LOVED THESE TWO PIECES FROM THE GUARDIAN


The digested read
Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth John Crace
Publisher: Cape
Price: £16.99

I hadn't been in New York in 11 years. Other than for surgery in Boston to remove a cancerous prostate, I'd hardly left my rural retreat in the Berkshires. But now I was on my way to Manhattan to see a urologist who specialised in treating incontinence problems. I'd been alone all these years, apart from occasional visits from my housekeeper, Larry. And he killed himself a year ago. I don't take an interest in anything. I just write, read and wet myself.

Save yourself a lot of time by reading this clever digested treatment of Exit Ghost. The rest is here.

AND THEN THIS

An audience with Philip Roth

Since his debut in The Ghost Writer in 1979, Nathan Zuckerman has become Roth's most celebrated alter ego. To mark the publication of Exit Ghost, in which Zuckerman takes his final bow, America's foremost novelist talks to Hermione Lee about his life and work

This conversation about Exit Ghost began in April 2007. I was in New York for the publication of my biography of Edith Wharton, and Philip was in town to receive Italy's Grinzane award at the Italian Academy at Columbia. We met to catch up (we've known each other since the early Eighties, when I wrote a short book about him and did his Paris Review interview), and to talk about Exit Ghost over a few meals. This is not as simple as it sounds. Going out with Philip Roth in Manhattan is like going out with Louis XIV in Versailles: the king is in his kingdom. ('Only as far down as West 69th Street,' he says, when I put this to him.) As you stroll to your destination, little old men come out of nearby doorways and say to him fiercely: 'Aren't you somebody famous?' Strange women walking their dogs stop to say hello as if they were old friends.

Read the full interview here.

Bookman Beattie reviewed Exit Ghost with Maggie Barry on Radio New Zealand National this Monday past and his review can be read here by scrolling back through the blog.