{"id":1906,"date":"2008-02-19T19:23:42","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T00:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/exit-ghost\/"},"modified":"2008-02-19T19:39:03","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T00:39:03","slug":"exit-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/exit-ghost","title":{"rendered":"Exit, Ghost"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the flight home from Belfast last week, I finished reading Exit Ghost<\/a>, the new Zuckerman novel by Philip Roth. I didn’t enjoy very much of it, except for the scene of Zuckerman’s reunion with Amy Bellette, the woman brilliantly “fictionalized” in The Ghost Writer<\/a>. It’s only in that episode that I really felt the weight of Zuckerman’s age, as he and Amy recommence a conversation they began 50 years earlier.<\/p>\n

The rest of the novel — in which the narrator laments his lost erection as he fixates on a perfectly toned, slim, large-boobed, literary oil-heiress who has married a schlubby Jew — left me cold. At its worst, it degenerates into a bad standup routine: Zuckerman, isolated in the Berkshires for more than a decade, comes back to NYC and grouses about people using cell-phones. Fortunately, the character doesn’t have to fly anywhere, or else we could’ve been subjected to a rant about airplane food.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Where the book did succeed for me was that one evocation of old age and loss, as characterized by Amy Bellette’s refusal to let the the love of her life go, though he’d been dead more than 40 years. And it got me thinking about how long I’ve been reading Philip Roth’s novels and how I’ll feel when he dies. Flying home, I thought, “I’m sure I’ll be sad, but I wonder if I’ll cry.”<\/p>\n

I doubted that I would, and that got me thinking: Which living artist’s (writer, musician, actor, painter, cartoonist, etc.) death would<\/em> move me to tears?<\/p>\n

I’m having an awfully hard time thinking of one. There are contemporary artists whose work mean the world to me, but I’m not sure any of their deaths (provided they’re not killed senselessly or somehow incredibly fittingly) would make me cry.* I’m trying to puzzle out what this means, since some of the possibilities aren’t too palatable.<\/p>\n

So I put the question to you, dear readers! In the comments section, tell me (okay, the world) “What artist’s death would bring you to tears, and why.”<\/font><\/p>\n

(If you need to expand the field to include athletes, feel free.)<\/em><\/p>\n

* I mean artists with whom I don’t have a personal relationship. I’m friends with a number of professional writers whose deaths would absolutely crush me. So no cheating and naming a writer who’s your dad or something. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the flight home from Belfast last week, I finished reading Exit Ghost, the new Zuckerman novel by Philip Roth. I didn’t enjoy very much of it, except for the scene of Zuckerman’s reunion with Amy Bellette, the woman brilliantly “fictionalized” in The Ghost Writer. It’s only in that episode that I really felt the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Exit, Ghost”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-uK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1934,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/joining-the-deities-demigods","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":0},"title":"Joining the Deities & Demigods","author":"Gil","date":"March 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Gary Gygax, co-developer of Dungeons & Dragons, has died at the age of 69. I spent a lot of time playing D&D as a kid\/teenager (along with Car Wars and Villains & Vigilantes); I bet a lot of my readers did, too. I haven't played in 20 years, but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/joining-the-deities-demigods#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1895,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-21108","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":1},"title":"What it is: 2\/11\/08","author":"Gil","date":"February 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the Belfast Special Edition of What it is! What I'm reading: Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, and A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley What I'm listening to: District Line, by Bob Mould What I'm watching: On the flight over to Belfast, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Belfast"","block_context":{"text":"Belfast","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/belfast"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0618915478","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":970,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ghost-boat","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":2},"title":"Ghost boat","author":"Gil","date":"May 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Creepy story about a boat washing up in Barbados, filled with mummified corpses of African immigrants. Some of the passengers wrote goodbye notes which, as you'd expect, are the saddest things in the world: I would like to send to my family in Bassada [a town in the interior of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ghost-boat#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1773,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mailers-ghost","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":3},"title":"Mailer’s Ghost","author":"Gil","date":"November 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I guess \"Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84,\" is better than \"Norman Mailer, Novelist Who Stabbed His Wife, Dies at 84.\" I found Charles McGrath's obit more entertaining than any of the Mailer I've tried to read, and I hope someday I can \"reliably be counted on to make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":389,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":4},"title":"I hate these online personality\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"October 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I hate these online personality testsI am a Pacman Ghost.I like to hang around with friends, chatting, dancing, all that sort of thing. We don't appreciate outsiders, and do our best to discourage others approaching us. I enjoy occasionally wandering around randomly, and often find that when I do so,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":104,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/feel-the-burn","url_meta":{"origin":1906,"position":5},"title":"Feel the Burn","author":"Gil","date":"December 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Nine days after getting back from NZ, I finally have heat back in my home. After a couple days of jury-rigging, the furnace gave up the ghost on Saturday. I spent Sunday coming up with ways to keep the pipes from freezing, and now I've got a brand-new furnace installed.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}