The Anatomy Lesson

In THE ANATOMY LESSON, Nathan Zuckerman, the author of the notorious best-seller "Carnovksy" suffers from an incapacitating pain in the neck. "The muscle soreness he could manage, the tenderness, the tautness, the spasm, all of that he could take... but not this steadily burning thread of fire that went white-hot with the minutest bob or flick of the head." Nathan has not written a good page of fiction since the death of his father three years before. Importantly his father considered "Carnovksy" to be thinly disguised ridicule of the Zuckerman family and their first-generation Jewish culture. And, on his deathbed, his father may have called Nathan a bastard. At least, that's what Henry, Nathan's competitive brother, and another family member offended by "Carnovksy", says he heard. In TAL, Roth explores the connections between Nathan's pain and writer's block, his subject of conflict across generations, and his successful novel, which characters who are not family members describe as opening a fond "floodgate of memories" of Newark before World War II or as "one genial trick after another." In doing so, Roth shows the self-medicating Nathan becoming enraged with Milton Appel, a distinguished magazine critic who shares Zuckerman's themes while claiming Nathan disparages Jews. Then, Roth shows Nathan unexpectedly recovering his hilarious and licentious Carnovksy-voice as he takes a trip to Chicago, where the Percodan-and-vodka-crazed Nathan presents himself as Milton Appel, a loathsome but brilliant pornographer. In TAL, poor Nathan worries that he may have lost his subject, with the death of his parents and the disappearance of Jewish Newark. He worries that "the aim of the affliction mightn't be to provide a fresh subject, the anatomy's gift to the vanishing muse." In this pain-dominated world, writing, which Nathan once saw as a "field of gigantic capacities... to engulf and purify life" has become "ten talons clawing at twenty-six letters." Even so, THE ANATOMY LESSON is largely a wild and funny ride, with Nathan ultimately facing the true reach of his gifts. Highly recommended.

The Anatomy Lesson is everything you'd expect in a Nathan Zuckerman or Philip Roth novel. Though it doesn't top the exquisite beauty of Ghost Writer, it is an improvement over what I considered to be the lackluster Zuckerman Unbound. Zuckerman's writer block has compounded and his life has grown exponentially more depraved since the last time we were with him. With the passing of his mother, Nathan Z. now feels guilty for the death of both of his parents. He hasn't spoken to his brother since the funeral. But worst of all, NZ is now bothered by a debilitating pain that has him confined to his New York loft. He self medicates with pills, grass, vodka, and c*nt. He's been to a dozen doctors and has received a dozen diagnoses. On top of all that he's going bald. The written word alternates between introspective Zuckerman thinking about his life's problem and dealing with them in the aforementioned way. Eventually the idea comes into him to go back to school to become a doctor. He flies out to chicago where he takes on an alter ego and eventually ends up in the hospital after a drunken attempt at murder. This book is not for everyone. Is it for you? Perhaps you've read some of Roth's work - Portnoy's Complaint, American Pastoral, etc - and you liked it enough to read more of the author's books. In that case, I suggest not only the Anatomy Lesson, but the entire Zuckerman BoundZuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985: The Ghost Writer / Zuckerman Unbound / The Anatomy Lesson / The Prague Orgy (Library of America #175). This is a collection of four short novels plus a television script, for the price you would pay for about two novels. Roth has procured for his reader luxuriously bound Library of America editions. Certified Archival paper and ink, a sewn in binding and a flexible but sturdy cover. If you haven't read any Roth before, I suggest you start elsewhere, because here Roth is writing about his own writing, and if you haven't read any of the books that he's writing about writing about, then some (though not all) of the subtlety will be lost. One of the two, or both of the novels I listed above would be better places to start.

My first Roth novel. Wow! First off, I have to say that I could not fully engage with the story until the third chapter. This is possibly due to my unfamiliarity of his style. But what lacks in the beginning of the story, is more than compensated for during the rest of this romp. How can you not have read Roth- you may ask? Well, it's not that I was unfamiliar with this genius, I've two of his other novels on my shelf- and as Nate Zuckerman said- 'The burden isn't that everything has to be a book. It's that everything *can* be a book.' Which leads me to the time factor. Oh, and yes this work *is* timeless. But, I digress- Get some Roth. You cannot go wrong with this one!

The words rain down like a cold shower; The Anatomy Lesson is this good, Roth a mandarin modern master.

This is one of my favorite works by Roth. It has everything that you would expect to find in a great Roth book such as humor, amazing prose that just swallows you up, and brilliant insights. The book follows Nathan Zuckerman on his quest to relieve himself from excruciating neck and back pain that has pretty much left him lying on his back in his apartment. That's all the set-up Roth needed to send you off on a comical and psychological quest with Zuckerman to find out what is wrong with him and cure it. Is it an actual physical problem or is it caused by some psychological guilt over his scandalous novel that ostracized him from his family? This is my favorite book of the Zuckerman trilogy.