The Ghost Writer (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

“I was thinking, for sport more or less, that he is the missing link; those stories are what connect you, if you don’t mind my mentioning your work—” He crossed his hands on his belly and rested them there, movement enough to make me say, “I’m sorry.” “Go ahead. Connected to Babel. How?” “Well, ‘connected’ of course isn’t the right word. Neither is ‘influence.’ It’s family resemblance that I’m talking about. It’s as though, as I see it, you are Babel’s American cousin—and Felix Abravanel is the other. You through ‘The Sin of Jesus’ and something in Red Cavalry, through the ironical dreaming and the blunt reporting, and, of course, through the writing itself. Do you see what I mean? There’s a sentence in one of his war stories: ‘Voroshilov combed his horse’s mane with his Mauser.’ Well, that’s just the kind of thing that you do, a stunning little picture in every line. Babel said that if he ever wrote his autobiography he’d call it The Story of an Adjective, Well, if it were possible to imagine you writing your autobiography—if such a thing were even imaginable—you might come up with that title too.

Lonoff as precursors to Isaac Babel