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"'The Anatomy Lesson is a ferocious, heartfelt book...lavish with laughs and flamboyant inventions' John Updike"
Book Description
'The Anatomy Lesson is a ferocious, heartfelt book-lavish with laughs and flamboyant inventions' John Updike
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A hilarious novel by Philip Roth, an analysis of a self-obsessed writer trying to cure himself of self-obsession. The story is told from the viewpoint of the main character Nathan Zuckerman, famous for an outrageous semi-pornographic, anti-Semitic novel called "Carnovsky" which earned him much money and notoriety but also the hatred of many, including most of his family except his mother. Roth uses free indirect style which gives us Zuckerman's thoughts: a mixture of literary high-mindedness and crass cursing at "low, piggish, real life". The narrative voice is cultured, careful and ironic: "When he is sick, every man wants his mother; if she's not around, other women must do. Zuckerman was making do with four other women", the novel begins with typical humour. Zuckerman has writer's block which manifests as an intense and debilitating, literal pain in the neck that no-one can either explain or cure. The first half of the story describes Zuckerman's attempts to explain and cure it, together with the diagnoses of various experts Zuckerman has visited. His utter self-absorption is balanced by a certain honesty that helps make him interesting to the reader and less repellent than he would otherwise be. His private sufferings are contrasted with the very public ones of Richard Nixon on TV: Zuckerman scorns him, yet the parallels of dishonesty are not lost on the reader. Zuckerman has spent most of his adult life writing in the solitary confinement of his study; now he finds himself doubting his choice of career. Maybe that is what the pain is trying to tell him? The second half of the book describes his attempts to get into medical school in Chicago, the city where he studied as an undergraduate, giving Zuckerman the chance to reminisce with a typical mixture of scorn and sentiment about student life. He tells no-one about his decision except Bobby Freytag, a college friend who is now an anesthetist at the hospital Zuckerman is trying to enter. Even the reader is taken by surprise as there is nothing in Zuckerman's past to suggest this choice (Zuckerman reads "Gray's Anatomy", an ironic parallel with his obsession with sex!). Bobby Freytag is yet another of the sensible friends Zuckerman seems blessed with, and tells him to give up the idea. Roth's powers of humour really take off in the second half of the book, as Zuckerman travels to Chicago. To help alleviate the pain in his neck, Zuckerman takes along Percodan pills, plus plenty of vodka and marijuana as backup. High from this mixture, Zuckerman re-invents himself as editor of the porno-mag "Lickety Split", calls himself Milton Appel (the name of another Jewish writer Zuckerman bitterly hates), and rants to anyone who will listen about the service he's providing to society and the unfairness of society's judgements. The rants get longer, funnier, angrier and increasingly repulsive as the story progresses and the vodka and Percodan mix, until finally, mercifully, Zuckerman knocks himself out and ends up in Bobby Freytag's hospital - as a patient! The story ends with a humbled, convalescing Zuckerman following Freytag and other doctors on their hospital rounds, learning, fascinated. Have the horrors and courage he sees finally taken him out of himself, or is he still just looking for a new story? A very funny book, masterfully written, that asks serious questions about life and art and ego.
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