Roth’s Humorous Art of Ghost Writing

In her article Roth\u27s Humorous Art of Ghost Writing Paule Lévy analyses Philip Roth\u27s Exit Ghost, the last novel featuring Nathan Zuckerman, in which Roth reassesses his favorite alter ego\u27s itinerary while exploring the troubled relation between writing and aging. Lévy considers Exit Ghost as an ironic sequel to The Ghost Writer and posits that in the light of Derrida\u27s theories of writing and hauntology the central motifs of ghosts and spectrality in the novel are a means for Roth to reflect anew on the ambiguous relation between autobiography and fiction. Lévy asks whether Exit Ghost should be read as an expression of Roth\u27s pessimism, as a ghost novel predicting its own disappearance as a cultural artifact, or whether it should be read as an assertion of Roth\u27s indefatigable vitality and faith in the priceless value of art. Lévy\u27s study is a textual analysis and a close examination of the dialogic links between the storyline and its haunting multifarious intertext—in particular Joseph Conrad\u27s partly autobiographical novel The Shadow Line, a central reference in Exit Ghost