Chiastic Reflections: Rash Moments in the Life of Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman's farewell with Exit Ghost is interwoven with Joseph Conrad's initiation story The Shadow-Line (1917), which traces the moral maturation of a young captain. While one could see Conrad's unnamed protagonist mirrored in Richard Kliman, this article rather suggests to read The Shadow-Line as the motivic fundament of Zuckerman's life: during his whole literary existence, Zuckerman has been meandering along the shadow-line, the emblem of this developmental twilight state the initiand is held in. In contrast to the typical initiand who will, eventually, be able to claim a new position, Zuckerman remains a perpetual initiand.