novel is hard to relinquish to the bookshelf. The Ghost Writer ends too soon.