Roth's most intricately plotted novel

Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer is a very short novel but in my opinion perhaps Roth's most intricately plotted novel - though it has all of the Roth shtick that we so much enjoy in his fiction - who could forget the awkward Nathan Zuckerman as he first meets his literary idol, E.I. Lonoff, and he can't think of anything to tell him but his experiences selling magazines door to door, and L's detailed questioning about magazine sales, as if that's the most important thing for them to talk about! What most will remember about the novel is that it centers on Lonoff's acolyte, an a young and idolizing woman who's working on collecting his official papers - and whom Z. determines must actually be Anne Frank, Holocaust survivor and now living under a new identity, Amy Bellette, in the U.S. A careful reading of TGW, however, shows that this idea is as preposterous as it sounds; Z. has no evidence on which to base this idea - it's just a fantasy he concocts. Why? First, because he's extremely jealous that Amy is engaged in an affair with Lonoff - in a grossly comic scene Z stands on a dictionary on top of L's writing desk to eavesdrop on the two of them in the bedroom above where Z has been placed - and he wants not only A to himself but also L. - his lascivious and somewhat grotesque relations with Amy are like a hammer blow to the Lonoff idol. Second, and more important, Z. wants a reconciliation with his own family and community - he spends a good deal of time recounting his father's bitter reaction to a story he'd written about a family squabble, and his father's decision to send the story to a leader of the Newark Jewish community, a guy who's totally full of himself, and who writes Z. a condescending letter: Is this good for the Jews? etc. Roth - and L. - both know that writers almost always break with their family and community - there are many references to Joyce and to Stephen Dedalus - and Z. - as well as Roth - will pay that price (though Roth has made it clear in interviews that his family always supported his writing, even if the larger Jewish community did not always do so) - but what Z. really wants is a father: Lonoff is one attempt at finding a literary father; the blowhard Abrvanel was a father who rejected him; but what could bring him back more fully into the Jewish community than a relationship with the heroine Anne Frank? Z's creation of the Anne Frank survival story is a desperate and radical fable - much like the fables that L. writes, in fact. By the end, Z. realizes that there are no answers in life for a writer: Amy leaves to pursue her own interests; Lonoff obviously has a tempestuous and troubled relation with his WASP Yankee wife of 35 years - moving off to the country to write undisturbed is just a pastoral myth. The problems - of love, of art, of family, of community - will remain: you can't run away and become a ghost.