The Ghost Writer (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

We talked about literature and I was in heaven—also in a sweat from the spotlight he was giving me to bask in. Every book new to me I was sure he must have annotated with his reading pen long ago, yet his interest was pointedly in hearing my thoughts, not his own. The effect of his concentrated attention was to make me heap insight onto precocious insight, and then to hang upon his every sigh and grimace, investing what was only a little bout of after-dinner dyspepsia with the direst implications about my taste and my intelligence. Though I worried that I was trying too hard to sound like the kind of deep thinker for whom he had no love, I still couldn’t stop myself, under the spell now not just of the man and his accomplishment but of the warm wood fire, of the brandy snifter balanced in my hand (if not yet the brandy), and of the snow falling heavily beyond the cushioned windowseats, as dependably beautiful and mystifying as ever. Then there were the great novelists, whose spellbinding names I chanted as I laid my cross-cultural comparisons and brand-new eclectic enthusiasms at his feet—Zuckerman, with Lonoff, discussing Kafka: I couldn’t quite get it, let alone get over it.

Talki ng literature with Lonoff