Page 6-Sunday, October 21, 1979-The MichianailThe Michigan Daily The Michigan Daily-Sunday, Oci Bookse 'Ghost Writer' exorcises Roth Tracking the Hayden-Fonda THE GHOST WRITER By-Philip Roth Farrar Straus Giroux, 190 pp. $8.95 PHILIP ROTH'S latest novel, The Ghost Writer, is characterized by both a curious old-fashioned flavor and an over-worked subject. Roth tran- scends that nostaglia-laden period in which his novel is set, the 1950s, by adhering to an almost classical discipline and covering just one evening and the following morning in the story. But the subject is one that 9eems too popular this season: The writer's self- conscious need to be free of restrictions from family and community in his artistic mission. Somehow that seems a world away from current realties, as if we left all that behind in the first few decades of the 20th cen- tury. 'Of course, family rebellions and adolescent gawkiness have never embarrassed Roth. Indeed, they have been the raw material of his art. But until The Ghost Writer it seems Roth has never addressed quite so directly the way these problems must be confronted emotionally and artistically within a single life. While recently many authors have become obsessive about the nature of writing itself (Bernard Malamud's Dubin's Lives is a-good case in point), few seem in- terested in the actual process of becoming a writer. Nathan Zuckerman in The Ghost Writer wants to become the artist, but -in charactistically Rothian. style, is unsure as to how to go about it. Should he risk the wrath and potential exile from his relatives and' publish what they consider an anti-Semitic story about themselves, or should he try for some kind of artistic martyrdom and bow to his family's wishes? If he goes his own way, how can he be sure he has any talent to sustain him, that he won't make a mess of his career and ruin the hopes of his family? Out to find direction and consolation in his troubled life. Nathan is temporarily attracted towards the life- style of Felix Abravanel, a thinly disguised Norman Mailer. But Abravanel becomes impatient with the paternal role he is asked to play. He was, says Nathan, "not in the market for a'23-year-old son." Nathan in- stead turns to E.I, Lonoff, fatherly in appearance and loosely based on I.B. Singer, with sprinklings of Malamud. Lonoff, his sons and daughters grown, spen- ds a somewhat monastic life in a remote farmhouse "turning sentences around," composing perfectly- shaped stories that Nathan would probably have given his left arm to have written. The tension of the winter evening which Nathan passes with Lonoff and his wife Hope is well-captured: Nathan, anxious for approval while attempting to swallow his idolatory with every sentence he speaks; Lonoff, dwelling on the realities of 'the secluded life and fierce discipline of his craft; Hope, almost throwing a fit in protest of long-term neglect from her husband. Hope Lonoff is not Roth's most successful character: Supposedly the "scion of an old New England family" (according to the book jacket), she comes across as too much the spinelss vic- tim, as she intones, in Mick Jagger fashion, "Chuck me out. Why don't you chuck me out?" Laurence Peters is a Ph. P. candidate in psy-l chology and education.f By Laurence Peters At the Lonoff home, Nathan meets a remarkable- looking woman named Amy Bellette, and inevitably he is quite taken with her Kafkaesque beauty. But Nathan has a bookihrather than a sexual fantasy about her. Suppose, he muses, because the dates and the ap- pearances and the accent seem to tally, suppose she is ... Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose diary everone has heard about? Now that could happen, if you've had too much brandy and are sleepless with a lively imagination, a la Nathan. The chapter in which the fantasy appears is teasingly entitled "Femme Fatale" 'Roth is saying the artist has little re- sponsibility to the world he fictionalizes.' wrote The Image of the Jew in American Fiction, has suggested that part of Nathan's (and perhaps Roth's) problem is that "he wants to be not a Jewish writer who is less than Jewish, but one who is more than Jewish." Lonoff and Nathan endlessly discuss a host of Jewish authors and at times it seems the reader is overhearing a tutorial led by Roth himself. The references they make are difficult to fit into a coherent pattern without proposing an over-arching thesis. The -reader's need to find that thesis is a real weakness of the book.W Roth conjures up a Henry James story, "The Middle Years," which is dragged into the reader's con- sciousness when Nathan recounts the plot at length during the Anne Frank/Amy Bellette fantasy. Amy, Nathan speculates, cannot return to her old identity because she would destroy the impact of the famous story of the innocent victim of Nazi barbarity. The tragedy's power rests on the knowledge that the Holocaust really did happen. If it were otherwise, Nathan reasons, the tale would have no more impact than a sort of Swiss Family Robinson bed-time story. Hut this is questionable-are Eli Wiesel's statements about the Holocaust any less valid because he was a survivor? Yet Roth, using Nathan, is moving to a postion that would too easily romanticize art and the artist. It's a complex argument, but in essence, Roth is saying the artist has little responsibility to the world he fic- tionalizes. Therefore, Nathan can be acquitted of the anti-Semitism charges leveled at his short story. The material that nourished his work can go on feeding him, while he can be vindicated as the true artist by Anne Frank and E.I. Lonoff. It's a neat though self- indulgent thesis, like sitting through a Hamlet-like dumb-show. Instead of the players attempting to catch the conscience of the royal family, however, Nathan's hyperactive imagination fills in all the parts. It is not easy to resist seeing The Ghost Writer as a deeply guilt-ridden book attempting to come-to terms and even to exorcise those anti-Semitism accusations people made against Roth's own early fiction. What the novella does mark is a return to a more tightly con- trolled form, such as that of Goodbye Columbus and The Breast, and away from Roth's more recent sprawling novels such as The Great American Novel. Mv Life as a Man, and The Professor of Desire. For all the criticisms that can be leveled at The Ghost Writer, it remains one of his most ingenious works. Roth hasn't lost his sense of humor or his feel for small town family life. The father's sadness, for example, at Nathan's stubborn refusal to change his intention to publish the story is captured with justice done to both sides. The family feud that the story recounts is classic Roth, bitingly irreverent and at the same time absurd, like watching a Monty Python sketch. While Judge Wapter, the ace that the family uses in its attempt to dissuade Nathan, is a neat Dickensian charicature, a sort of condescending Pecksniff. If anything, Roth's ability to handle detail with economy and precision have im- proved, while the depth of concern about the relation- ship of art to society and the originality of its ex- pression may signal the start of new seriousness and maturity in Roth's fiction. and is masterfully written: It convinces through the technique that Colderidge talked about, "suspension of disbelief"-or, if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one. It's a difficult feat to accomplish without being ac- cused of the twin sins, bad taste and sentimentalism. In "Femme Fatale," the two balance each other, so that the reader is as disappointed as Nathan in the cold morning light that the Harvard librarian Amy Bellette remains in Harvard's library. Amy patiently replies to Nathan's insistent questioning on her resemblance to Holocaust victim Anne Frank with "I've been told that before." As that reply fades into the air, so fades away one with which Nathan could have patched the quarrel with his parents: Marriage to that particular "nice Jewish girl." Another path to family reconciliation remains in his relationship with Lonoff. The respect Nathan holds for Lonoff is explained early in their conversation. "You got away from Russia and the pogroms. You got away from the purges. You got away from Palestine and the homeland. You got away from Brookline and the relatives. You got away from New York;" Nathan appars to be looking for a way he can both incorporate Lonoff's universalism but still write about his own world of family fueds and narrow-minded and hypocritical adults. Critic Leslie Fiedler, who in 1959 W~HEN TOM HAYDEN cam- in 1975 he was fond of saying that "the radical- ism of e 1960s is fast becoming the common sense of the 1970s." As slogans go, his was catchy, provocative, and to- the-point. Of course, no one really believed it for a minute. How could they have? Here, after all, was the New Left leader who'd or- chestrated one of the pinnacles of six- ties anarchy-the Chicago street-wars of '68. Here was the exhorter who'd declared, "If they want blood to flow from our heads, the blood will flow from a lot of other heads around this city and around the country." Now, staging a major Senate campaign, his political career was tied to the wealth' of his family (i.e., Jane Fonda) as closely as that of Nelson Rockefeller. Whatever could be said of Hayden's campaign, it sure didn't sound much like the "radicalism of the 1960s." Still, it was unclear just how much the "new" Hayden differed from the "old." His progressive platform seemed in line with the ubiquitous six- ties demand for "power to the people." Gone, though, was the rhetoric about overthrowing the Establish- ment-rhetoric that was as much Hayden's as it was the Yippies' or the Black Panthers.' Gone were the violent pleas for instant reform. Instead, Hayden seemed not only willing but eager to weather a system he'd been Hell-bent on destroying. He straddled more than a few fences in '75; his image was always in limbo. To some, Hayden was (and always would be) the incendiary radical, leaving trouble in his wake. Others welcomed what they saw as an old-style populist, and embraced his no-nonsense manner and hard-line stands. But Hayden was not a typical "mellowed" activist. He scorned conventional liberalism, and his scarbrous attacks on the Welfare State carried an oddly William F. Buckley-ish ring. Considering his lack of unified sup- port, Hayden turned in an impressive show at the polls. He managed to rack up 37 per cent of the vote in the Democratic primary, compared to an underwhelming 54 per cent for op- ponent John Tunney (who went on to lose the Senate race to S.. Hayakawa). Hayden, though, didn't feel he'd "lost" at all. With Fonda's continued financial support, he parlayed-his election team into the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), a state-wide grass roots organization that is still working to change the face of California politics. CED now has close to 8,000 members, and has succeeded in winning busing and rent control battles and getting candidates elected to local city coun- cils, some in extremely conservative areas. Last Monday, midway through their 50-city, 35-day tour of the country, Fonda and Hayden came to Ann Arbor, bearing political messages but somehow strangely aloof from the mainstream political world of which they are now so obviously a part. Hayden's well-publicized associations with California Gov. Jerry Brown con- tinue to draw criticism from all sides, though the motives of both are unclear. Equally mysterious is the question of Hayden's own political ambitions (which many speculate are related to his Owen Gleiberman is co-editor of th Sunda vMagazine. alliance with Brown). Some believe CED is merely a vehicle for the blossoming career of Citizen Hayden. But while that notion seems rather one- sidedly cynical. it brings up a provocative point: Were it not for its two noteworthy leaders, CED would be floundering in obscurity. AYDEN AND FONDA. One thinks, the Politician and Celebrity, except in this case, they're both celebri- ies. den's dully methodical speak- ing is almost a part of his radical-chic appeal. He was the Chicago Seven defendant that Judge Julius Hoffman told, "A fellow as smart as you could do By Owen Gleiberman take snapshots of. And draw she does. That was painfully clear at the post- speech reception in Alice Lloyd Hall, a miserably jam-packed affair at which students sandwiched themselves wall- to-wall, stood on each other's shoulders, and hurled themselves into a fortress of bodies-all for a glimpse of the Divine Miss F. And Jane plays her part like the pro she is. Stepping on the Hill Auditorium stage, she was positively radiant. She looked. . . well, like Jane Fonda. Hayden plays Charlie to her Angel. He's the thinker, the philosopher, spin- ning well-conceived, labyrinthine plans for the nation's economy, carrying the entire CED platform under his mop of grey-flecked hair. Slighty hunched over, his plain features framed by a shy, boyish smile, Hayden comes on like a pock-marked Dustin Hoffman. Considering the wild tales about his radical past, he's a surprisingly restrained and uncharismatic speaker. His demeanor is stilted, his tone plod- ding, controlled. He quotes facts and figures, mixing in traces of raw ideology. He seems to want to sell CED as a pragmatic enterprise, a wellspring of concrete proposals for specific social problems. When the two appeard on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, on the tenth an- niversary of the day the Chicago Seven trial commenced, Hayden spoke ter- sely, not without a trace of hositility. He made it clear he thought it frivolous to linger over the excesses of the past. "I don't want to rehash 1968," he snapped at one point. "If we wanted to rehash 1968, we'd have to find out where Spiro Agnew is, and what Richard Nixon is doing in China." But even back in '68, Hayden was already a veteran activist. Born 39 years ago in Royal Oak, Michigan, he attended Catholic school through the eighth grade and then Royal Oak High School. Therehe was almost denied his diploma when administrators discovered that in his final editorial in the school ne of each Para; hell." In 1957, Ha where he wen editor of thel at last week's ted himself as said: "In th you want!") proved a pow writer. His s per the editc issues. By the tin alrea'dy imr growing mov travelled to R of the first wh enter the sta about voter- supported dE high school st In Ann Arl prettywell under a system like ours." A fellow as smart as you. Thanks to gentlmen like Lester Maddox and Bert Lance, the American political arena has in recent years looked like a sideshow for corrupt bimbos. Tom Hayden's sternly persistent intelligen- ce, like Gene McCarthy's, is so welcome that it almost gives the man some charisma. Though hardly a glamorous figure, there's something undeniably attractive about Hayden and his pragmatic, issue-oriented ap- proach. Indeed, John Tunney, who typified the modern packaged-image politican, may well have been the per- fect opponent; his clean-cut blandness could only look bad in the face of Hayden's refreshingly down-to-earth style. hayden tContinued from Page 3 When pressed, Hayden will point to the continuity of his views over the last two decades; he was, after all, peddling "participatory democracy" back in the days of the Port Huron Statement. But Hayden prefers talking about the future. Our era, he says, is an historic turning point; our unprecedented energy situation calls for nothing less than an economic revolution borne of. "non-voilent resistance." And for many Americans-especially youth-he strikes a tender nerve. In Hill Auditorium, addressing the question of the energy crisis, Hayden said, "We're talking about something that goessnarston-apd'igtaeymnttmsafs {. which most of us were never prepared for. And when we look at the problems, and we look at the proposed solutions, the sense of emptiness that I feel in most people is something that I, too, feel very strongly." With college audiences, Hayden is all too aware of which strings to pull. "Divestiture" is a buzz-word that sent the University crowd into fits of ap- plause. And Hayden spoke gently and sympathetically about the issue of student "apathy:" "When I hear people say there's no action like in the sixties or the campuses are apathetic or there's no challenge to life, I think it's almost the case that the challenges are so 'g'nat that PoIe 'dbh'4 quite know, what to do about them." Hayden also draws his strength from the success of CED, a political machine that, like its leaders, has managed to work effectively within the two-party system without sacrificing its maverick identity. CED assocites itself with issues, not candidates. Its philosophy is to attack problems from the bottom up, through community organization, to personalize America's hopelessly de- personalized politics. The scale is small, but the issues are monumental: Alternative energy sources, inflation, the economic imperialism of American Big Business. Hayden is a staunch critic of untempered free-enterprise. Herlikoris1 the'economici ebut of'the'oil"" companies to the political stranglehold the government of the Soviet Union maintains over its people. He wants citizens on the boards of companies, exercising some control over the organizations that affect their lives. Asked how a mass of citizens spread over the country can possibly organize to' fight the oil oligopoly, he resorts to romantic analogies with the American Revolution and the end of slavery. His where-there's-a-will solution is clear but non-specific. A contingent of stud- ents in the auditorium, in fact, snorted at Hayden's idealism. It sounds great. they said, but where's the plan? Hayden's implicit answer was that for See1A Y DE N, a e ,.,_ _V.k' tivists attend what was to Democratic was chosen to The Port Hur pamphlet, wa the bedrock ( "The Americ the democra glorifiers s Statement. "] democracy b3 citizen, paral and consolid power of mi terests." Hayden con Newark, New and wrote a be based on his ( year of the C trial-a six-m rebellion fuel( of Judge Hof canonized as and committe As his involv tivities incr Hanoi, wher release of An the anti-war Fonda. The t and were mar See tLI The current Hayden-Fonda paign epitomizes personality p( Fonda's anecdotal speeches, del in strong, proud, actress-y tones, off like well-meaning but light, gestures. Forever reminding audiences that she's an "activis often evokes the sort of di liberalism that Hayden des Plainly, though, she is there tc crowds-not because she's a thinking citizen, or even a notab but because she's a movie sta people want to see and stand next See II: