Roth construye aquí un relato jamesiano en el que se cuestiona el oficio de escribir, el compromiso que el autor contrae con su arte y el efecto que ello tiene en la forma de relacionarse con el mundo y viceversa. Zuckerman entra por la puerta grande al enfrentarse como escritor, o más bien como el escritor que lleva camino de ser, a una de las grandes obsesiones del autor y del futuro personaje. Siendo así, su alter ego no podía empezar de cualquier manera. El resto es la locura del arte.” (Henry James) Aunque unos años antes había aparecido en otra de sus novelas, es en esta en la que Roth afianza su relación ficcional con el personaje de Zuckerman, al que se mantendrá ligado el resto de su carrera. Nuestra duda es nuestra pasión, y nuestra pasión es nuestra tarea. “Trabajamos en la oscuridad: hacemos lo que podemos damos lo que tenemos. perhaps I will rewrite my story and pretend I've been friends with him all along! reading this was like being introduced to a new person who I should have been friends with for years. I can't believe I've avoided Roth for so long. the story felt both intimately autobiographical and completely universal. I loved its engagement with identity (Jewish and otherwise), with how we are defined and the conflict between how we define ourselves and how others may have a completely different definition of who we are. I loved its slow dance with the idea of 'storytelling', with the responsibility authors have when telling the stories of their subjects, with how each person is living in their own personal story. the novel was completely absorbing to me.

What is a story? that is the story within stories within a story that is The Ghost Writer. the boy will probably continue to do this, rather than try to understand his real father's anger. and so the boy ghost-writes his own life, trying to imagine a new father figure, and after that person shows that he is unsuitable for the job, he imagines another person as his new father figure. the boy doesn't like his father's anger, doesn't like that his father's anger calls into question the boy's loyalty to the Jewish kind. a father who is angry with him right now. he creates a narrative for the girl that barely takes the girl into consideration, except for the basic facts that she is a girl and, like the boy, a Jew.

except for the story of the girl! that's all him, his projection onto her. he doesn't create a story, he transcribes it. the boy is a writer, one who has yet to experience life. he turns her into a lure, a mystery, a travesty, into the best way to illustrate his Jewishness, the best way to thumb his nose at his parents and all the adults who would dare condescend to him.

The boy ghost-writes the story of a girl's life.

The Phantom Writer by Rusty Hodgdon