The judge even sends Zuckerman a letter, with ten provocative questions for the young author, concluding with nothing less than: Zuckerman, meanwhile, argues for the ideals of art and truth over these objections. He had based the story on actual family experiences, complicating the matter: And they judge them as such", it hits particularly close to home, after all.
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Zuckerman can't completely escape this conflict when he's visiting Lonoff -- it obviously weighs on his mind, and his parents continue to badger him, even at his retreat, and of course it is also a fundamental question the young writer must face about his work. At Lonoff's, over the course of an afternoon, dinner, and then the night he spends at the writer's house, other issues however also crowd for attention.
There's the whole meeting-the-master, and Zuckerman's awed reaction, but then also the glimpses of a strained domesticity. Lonoff dreams of life in a villa outside Florence, for example, -- with a woman: Suggesting that however respected and successful he now is, he hasn't lived quite the life he wished for, and that life with his wife, the mother of his children, and as a college professor, isn't quite so idyllic.
A further complicating factor is the presence of a former student of Lonoff's, the beautiful mysterious, foreigner, Amy Bellette, only a few years older than Zuckerman. As Zuckerman learns, Amy also has some daddy-issues -- calling Lonoff 'Dad-da', curling on his lap, and with life-in-Florence-dreams of her own: We could make each other so happy, I wouldn't be your little girl over there. I would when we played, but otherwise I'd be your wife. Lonoff brought Amy to the States, and an air of mystery remains around her. There's enough of the romantic and fantasist to Zuckerman for him to spin out a wild fantasy about her, and even the next morning he finds: And quite the fiction it is, imagining nothing less than that she is, in fact, Anne Frank.
It's a fascinatingly spun-out section of the novel, the writer's and young man's fantasy creating a life- story -- and a figure to toy further with in his imagination, whether as prospective wife he loves the idea of introducing her to his family or as "E. Lonoff's femme fatale ".
Zuckerman spends the night at the Lonoff's, and the next morning is to head back to his writing-retreat, while Amy is to head back to Cambridge -- but what starts as a comfortable domestic scene over breakfast quickly falls apart. I knew that from roughly to he secluded himself in the rural Northeast so that he could do nothing but write at a remove from the world.
Roth has said in interviews that in his career of 31 novels and numerous short stories, he more or less wrote the same book over and again. All of this tells me that he sought to write literature that resounds with a particular kind of timelessness, one that comes from turning very deeply inward to craft a singular human story over a long period of time.
And The Ghost Writer mostly reads like that.
The ghost writer
Lonoff, the elder statesman author who has invited Nathan to spend an evening in his countryside home. The evening visit and the morning after comprise the entire novel.
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Both Zuckerman and Lonoff are Jewish men, concerned with writing the male, post-war Jewish experience. Zuckerman, young and zealous, is from a Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey. Only four published stories into his career, his writing is already offending his Jewish family and community so much that his father has gone to the local Rabbi to seek both counsel and mediation.
Zuckerman is outraged, indignant. Lonoff lives like a recluse, a monk for the religion of his art, in a small cabin with his wife surrounded on all sides by untouched field, away from the writing and publishing scene of New York. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. As Zuckerman reads a Henry James story several times just because Lonoff made an offhand comment about it.
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At the same time, Zuckerman thinks about an argument he has been having with his father. Zuckerman wrote a short story about a fight over money a couple of cousins had a few years before. Zuckerman's father believes the story perpetuates a stereotype about Jews and has enlisted the help of a respected judge in their neighborhood to pressure Zuckerman into throwing the story away.
Zuckerman is offended by this interference and attempt at controlling his career. While Zuckerman is thinking about all this, Amy returns to the house. A few minutes later Zuckerman can hear arguing in the rooms above him. Zuckerman attempts to listen in, imagining Amy and Lonoff having an intimate discussion in her bedroom. Later, Zuckerman begins to imagine that Amy is Anne Frank.
Late to the Party: Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer
Amy survived the concentration camp where she was rumored to have died and has come to the United States to study under Lonoff in her aspiration to become a great writer. When the Diary of Anne Frank is published and later turned into a Broadway play, Amy becomes distraught, reading the book over and over, convincing herself that it is too late to let her father know she is still alive. The following morning, Lonoff and his wife read Lonoff's fan mail to Zuckerman and Amy over breakfast.
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When Hope reads a letter from a young man asking Lonoff to sponsor him to come to the United States to study and become a writer, Hope attempts to apologize to Amy, believing the letter to have hurt her feelings in some way. Amy becomes upset even as she attempts to brush off the apology. Hope then begins her rant again, pushing Lonoff to become Amy's lover. Zuckerman imagines the two are already lovers. Hope then insists that Amy remain at the home with Lonoff while she will leave.