The writer's life - and the writing life - Roth's dichotomy

In The Ghost Writer, part 1, Philip Roth is having a little fun in creating his avatar, Nathan Zuckerman, and in letting Z experience, or actually look back upon his experience, of being an ambitious and aspiring writer seeking endorsement and, in a sense, paternalism, from his literary forebears. Most of the first section involves Z's visit to the reclusive great writer who most influenced him (and to a degree Roth), E.I. Lanoff, closely based it seems in I.B. Singer. But toward the end of part 1 a second eminence appears, the slick and successful and lascivious writer Abravanel (?) - w/ Z. remembers A's visit to his college campus, during which he led a seminar that discussed Z's latest story, and Z's wish, hope for a blessing from this visiting god - most specifically, in the form of an introductory letter or note to a NY editor (Shawn, presumably?) - a blessing that was not forthcoming (Z. notes that Thomas Mann himself bestowed a similar blessing on Abravanel early in A's career - so it's clear that Z. is playing for very high stakes and at a very young age wants to establish himself as among the next generation of great Modern writers - which of course Roth has done and is). Part of the fun here is Z's naive transparency - he's much like Roth, and much like the young Roth, we would imagine - but his it not Roth exactly. I've often made the distinction between two statements: I want to be a writer. v. I want to write. The former sentence is much more suspect. Someone who says "I want to be a writer" often has no knowledge of what it is to actually writer - they just want the accolades, the recognition, the $, the women (or men), and the sense of accomplishment - they imagine the writer's life as something pure and holy. I don't think Roth ever felt this - or not for long; Zuckerman, however, is a bit of a romantic and wants to "be a writer" - and his visit to Lonoff is for him perhaps the experience that changed him to wanting "to write" - the writer's life, lonely and difficult, enslaved to the Olivetti, squabbling with the ever-neglected wife - is no paradise. It's in many ways a burden, even a sentence (interment, that is), a curse. Mann wrote about this, btw, in the great Tonio Kroger. While Z. pulls away in horror from Lonoff's life, he also sees Abravanel's as an alternative - the beautiful young acolyte by his side, the travel, the romance, the beauty and serenity of California. (BTW is Abravonel based on an real writer or writers? Did I detect a slight dig at Norman Mailer, esp post The Deer Park?) He will be town between these ideals, until he finds  writer's life, and a form of suffering, of his own - as Roth will anatomize in at least 3 more novels in this series.