The Anatomy Lesson

Zuckerman Bound #3

by Philip Roth

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--and one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century--"a ferocious, heartfelt book" (The New Yorker) featuring Nathan Zuckerman whose life is about to unravel when he comes down with a mysterious affliction.


Roth has a genius for the comedy of entrapment.... [He] writes America's most raucously funny novels. --Time

At forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction--pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the pain and nobody can assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain can have been caused by his own books. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers grows into an addiction to vodka, marijuana, and Percodan.

The Anatomy Lesson is a great comedy of illness written in what the English critic Hermione Lee has described as a manner at once ... brash and thoughtful ... lyrical and wry, which projects through comic expostulations and confessions...a knowing, humane authority. The third volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson provides some of the funniest scenes in all of Roth's fiction as well as some of the fiercest.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction, American, Jewish, 20th Century

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1983

About the author

Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Lo malo no está en que todo tenga que ser un libro, sino en que todo pueda ser un libro; y nada puntúe como vida mientras no sea libro.”

Un poco llorón sí que es este Philip Roth, cuando coge una perra… una vez más saca del cajón a su querido Zuckerman para endilgarnos un nuevo discurso sobre lo jodido que es dedicarse a la literatura, lo jodido que es tener éxito, lo jodido que es vivir “sin amamantar un libro que lo amamantara a él” y lo mucho que jode y con cuántas lo hace.

“Asustado del éxito y asustado del fracaso; asustado de que lo conociera todo el mundo y asustado de que no lo conociera nadie; asustado de ser un raro y asustado de ser normal; asustado de que lo admiraran y asustado de que lo despreciaran; asustado de la soledad y asustado de la compañía; asustado, tras Carnovsky, de sí mismo y de sus instintos, y asustado de estar asustado.”

Aunque esta vez sí que parece estar bien jodido, le duele todo al hombre, “todas sus ideas, todos sus sentimientos, quedaban atrapados en el egoísmo del dolor”. Se había metido en un círculo vicioso, tan vicioso él, en el que la somatización de su culpa o de su falta de inspiración o de ambas al tiempo o de ninguna de ellas, como él sostiene, le provocan dolores físicos insoportables que le anulan como escritor y como persona.

“La vida, cada vez más pequeñita. Despertarse pensando en el cuello. Irse a dormir pensando en el cuello… cuando te duele algo en lo único que piensas es en que deje de dolerte… tenía la vocación ocluida, el físico invalidado, el sexo desinteresado, el intelecto inerte, el ánimo deprimido; pero calvo, así de pronto, de la noche a la mañana, nunca.”

Pero aguantamos bien las quejas y lloros de este Zuckerman/Roth, hasta soportamos su misoginia y nos divierte su lucha contra cierto tipo de feminismo, y lo hacemos por su valentía (no sé si en nuestros días se habría atrevido a escribir ciertas cosas que, equivocadas o no, siempre argumentaba y explicaba con mucha gracia, y pensar en esta libertad perdida me produce mucha pena), por su humor, por la capacidad que tuvo de reírse de sí mismo, porque sabe mezclar como nadie sus angustias y dolores con divertidos gags, porque expone la vida, la de un escritor de éxito pero que de la misma manera es extensible a la vida de cualquiera, con una intensa y veraz mirada crítica.

“Estoy harto de canalizar todo por medio de la escritura. Quiero lo auténtico, lo quiero en bruto, y no para escribirlo, sino por sí mismo.”

Con varios divorcios a cuesta, lleva cuatro años sin terminar una novela, prácticamente sin escribir (“Sin padre ni madre ni patria chica, Zuckerman no era ya novelista. Si no se es hijo, no se es escritor”), duda muy mucho de que sus novelas tengan algún valor, de que su pasión literaria no responda únicamente a una irrefrenable compulsión “bajuna e insignificante" por escribir, siente como algo monstruoso la utilización de las personas que conoce como material para su obra y como una pesadez insoportable a aquellos que se acercan para formar parte de ella, está cansado de enfrentarse a todo y a todos, a su familia, a su país, a su religión, a la educación recibida, a los críticos, a sus lectores, y con nada menos que con cuatro mujeres a su alrededor (“el macho doliente es para algunas mujeres la gran tentación”), se queja de que “con su benevolencia, con su indulgencia, con su adaptación a mis necesidades, me dejan sin lo que más necesito para salir de este agujero.” Nada parece ayudarle, ni el abundante sexo que le proporcionan complacientes y devotas las cuatro mujeres ni el abundante vodka ni las numerosas pastillas ni la eventual marihuana ni médicos ni curanderos ni el enfrentamiento visceral contra el crítico semita que le acusa de mal escritor y peor judío (una venganza personal de Roth).

“… extirpado de la Nueva Jersey judía… la narrativa tomó el poder y lo reexpidió a su lugar de origen.”

Solo ve posible una solución, un giro copernicano en su vida, dejar la literatura para estudiar medicina en su antigua universidad de Chicago y dedicarse, esta vez sí, a resolver problemas reales de la gente… aunque no sin dudas.

“Quizá fuera eso lo que había detrás de toda esta historia de Chicago: ir a un lugar sagrado en peregrinación, para purificarse. Si así era, ojo: lo siguiente bien podría ser la astrología. Peor: hacerse cristiano. En cuanto cedemos al hambre de magia médica nos vemos llevados al límite último de la estupidez humana, a la más ridícula de las quimeras pergeñadas por la humanidad doliente: a los Evangelios…”

¿Creen que lo lograra? Léanla.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the funniest of the Zuckerman Unbound tetrology and a fantastic read. Again, Nathan is living in the aftermath of the publication and scandal surrounding his book Carnovsky (Portnoy's Complaint in Roth's real life). He is in constant physical pain with 4, then 5, mistresses and decides to drop writing and go to medical school in Chicago. In Chicago, his female limo driver Ricky is treated to his impersonation of a literary rival who Nathan transforms into a pornographer. This is a wonderfully funny book fully of life and typical Roth self-deprecation and now one of my favorites from him. Now, I need to read Patrimony.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the previous book in the Zuckerman Bound series, entitled Zuckerman Unbound, we see that the novelist Zuckerman, castigated (particularly by his fellow Jews) for his popular and funny novel Carnovsky, about a lecherous young Jewish man (such as Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint). Both Roth and Carnovsky’s Newark Jewish communities and their own families are horrified that they see their families represented in that novel. This is a deliberate ploy on Roth’s part, to say that his characters have nothing and everything to do with his own life. There are many parallels, but Roth--in that novel, anyway, ultimately uses those parallels to make jokes, not to make any kind of serious reflection on the relationship between fiction and life.

Anyway, in Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman’s father’s last word to his son was “bastard” for writing that “anti-semitic” novel, and his brother Henry dismisses him completely. So what is Zuckerman “unbound” to, at the end of that book? He sees himself as not bound to any responsibility to Jews, to Newark, to family. Or to a high-minded, pious commitment to Israel.

“Without an old country link and a strangling church like the Italians, or the Irish, or the Poles, without generations of the American forebears to bind you to American life, or blind you by your loyalties to its deformities, you could read whatever you wanted and write however and whatever you pleased. Alienated? Just another way to say 'set free.' A Jew set free from Jews - yet only by steadily maintaining self-consciousness as a Jew. That was the thrilling paradoxical kicker.”

Zuck’s a secular Jew free to imagine anything, even if he will always be seen as a doppleganger for Roth himself, and criticized for that. He’s says screw you if you don’t like it, then castigates you if you are a critic.

In Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman seems to distance himself from his central lusty character, Carnovsky. I’m not Carnovsky! In The Anatomy Lesson, though, he takes a different angle on this subject: Zuck becomes Carnovsky, without apology. We see him having sex with as many as four different women. So you have been warned (or encouraged), Roth is not making a nice Jewish boy to appease his critics. Yes, this is a male perspective on middle-aged Zuckerman, in part focused on a continued interest in sex. Like it or leave it. Seems like many men like it, and most women leave it.

The central focus of this book is on the aging body, on anatomy. If Roth's Portnoy's Complaint is about is about a celebration of the body amidst the youthful joys of sex, The Anatomy Lesson is about the body, beginning to age, in pain. The opening of The Anatomy Lesson shows Zuckerman at mid-career, 40, having worked 20 years as a writer focused every day on “his two pages,” with sometimes mixed results, with his body—his anatomy—breaking down a bit. He is experiencing some writer’s block, he has serious neck pain that travels down his arm, and he is balding. All of these facts provide the basis for some sometimes amusing (sometimes not) whining about the pains that the writer’s life has brought to him. Zuckerman's Complaint. Prt of his psychic pain is his railing against his narrwoly moralistic critics! But in general, he’s just getting older. Which is an opportunity for comedy, and at times, this is the funniest Zuckerman novel because of that..

The tone shifts sharply, though, as Zuck recalls the most painful time in his life, when his mother died. Which becomes another—or continuing—“anatomy lesson” about the end of the body for everyone in death. The tone shifts again, however, from grief to rage when Zuckerman gets a request from a critic, Milton Appel (modeled on Irving Howe) to write for the NY Times Book Review “something nice about the Jews and Israel” to help counter the “anti-semitic” or “self-hating” portrayals of Jews in his works.

So Zuck suddenly has had it with writing. You can't win! He wants to do some actual good in the world without bad reviews and all this obsessive self-reflection. So he applies to medical school (to take, among other things, anatomy classes, natch!). Flying out for an admissions interview, he meets his limo driver, Ricky, and pretends to be Appel, transforming him from a literary critic to a pornographer with long, detailed, profanity-filled descriptions of his completely made-up career as an adult-movie producer, and men's magazine publisher. Zuckerman thus sends up Appel, and Roth sends up Howe, either harshly or hilariously, depending on your view of his aggressive (masculinist) prose.

The end of the novel has Zuck in the hospital, having passed out in a cemetery literally on his face, high on percodin, his career switch over. Facing his own anatomy’s mortality. The Anatomy Lesson is a comedy of illness, often funny, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes infuriating (the attack on Irving Howe). Never boring, though, this book. Not one of his best works, and not for everyone; you could be laughing at turns, at turns admiring of his writing, and then possibly offended, and he doesn't care what you think, you critic!

What’s amusing is that Zuckerman's supposed goal is to escape the narcissistic life of the novelist, but this novel’s whole foundation is one of almost unavaoidable narcissism. And he knows we know this. That’s funny, right? Yes? No? For Roth, maybe a 3.75. But some sentences no one else could have written anywhere near as well. I'm kind of conflicted, but if I compare it American Pastoral or Portnoy's Complaint, it isn't quite there. The most damning thing I can say about it is that IF you were looking for well-rounded, interesting female characters (and why wouldn't you?!) you would not find them in this book. But I still contend it's very good. It’s a pretty funny look at male mid-life and fame and the writer’s life, if you are interested in those things.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Pain is like a baby crying. What it wants it can't name.”
― Philip Roth, The Anatomy Lesson



The Anatomy Lesson is book # 3 in the Zuckerman Bound trilogy. The first two being The Ghost Writer and Zuckerman Unbound. The Prague Orgy is also included often, as it is the epilogue (thus turning the trilogy into a tetralogy.

Anyway, like all of the Zuckerman novels, Roth is brutal in his introspection. Zuckerman has bottled up his anger at his moralist critics and mental anguish at the death of his parents to the extent that he actually suffers physically and is unable to write. This creative castration of Zuckerman serves to drive the narrative (as much as this type of novel has a driven narrative). Mostly, it deals with conversations with friends and doctors, physical relationships with female caregivers, and large doses of philosophical tangents on pain, pleasure, defense of creativity, consciousness, kin, death, doubt, etc.

One of my favorite sections of the book was Zuckerman riffing on the inside of his mouth:

"When he wasn't sucking liquid pulp or sleeping, he went exploring his mouth with his tongue. Nothing existed but the inside of his mouth. He made all sorts of discoveries in there. Your mouth is who you are. You can't get very much closer to what you think of yourself. The next stop up is the brain. No wonder fellatio has achieved such renown. Your tongue lives in your mouth and your tongue is you. He sent his tongue everywhere to see what he was doing beyond the mental arch bars and elastic bands. Across the raw vaulted dome of the palate, down to the tender cavernous sockets of the missing teeth, and then the plunge below the gum line. That is where they'd opened him up and wired him together. For the tongue it was like the journey up the river in "Heart of Darkness". The mysterious stillness, the miles of silence, the tongue creeping conradianly on toward Kurtz. I am the Marlowe of my mouth."

Brilliant.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When he is sick, every man wants his mother; if she’s not around, other women must do.”

I am telling you, I haven’t laughed this much while reading a book in quite a while. I know that the American Trilogy, still considered part of the Zuckerman series, has got less of a focus on Nathan Zuckerman as a main character. If American Pastoral is anything to go by, the other two will be amazing. This one, however, is my favourite of the series that has Zuckerman as the main character and focus of the novel. It is quintessentially Roth. Smatterings of appropriated psychoanalysis and neuroticism, a harem of younger women tending to his every need, ungodly harangues. Zuckerman cannot handle a poor review from some schmuck he respects, and so he goes off the rails. Roth manages to strike up the perfect balance between blog post, literary fiction, and raunchy tale. I don’t know how he does it, but he does it well. Here is a nice Zuckerman quote to end this one off:

“We keep records about everything. Assists. Hits. Batting averages. Why not cock?”

[Gabril · Rating 5 out of 5]

In questo terzo, illuminato libro di Zuckerman, il nostro eroe è alle prese col dolore. Un dolore acuto e persistente, un dolore oscuro e invalidante, che gli impedisce di scrivere e gli permette così di riflettere sul significato della scrittura: ossessione e destino.
Al dolore si tenta di dare un significato per poterlo giustificare e quindi accettare, ma ogni tentativo è vano, addirittura puerile. Infatti soffrire è tornare allo stato infantile primitivo: un puro grido di disperazione che invoca la mamma.
E invece:

“Tutti vogliono rendere il dolore interessante: prima le religioni, poi i poeti, poi, per non essere da meno, anche i medici, che fanno la loro parte con la loro ossessione psicosomatica. Gli vogliono dare un significato. Che vuol dire? Cosa nascondi? Cosa mostri? Cosa tradisci? È impossibile soffrire e basta, la sofferenza deve essere significativa. Invece il dolore non è interessante e non a senso: è semplice e stupido dolore...”

Ciò che il dolore rivela a Nathan, invece, è l’ineluttabilità della sua separazione, la consistenza del suo far della vita libro, l’affondo nel buco nero dell’io. Da dove il minatore Roth/Zuckerman estrae parole rivelatrici su che cosa significa veramente per uno scrittore avere a che fare con le parole, con la vita che si intreccia in una storia.

“Scrivere avrebbe intensificato ulteriormente ogni cosa. Scrivere-come aveva testimoniato Mann, anche con il suo esempio-era l’unica cosa per cui valesse la pena di battersi, l’esperienza inarrivabile, la lotta più nobile, e si poteva scrivere solo fanaticamente. Senza fanatismo, in letteratura, non si sarebbe mai arrivati a fare nulla di grande. Nathan aveva il concetto più alto possibile delle gigantesche capacità della letteratura di assorbire e purificare la vita. Avrebbe scritto ancora, pubblicato ancora, e la vita sarebbe diventata colossale.
Ma quella che divenne colossale fu la pagina seguente. Credeva di aver scelto la vita, invece aveva scelto la pagina seguente. Mentre rubava il tempo per scrivere racconti, non pensò mai di chiedersi cosa il tempo avrebbe potuto rubare a lui. Solo gradualmente il perfezionarsi della ferrea volontà dello scrittore cominciò ad apparirgli come un’evasione dall’esperienza, e i mezzi indispensabili per liberare la fantasia, per esporre, svelare e inventare la vita, come la forma di carcerazione più severa. Credeva di aver scelto l’intensificazione di ogni cosa e invece aveva scelto la vita monastica e ritirata insito in questa scelta c’era un paradosso che non aveva mai previsto.”

Impossibilitato a scrivere, drogato dagli antidolorifici, Nathan tenta di sfuggire al vortice risucchiante dell’io e vuole, a quarant’anni, cominciare un nuovo corso, iscriversi a Medicina, partecipare al consorzio umano con la percezione di essere utile agli altri. Per questo va a trovare il suo ex compagno di college, diventato medico.
In ospedale ci arriverà, sicuro, ma per una strada molto diversa da quella immaginata. E l’illusione di potersi “sganciare da un futuro di uomo separato dagli altri” è ovviamente destinata a naufragare.

[Carlo Mascellani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crisi di mezz'età per lo scrittore Zuckerman, alter ego di Roth, il quale, causa una perdurante algia, impossibilitato a far qualunque cosa, si scopre a riveder momenti salienti della sua vita, a metter in discussione la sua stessa vocazione di scrittore, a dover affrontare piu d'un fantasma del proprio passato.

[David Carrasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

La otra tarde fui al hospital a visitar a mi vecino de noventa años, ya os he hablado otras veces de él. Se cayó en la calle, pero por fortuna no se rompió nada. Entré en la penumbra de su habitación. —¿Cómo se encuentra? —pregunté. Me miró con sus ojos azules, intentó sonreír y me soltó: —Verás, muchacho; digamos que mi cuerpo y yo estamos en términos complicados. Básicamente, él me ignora y yo finjo que no me importa. Pero ya estoy acostumbrado; a mi edad, el cuerpo es como un coche viejo: hace ruidos extraños, se queja y nunca arranca cuando más lo necesitas.

Me acordé de él mientras leía Lección de anatomía de Philip Roth. Porque, ¿qué pasaría si tu propio cuerpo dejara de ser tu aliado justo cuando más lo necesitas?

Nathan Zuckerman, el alter ego de Philip Roth, nos responde que no hay traición más cruel que la del cuerpo: dieciocho meses de dolor crónico en las cervicales que no solo le impiden escribir, sino también vivir. Y aquí estamos, siguiéndolo como si lo miráramos en un espejo deformado, entre la compasión y la risa, preguntándonos cómo un escritor puede sobrevivir a su propio éxito.

Lección de anatomía es la tercera entrega de la saga de Zuckerman, después de La visita al maestro y Zuckerman desencadenado (La liberación de Zuckerman) , y en ella Roth nos muestra la otra cara de la fama literaria. Zuckerman ya no es el aprendiz inseguro de la primera ni el escritor desatado que lidia con la celebridad en la segunda; es un hombre que ha conocido la gloria de sus cuatro novelas y descubre que el éxito tiene un precio más alto que cualquier crítica: la desmotivación absoluta, la sensación de vacío, y la extraña paradoja de que la vida solo parece valer cuando puede convertirse en libro, mientras él ya no encuentra propósito en escribir ni en vivir más allá de la página.

Sí: el cuerpo le falla, la mente —embotada en calmantes, vodka y marihuana— lo traiciona, y lo que queda es el espectáculo grotesco de un hombre sumido en un vaivén constante entre la ansiedad por la admiración y el temor a ser olvidado, entre la soledad y la necesidad de compañía. Un hombre que lleva su culpa, su frustración y la ausencia de inspiración metidas en los huesos, hasta que el dolor físico se convierte en la prueba tangible de su colapso como escritor y como ser humano. Todo mientras intenta mantener su identidad de escritor cuando escribir se ha convertido en una tortura física y la vida parece desvanecerse entre cada vértebra dolorida. Pero cuidado: esto no es un drama solemne. No. Porque Roth escribe esta crisis con una comicidad desesperada, con ese humor suyo que no sabe si reír o pegarse un tiro.

Lo que el reconocimiento le ha dado —prestigio, fama, audiencia— también lo ha dejado solo, exhausto y, paradójicamente, ansioso por escapar. La publicación de su novela Carnovsky, remedo de El lamento (o el mal) de Portnoy , con su crítica mordaz a la familia judía, fue el punto de ruptura: sus padres se sintieron traicionados, su hermano lo borró de su vida. Luego llegaron las muertes, primero la de su padre, que en su lecho aún tuvo tiempo de llamarlo “bastardo”, y después la de su madre. Zuckerman carga con la culpa de escritor consciente: sabe que su pluma ha dejado marcas, que su éxito ha herido, que cada frase provocó un terremoto doméstico. Pero no es que se sienta arrepentido en plan santo penitente; es una culpa con sarcasmo, una mezcla de irritación, ironía y resignación: “Sí, los hice sufrir, pero ¿qué culpa tengo yo de que en Nueva Jersey no sepan leer ni separar al autor de su personaje?”, parece pensar.

Mientras tanto, su relación simultánea con las cuatro mujeres que lo cuidan —una de sus ex, su secretaria, la mujer de su asesor financiero y la terapeuta que trata su incipiente alopecia— es menos romántica que biológica: puro sexo, deseo crudo y la compulsión de sentirse vivo aunque sea a golpe de cama —o de alfombrilla—. Todo se reduce a un espectáculo íntimo donde él es tanto actor como público, mezclando autocomplacencia, culpa y la extraña comedia de sentirse vivo mientras el cuerpo le recuerda que la vida duele. Porque, seamos sinceros, cuando tu espalda te traiciona, hasta follar se convierte en un acto de resistencia tragicómica… y a veces de autolesión voluntaria.

Y en eso surge la ocurrencia de volver a la universidad para estudiar Medicina: “Quiero hacerme tocólogo”, le dice en pleno acto a una de sus amantes, “Nadie se pelea con un tocólogo”. O sea: Medicina como refugio moral, o quizás como excusa para no tener que escribir ni recibir críticas adversas mientras su espalda lo recuerda con cada vértebra. Es el control sobre lo real cuando la literatura se ha vuelto un circo de dolor y auto-parodia… y uno no puede evitar imaginar a Zuckerman enfundado en la bata blanca solo para fardar ante sí mismo o, quién sabe, quizá solo para examinar vaginas con impunidad.

Y es aquí, en medio de este paisaje de fatiga y dolor, donde Roth se encuentra realmente cómodo con sus temas fetiche y despliega un análisis feroz sobre la identidad judía en la América de los años setenta. El trauma de Zuckerman con su propia novela Carnovsky, que provocó la condena familiar y el juicio público, se convierte en una lente a través de la cual Roth examina la teatralidad cultural del judaísmo. No es solo la culpa familiar lo que lo persigue; es la conciencia de ser observado, juzgado y reducido a un estereotipo, como si su identidad pudiera ser escenificada para la risa o la crítica. Aquí es donde aparecen nombres como Sammy Davis Jr. y Elizabeth Taylor, convertidos al judaísmo, que no son simples anécdotas, sino símbolos de la manera en que la cultura americana convierte la pertenencia judía en espectáculo: la identidad ya no es solo personal, sino performativa, contradictoria y, a veces, grotesca. Zuckerman observa este circo con ironía y amargura, consciente de que su propio dolor y su arte están atrapados en la misma función pública que él critica y sufre a la vez.

Pero Roth no nos deja solo en la reflexión; la novela también estalla en momentos de hilaridad pura, sobre todo cuando nuestro hombre viaja a Chicago para matricularse de Medicina en la universidad. Bajo los efectos de calmantes y alcohol, Zuckerman adopta la identidad de un editor de pornografía barata y desata un monólogo delirante, con su punto de misoginia —es Roth, a fin de cuentas—, sobre sexo, feminismo, pornografía, prostitución y la crítica literaria que lo vapuleó. Desde el púlpito de un asiento de avión hasta la limusina con chófer, parece más un actor judío de monólogos que un escritor: lanzando diatribas con la mezcla perfecta de autocrítica, parodia, y “mira cómo me desmorono y me río a la vez”. Un delirio tan absurdo que uno no sabe si tomar nota o aplaudir. Roth convierte así el delirio en comentario: mientras Zuckerman se burla de todos y de sí mismo, nos muestra cómo la literatura, el sexo y la moralidad son campos de batalla donde la identidad se negocia, se esquiva y se exhibe. Es un carnaval de ironía, dolor y reflexión que nunca se siente gratuito, porque detrás de cada risa late el agotamiento de un hombre que ya no sabe ni cómo escribir ni —apenas— quién es.

El tono resulta ahora electrizante y desbordado, casi histérico: los párrafos se alargan, se retuercen, se contradicen. La prosa de Roth es en esta novela un torrente: nerviosa, rabiosa, introspectiva y cómica a la vez. El narrador interior de Zuckerman se despliega en capas, mezclando memoria, delirio y análisis cultural, como un cirujano literario que disecciona su propio cuerpo y alma. La prosa se mueve entre el monólogo interior, la sátira cultural y el delirio existencial, como si Kafka se hubiera escapado a Manhattan con una botella de vodka. Pero también tiene un sentido cómico y humano que remite, en matiz, al Roth de Portnoy . Hay algo casi obsceno en la honestidad con que Roth se desnuda aquí —y nunca mejor dicho—: Zuckerman pasa la novela entera intentando entender por qué su cuerpo lo odia, y de paso, por qué el mundo parece disfrutar viendo a un judío neurótico desmoronarse en público.

Es brillante cómo Roth consigue que el lector perciba simultáneamente la fragilidad física, la frustración creativa y la ironía cultural, sin que ninguno de estos elementos opaque al otro. La estructura parece caótica, pero en realidad refleja la mente del protagonista: saltos de pensamiento, asociaciones grotescas, hipérboles dolorosas, todo para capturar la experiencia de un escritor que ya no puede separarse de su propio cuerpo ni de la sátira de su vida pública.

Si hay un eco de Portnoy aquí, es en la manera en que Roth combina el humor con la culpabilidad, pero mucho más refinado y corrosivo. Aquí el juego ya no es solo sexual o familiar: es literario, cultural y físico. Cada página recuerda que la comedia y el sufrimiento son inseparables cuando el sujeto es un judío americano consciente de sí mismo, expuesto al mundo, atormentado por la fama, y atrapado en un cuerpo que lo traiciona.

Leer Lección de anatomía es comprobar que el dolor puede ser un narrador de primera clase: Zuckerman lo sufre, Roth lo convierte en risa, en delirio y en reflexión, y nosotros terminamos agotados… y riéndonos como idiotas de lo absurdo de todo. La medicina, la fama, el sexo, la culpa… todo se mezcla en un carnaval donde nadie sale indemne y donde, seamos sinceros, a veces querrías darle un buen codazo al protagonista solo para que espabile. Pero qué demonios: pocas veces la literatura nos recuerda con tanto descaro que vivir duele, escribir duele, y que la única salida viable muchas veces es la ironía, esa vieja amiga que nos salva del melodrama.

Al final, Zuckerman sigue vivo, su cuerpo sigue protestando, su mente sigue renegando, y nosotros seguimos ahí, entre risas y desesperación, disfrutando del espectáculo. Porque Roth nos recuerda que la identidad es un circo y que, si vamos a mirar el show, más vale hacerlo con humor: que arda todo, pero que podamos reírnos mientras lo hace.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Literature of Pain

Roth has written about the literature of sex, of the American dream, of infidelity, of Jewish angst, of the flagging libido, and even of the dying human animal; this time he is writing about the literature of pain.

Roth’s alter-ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who normally hides in the background to tell other people’s stories, is front and centre of this one, in full meltdown. Sandwiched between two other Zuckerman books of a personal nature, Zuckerman Unbound and The Counterlife, The Anatomy Lesson has our hero suffering from a mysterious and incurable neck pain going on for nearly 18 months. “One doctor prescribed a regimen of twelve aspirin per day, another prescribed Butazolidin, another Robaxin, another Percodan, another Valium, another Prednisone; another told him to throw all the pills down the toilet, the poisonous Prednisone first, and ‘learn to live with it.’” We suspect his pain comes from a hurt ego caused by a bad book review from fellow Jewish critic Milton Appel, and guilt from the damage Zuckerman brought upon his now-dead parents by the publication of his bestselling fourth novel Carnovsky (a proxy for Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint). That writing is an act of imagination seems to perplex and infuriate everyone. Life and art are distinct, posits Zuckerman; what could be clearer?

To be raised as a post-immigrant Jew in America is to be given a ticket out of the ghetto into a wholly unconstrained world of thought. Both Appel and Zuckerman fit this mold. Yet Appel turned from friend to foe after the Carnovsky novel, categorizing Zuckerman as anti-Semite. The Zuckerman-Appel conflict can be summed up as: “I’m a petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew, and I have been insulted one time too many by another petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew.”

Hopped on drugs and fueled by alcohol, Zuckerman comes to the conclusion that he has to give up his career of writing, recognize his four dead marriages as being a consequence of the writer’s claustrophobic and self-absorbed life, give up his current four mistresses who each nurse him at different times without colliding into each other, and study to be a doctor, even though he would end up qualifying at the ripe old age of 50. He leaves New York for the University of Chicago to enrol. Enroute, his mental state starts to unravel, and he takes on the role of “Milton Appel, pornographer and men’s club owner,” telling all and sundry of how he makes his living as such. This gives him the thrill of revenge, the spur of invention, and an outlet for his seething anger and pain. His antics on planes and limos during this meltdown is hilarious, bawdy and downright brilliant— Portnoy Redux.

Some brilliant lines come out during this headlong flight to the bottom:
“The only patient being treated by the writer is himself.”
“Without fanaticism, nothing great in fiction could ever be achieved”
“I am changing American f***king forever! I am setting this country free!”
“Stand alone. Like Swift and Dostoevsky and Joyce and Flaubert. Obstinate independence. Unshakable defiance. Perilous freedom. No, in thunder.”
“While doubt is half a writer’s life. Two-thirds. Nine-tenths. Another day, another doubt. The only thing I never doubted was the doubt.”

When the collapse finally comes (and Roth seems to make them happen in familiar territory like cemeteries, a-la- Sabbath’s Theatre, and Everyman) and he gets his chance to see the insides of a hospital and what doctors face day in, day out, Zuckerman realizes that the grass is not always greener on the other side, that the journey from typewriter to stethoscope is indeed a long one, perhaps one never to be completed, or even attempted, although many successful authors like Cronin, Maugham and Conan Doyle made the journey successfully in the opposite direction.

This is fresh, energetic, and brilliant writing. Roth is at his peak, pain notwithstanding.

[Giovanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

La lezione di anatomia è una grande domanda sul dolore. Su un dolore fisico che non dipende per forza, freudianamente, da cause psicologiche, ma che obbliga Nathan Zuckerman a fare i conti con la sua vita, con quella che è stata e con quella che sarà. La sua vita di scrittore, infatti, l'ha portato a ripiegarsi su se stesso (fino a farsi venire mal di schiena), l'ha spinto a spremere tutta la sua interiorità. Non scrive più da quattro anni, non ha più niente da scrivere su di sé, non riesce a scrivere degli altri, e il suo dolore fisico continua a rimpicciolire le sue vedute, riconduce costantemente tutto il suo essere a quel punto tra collo, spalle e schiena che lo fa tanto penare.

«Se esci da te stesso non puoi fare lo scrittore, perché quello che ti mette in movimento è l'ingrediente personale, e se resti attaccato al tuo ingrediente personale finirai per sparire nel tuo buco del culo.»

Per quanto non riesca a concludere un romanzo, però, Zuckerman è sempre Zuckerman, e non può fare a meno di inventare storie esilaranti (lo avevamo già visto nello Scrittore fantasma alle prese con un “futuro possibile” di Anne Frank). Non riuscendo a inventare niente di nuovo, allora, tutto quello che può fare è moltiplicare se stesso, reinventarsi in versioni diverse, che pescano, è vero, in profondità nella sua esperienza, ma non coincidono con la sua vera identità. Lo Zuckerman/Milton Appel (lontano mille miglia dal Milton Appel “reale”) di questo romanzo è per certi versi la ripresa di uno dei temi di Zuckerman scatenato: che rapporto c'è tra scrittore e personaggi? Tra Zuckerman e Carnovsky? E tra Zuckerman e Appel? E tra Appel e Carnovsky? E, ovviamente, tra tutti loro e Roth stesso?
La gabbia dello scrittore lo ha escluso dal mondo, può rapportarsi solo con altri sé, il mondo è uno specchio che continua a mandargli immagini, ora fedeli ora distorte, della sua persona (fino alla catarsi ospedaliera finale). Come già spiegava Flannery O'Connor in Nel territorio del diavolo, «L'eroe moderno è l'escluso. […] I confini del suo paese sono le pareti del suo cranio.»

Come sempre, non si sa mai dove finisca l'ironia e cominci la tragedia, quanto Roth, Zuckerman e i loro personaggi siano seri e quanto prendano in giro il lettore e gli altri personaggi. Fa parte di questo grande gioco narrativo che Roth conduce con enorme maestria. A fare da sfondo, poi, i soliti (ma intramontabili) temi: l'ebraismo, il rimando “kafkiano” alla figura paterna, le donne, una Newark da cui ci si è allontanati, ma da cui non ci i libera mai veramente.
Un romanzo-labirinto in cui più si va avanti, più ci si perde e più le strade si moltiplicano. Roth indica tutti i cunicoli, tutte le strade possibili, ma non accompagna il lettore all'uscita, né gli fa percorrere fino in fondo un determinato percorso; lo mette lì, in mezzo al labirinto, tra lo smarrimento e il piacere del gioco.

[Joeji · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is perhaps so striking about this book is that Philip Roth depicts an aging writer who, because of undiagnosed physical pain, has stopped writing filling his world with doubt and despair. Zuckerman's pain is very much an investigation of Roth's own biographical highlights. Roth too recovered from surgery, stopped finding writing worthwhile, and was attacked over and over again for his most infamous novel Portnoy's Complaint i.e. "Carnovsky." So disillusioned with writing is Zuckerman that he wants to become a doctor, healing his own pain, but mroe importantly healing his own doubt. Idealistic, yes, but as Roth always does, his characters' occupations always inform on writing. For Zuck, being a doctor means working with people, not alone with doubt.

Some of the wildest passages are when Zuckerman poses as a pornographer he has named after his worst literary critic, Appel. His arguments for pornography sadistically paralell a defense for his own writing. It abuses women? It is bad for the Jews? No! You misunderstand me. Though posing as Appel is revenge in writerly overdrive, Roth is reacting to his real world critics while underminding his characters. Yep, meta-meta-meta fiction. Arg. You know it, enjoy.

Read this on the heels of Zuckerman Unbound to see Nathan dealing with his success. I think that Roth writes these books for the idealistic. He wants people to know that writing is hard, celebrity is harder, and that even though everyone is going to tell you you are crazy, no one will sympathize with your literary plights. Or career choices for that matter. Zuckerman lives for a time with an unrealistic dream to be a doctor and when explaining this to his college friend Bobby, now a doctor, he is turned off of his idealism. It is not writing that is full of doubt; life is full of doubt. Some of Roth's most touching passages are when Zuckerman, finally finding solace in people who actually address his pain as life's pain, wanders here and there in a hospital. He talks with the elderly. He visits those who are sick. He pushes an old man around in a wheel-chair. He is inspecting himself and realizing, in the calm after his personal storms, that "This is life. With real teeth in it." And though Zuckerman may still not have matured all the way out of himself, he is set to try.

[LW · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ogni pensiero e ogni sensazione paralizzati dall'egoismo del dolore, un dolore che gira eternamente su se stesso, riducendo ogni cosa tranne l'isolamento: prima è il dolore che svuota il mondo, poi lo sforzo per vincerlo.

[Marcello S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terzo capitolo con protagonista l’alter-ego più noto di Roth dopo Lo scrittore fantasma (molto buono) e Zuckerman scatenato (meno buono). Più che un romanzo è un bollettino medico. A quarant'anni Zuckerman non se la passa bene: dopo quattro romanzi, tra cui l’enorme successo/scandalo di Carnovsky, da mesi non scrive qualcosa di decente. Semi-immobilizzato da dolori cronici al collo e alla schiena e intorpidito da vodka e antidolorifici, prende la decisione un po’ folle di iscriversi a Medicina. Nel mezzo ragazze, famiglia, ebraismo. Ha diversi appigli autobiografici e può essere letto autonomamente. Sguardo profondo, e a tratti divertente, sul dolore e sui modi possibili di affrontarlo. Trama sbilenca, diversi picchi.

[81/100]

∞ La vita sempre più piccola. Svegliarsi pensando al collo. Andare a dormire pensando al collo. Unico pensiero, a quale dottore rivolgersi quando questo non farà niente per il collo. Hans Castorp, in tutto questo, era meglio di me, Jennifer. In quel letto ci sono solo io. Solo un collo che pensa pensieri da collo. Né Settembrini, né Naphta, né neve. Nessun affascinante viaggio intellettuale.
∞ O le medicine sono ancora troppo primitive o i dottori non sono ancora all'altezza o io sono incurabile.
∞ Parlami dell'anestesiologia. Scommetto che è chiarissima. Tu dài a loro qualcosa per dormire e loro dormono. Non è vero? Non avresti l'aspetto che hai se non fosse così. A porta a B e B porta a C. Tu sai quando hai ragione e sai quando hai torto. La sto idealizzando?
∞ Tutti i vogliono rendere il dolore interessante: prima le religioni, poi i poeti, poi, per non essere da meno, anche i medici. Gli vogliono dare un significato. Che vuol dire? Cosa nascondi? Cosa mostri? Cosa tradisci? È impossibile soffrire e basta, la sofferenza deve essere significativa. Invece il dolore non è interessante e non ha senso.
∞ Ricordo che a 15 anni leggevo Henry Miller. Pagine e pagine di leccate di fica. Non avrei saputo descrivere una fica con più di sei parole. Fu la prima volta in vita mia che mi vergognai del mio vocabolario. Se a scuola i professori mi avessero detto che arricchendo il mio vocabolario avrei potuto descrivere la fica come la descriveva Henry Miller, non sarei mai rimasto indietro. Avrei avuto una motivazione.

[Gauss74 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Capita spesso che il terzo volume di una trilogia (no, il signore degli anelli non fa testo) manifesti una sorta di stanchezza e si trascini stancamente, come se di fatto l'autore abbia finito le cose da dire ma lo spazio a disposizione non sia ancora stato riempito.
Questo "la lezione di anatomia" a mio avviso è un caso di questo tipo, ma solo in parte. Nathan Zuckerman, il leggendario alter ego di Philip Roth, è ormai un cinico scrittore di mezza età, ormai sulla buona strada per diventare uno dei tanti (anzi no: il principale) scrittori di mezza età che popolano i romanzi di Philip Roth, con tutte le caratteristiche che condividono: dalla paura della morte alla mania del sesso, da un deviato senso dell' umorismo alla ossessione di rivivere le esperienze giovanili (l'università) nel goffo tentativo di recuperare gli anni perduti.

Forse è questo il punto, col questo terzo volume della saga di Zuckerman. Che l' opera matura dello scrittore di Newark è un racconto della senilità: ed ecco quindi che quando nel raccontare la vita del protagonista si arriva alla terza età, questa storia diventa subito una delle tante.
Peccato, perché l'idea di raccontare la sopportazione del dolore fisico con tutto il suo strascico di pesantezze anche mentali non era male, anzi. Solo che, a parte l'immancabile sequenza di pagine di molto rothiano autocompatimento in parte col doppio fine di mendicare sesso (che mi ha ricordato un po' Lamento di Portnoy), di una idea così buona resta davvero poco.

Un po' mi dispiace, perché la scrittura è perfetta come sempre, così come come sempre godibilissimo il bruciante humour che caratterizza da sempre il Roth maturo. Mi dispiace soprattutto perché mi viene il sospetto di essere arrivato alla saturazione, come potrebbe accadere quando un grande scrittore è così prolifico. Vuoi vedere che da qui in in avanti nei romanzi del vecchio di Newark non ci troverò più niente di nuovo?

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Anatomy Lesson

"The Anatomy Lesson" (1983) is the third of a trilogy of Philip Roth novels about an American Jewish novelist, Nathan Zuckerman. Zuckerman has at least vague resemblances to what readers might imagine as the character of Roth. Throughout the book, Roth plays on these resemblances, teasing the reader about the extent to which the writer and his fictional protagonist may be the same. The relationship between author and character is only one of the many studied ambiguities and themes in this book.

The story is told in the third person, perhaps to separate Roth from Zuckerman. It is set primarily in 1973, shortly after Watergate. At the age of 40, Zuckerman has written four novels but has suffered from writer's block for four years. When he published his fourth and highly successful novel, "Carnovsky", his father and brother reacted sharply as they thought the book mocked the family and American Jews. On his death bed, the father cursed Zuckerman. About a year after the father's death, Zuckerman's mother died. Roth's first sentence in the book is "[w]hen he is sick every man wants his mother." Thus Zuckerman has been suffering from severe neck and back pains which the finest of New York City's specialists cannot diagnose or cure, and he becomes dependent upon the ministrations of women.

The book features a mixture of Roth's bravado and sharp humor on the one hand and seriousness and introspection on the other hand. Ego is on full display. Much of the story moves forward through long conversations between Zukerman and a variety of other characters in the book. There are many arguments and verbal confrontations.

A major theme of the book is the loneliness and isolation of the life of a writer. Zuckerman portrays himself, with some reason, is sitting in a bare quiet room from his 20's struggling to develop and think through language and character and stories. His libido as always is in the way as Zuckerman has gone through and divorced what he describes as three "exemplary" wives. Zuckerman also is stung by criticism of his work, even though his novels have attained great popularity and have made him financially comfortable. Midway in the book, the frustrated writer forms the idea of going back to school, changing professions, and becoming a doctor. He imagines that as a physician he could do clearcut good for people and avoid the ambiguities, bickering, and loneliness attendant to writing. Besides dealing with the process and nature of writing, Zuckerman has issues with his strong sexuality and, even more so, with his Jewishness.

The novel is in two broad parts. The first part takes place with Zuckerman with his illness and writer's block in New York City. He is tended to by four women, each of whom offers him care as well as sex in varied forms. The opening gradually turns to Zuckerman's relationship to a critic named Appel who has written a lengthy essay rejecting Zuckerman's work for what he sees as its hostility to American Judaism. Following the Yom Kippur War, Zuckerman learns that Appel wants him to write a New York Times essay responding to criticism of Israel. Zuckerman reacts angrily, in the process addressing sore issues about his relationship to his family, to the community in which he grew up, and to Judaism.

The second part of the book is set in Chicago. Full of painkillers, drugs, and alcohol, Zuckerman travels to the University of Chicago in pursuit of his will-of-the wisp dream to become a physician. This is the stronger, livelier part of the book, full of outrageously brilliant, ribald, and yet introspective writing. To a variety of people, including, the unfortunate businessman sharing a plane seat with him, and a young woman working as a chauffeur, Zuckerman portrays himself as a successful and unscrupulous hard core pornographer with the name of his nemesis, Appel, en route to a meeting with Hugh Heffner. Zuckerman also meets with an old high school friend who has become a doctor and a medical school professor. Zuckerman's writers block, if not his illnes, seems to disappear as his imagination becomes overworked in his depiction of himeslf as the publisher of pornographic magazines and movies and the proprietor of a swingers' club.

The novel manages to combine bravura and wit with considerable seriousness and thought. The book portrays well the sense of inner conflict that invariably accompanies writing or serious intellectual or creative effort. The books in Roth's Zuckerman trilogy, "The Ghost Writer", "Zuckerman Unbound." and "The Anatomy Lesson" each stand on their own and do not require knowledge of the other books in the series to be enjoyed and pondered.

Robin Friedman

[Ja'net · Rating 2 out of 5]

If the first half of this book didn't exist, the book would've earned three/three and a half stars. But the first 150 pages or so are completely unfocused, boring, and incredible (though I've heard much of what happens in the book actually happened to Roth in real life--a claim that is irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned)that I nearly hurled this book across the room at several points during my arduous attempts at finishing it. The Anatomy Lesson was my first and LAST experience with Roth.

[David Partikian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The continued escapades of the now early middle-aged author, Nathan Zuckerman, replete with the obligatory middle-age crisis and excruciatingly funny and fulminating rants. The rants alone are worth the price of admission. Although it might be considered cliché and misguided to answer literary criticism in a work of fiction, the phone conversation between the obsessed, maligned author and a poisoned-pen critic, Milton Appel, contains the caustic, vituperative retorts one might find on Twitter today. To render this feud even more hilarious, Zuckerman, later in the novel, misrepresents himself twice as his nemesis, Milton Appel, painting “himself” as a maligned XXX pornographer of the off-the-cuff imagined stroke magazine, Lickety Split, and swing club owner to two unsuspecting dupes during an ill-advised trip to Chicago which elicit further rants that would leave Thomas Bernhard in awe. It is hard to overlook Roth as continuing the tradition of American humor that goes back to Mark Twain.

The Anatomy Lesson wraps up the Zuckerman Bound trilogy, recounting the life of a hugely successful American Jewish novelist, Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s literary alter ego. All the best elements of the previous volume, coalesce here, creating a lasting testament of grief; behind the course, piggish behavior, is a man grieving his recently diseased parents, particularly his mother, making this book a necessary coda to Portnoy’s Complaint.

As in Portnoy’s Complaint, the narrator receives his comeuppance. Alexander Portnoy gets beat up by an Amazonian Israeli during a failed pathetic attempt at sexual assault. Nathan Zuckerman’s drug-induced, schizophrenic fugue state leads to a seemingly well-deserved smack on the jaw. The Anatomy Lesson is way deeper than one might think at first glance. Decades ahead of its time in honestly portraying substance abuse of prescription pain killers, the author abuses Percodan to numb his mourning grief, existential ennui and disgust with his chosen profession. Rarely are spiritual crises as entertaining as these.

[Ana Carvalheira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Em jeito de homenagem a este ENORME autor americano que nos deixou no passado dia 22 de maio, profusamente galadoardo - recebeu o Prémio Pulitzer em 1997, a Medalha Nacional de Artes da Casa Branca em 2002, o mais alto reconhecimento da Academia de Artes e Letras, a medalha de ouro da ficção, anteriormente atribuída a John dos Passos, William Faulkner e Saul Bellow, ganhou por duas vezes o National Book Award entre outros prémios, tendo sido também um eterno candidato ao Nobel da Literatura, galardão máximo que, infeliz e indesculpavelmente não viria a receber (Academia Sueca, shame on you!!!) -, que decidi, porque encontrei várias referências a este livro em outras leituras, dedicar algum do meu tempo rememorando Philip Roth através desta notável “Licão de Anatomia”.

Embora considere o total da sua obra bastante eclético nas emoções que possam influir no nosso espírito – adorei “A Humilhação” e “A Mancha Humana” mas o “Teatro de Sabbath” fez-me bocejar de tédio – Philip Roth não agrada a todos porque, muitas vezes, não é fácil encontramos a bissetriz que nos permitirá continuar, com gosto, a leitura ao invés de a abandonarmos. Mas garanto que, encontrada, ela flui numa corrente deliciosa.

“A Lição de Anatomia” é um livro que, no meu entender e tendo a consciência de que não ainda não li nem um terço da sua obra, considerei excecional. A construção das personagens, o enredo, as várias situações com as quais nos identificamos mas, fundamente o humor, presente em vários momentos, fazem deste livro uma leitura obrigatória.

Não entrarei pela análise da história pois a sinopse identifica muito bem os seus momentos.
Apenas uma ideia, entre outras, que me fez refletir sobre o destino de Nathan Zuckerman, personagem principal, escritor afamado mas maldito na comunidade judaica, muito por força do seu livro “Carnovsky”: “Quando ainda andava à procura de uma coisa oculta, chegara a perguntar a si mesmo se o objetivo desse sofrimento não seria oferecer-lhe um tema novo, a dádiva da anatomia à musa que se esvai. Bela dádiva! Dedicar uma enfermidade desconcertante não apenas a atenção obstinada de um paciente mas também de um escritor obsessivo! Só Deus sabe o que este corpo teria para dar, se o sofrimento físico se revelasse bom para o seu trabalho.”

Não resisto transcrever mais uma provocação de Roth: “A ‘mente’ pode mudar, ou dar a impressão de que muda, mas nunca a paixão do inquisidor pelos verditos impiedosos. Por tás da admirável flexibilidade da reavaliação judiciosa continua a existir uma estrutura de betão que é indestrutível”.

That’s the stuff the greatest authors are made!!

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nathan Zuckerman is forty, married and divorced three times. Both his parents are now dead, his mother from a sudden brain tumor. His brother isn't speaking to him. His brother's wife only utters the most rudimentary comments - out of fear of being quoted in Zuckerman's next novel. Zuckerman has severe writer's block, and severe pain in his neck, back, shoulders. He spends much of the day down on a "playmat" in his apartment, being sexually serviced by four or five different women, and servicing them.

One of them, a Polish émigrée named Jaga who works as a technician in the hair restoration clinic he visits, says: "But if you are looking at me for sex, I am not interested. I hate lust. It's a nuisance. I don't like the smells, I don't like the sounds. Once, twice with somebody is fine - beyond that, it's a partnership in dirt." Yet a few visits later Jaga is drunk, "her cheek crushed to the playmat and her rear raised to face him" and she's crying out, "Nail me, nail me, crucify me with your Jewish prick!"

Uh huh.

Maybe it's all of this playing doctor that gives Zuckerman the sudden inspiration to quit Manhattan, move to Chicago where he went to university, and enroll in the medical school. He decides he wants to be an obstetrician. (Soon he becomes aware this also means being a gynecologist.) Flying out out for an admission interview, he meets his female limo driver, Ricky, and pretends to be Milton Appel, a critic who has given him a bad review. Appel's new identity is a pornographer with a magazine called Lickety Split. Soon he is enchanted by Ricky's stolidness.

"....You know how many come there who actually fuck?"
"No, sir."
"Take a guess."
"Better if I concentrate on my driving, sir. Heavy traffic."
"Twenty percent...."

The novel ends with Zuckerman pitching face forward onto a gravestone, fracturing his jaw and knocking out teeth, carried to Billings Hospital by Ricky, where the doctors and interns try to impress upon him what a horrible idea becoming a doctor would be.

(Milton Appel was based on Irving Howe.)

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was arguably a mistake to read "The Anatomy Lesson" without first reading the previous two books in the Zuckerman series, but the third installment works fine on its own, especially if the reader has a working knowledge of Philip Roth's own history. One can easily mentally replace "Carnovsky," the book for which author Nathan Zuckerman became famous, with Roth's own "Portnoy's Complaint," and all becomes clear. (I read "Portnoy's Complaint" many, many years ago, but it's not a book one quickly forgets.)

"The Anatomy Lesson" suffers a bit from its episodic nature, which stops the reader from feeling he's read a completely cohesive novel once he's through, but its comic set pieces more than make up for that flaw.

I've only read a handful of novels with passages as funny as those in "The Anatomy Lesson" in which Zuckerman poses as his rival Milton Appel, transforming him from a literary critic to a pornographer in order to verbally assault anyone who will listen -- and those who won't -- with long, detailed, profanity-filled descriptions of his completely made-up career as an adult-movie producer, men's magazine publisher and sex-club owner.

Those passages serve as a comic prelude to later scenes in which Zuckerman's misguided attempts to actually transform himself from a novelist to a doctor reach their downbeat but inevitable conclusion.

For someone like me, who has read a handful of Roth books but never any of the Zuckerman novels, and wanted to see what they were like without committing to the whole series, "The Anatomy Lesson" turned out to be a good choice.

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are parts of the book that are worthy of four stars, but they were few and far between. As with the previous Zuckerman novels, it improved greatly as it progressed, but the first third of the novel I found incredibly tiresome. I hate it when authors have to respond to their critics within their books (I found it petty when Tina Fey responded to internet commenters in 'Bossypants' as well), and having a literary alter ego respond to a fictional critic is one of the most trifling acts I can imagine in a novel. The voices of the male characters were practically indistinguishable to me, and I can't tell whether that is the fault of Roth or Zuckerman, but either way it's still the fault of Roth. The female characters were slightly distinct from each other, at least, though kind of nagging.

Everyone's speechifying became so wearying, which Roth describes as "some enormous tube of linguistic paste. Diatribe, alibi, anecdote, confession, expostulation, promotion, pedagogy, philosophy, assault, apologia, denunciation, a foaming confluence of passion and language, and all for an audience of one." If this sounds horrible to you, you should probably skip the Zuckerman Unbound series (save for "The Ghost Writer"), but if this sound like your cup of tea, then you might like these books.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

the great american neck and back pain novel

[Vladimir Ghinculov · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Anatomy Lesson was a treat, as all Philip Roth novels are for me so far. The subject is pain. Physical pain. Excruciating physical pain. Constant and untreatable, going on for a long time. Everyone with a bad back or a toothache: multiply your pain by a thousand, a million. And, from this, we go to some constant themes of the author's: the writer, maleness, jewishness. And all the while Roth creates unusual and unforgettable characters. Even Zuckerman does.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Gone. Mother, father, brother, birthplace, subject, health, hair-according to the critic Milton Appel, his talent too.”

In this third and in my opinion, strongest instalment so far, finds Zuckerman barely getting by on a steady diet of weed, Percodan, vodka and cunnilingus as he descends deeper into the darkness of his soul and dancing with demons as he toils with the many frustrations that middle-age is throwing up.

“It’s like the body count in Vietnam. If you’re defined as not being human, somebody can justify your execution.”

But don’t be fooled by the sex, drugs and other excess, Roth is on compelling and combative form here making some controversial points on feminism, porn, identity, mortality, exploitation and power. This book reminds you how refreshing and shocking Roth could be and he even has his moments of humour too.

“The comedy is that the real visceral haters of the bourgeois Jews, with the real contempt for their everyday lives, are these complex intellectual giants. They loathe them, and don’t particularly care for the smell of the Jewish proletariat either. All of them full of sympathy suddenly for the ghetto world of their traditional fathers now that the traditional fathers are filed for safekeeping in Beth Moses Memorial Park. When they were alive they wanted to strangle the immigrant bastards to death because they dared to think that they could actually be of consequence without ever having read Proust past Swann’s Way. ”

[Ana Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Li mais este livro de Philip Roth para o Clube de Leitura.
Um escritor 5 estrelas mas que no caso particular deste livro me chocou mais do que me agradou.
Acho que deste autor já tive a minha dose.
E deixo estes excertos:

“Inconscientemente Zuckerman tinha medo de tudo medo do sucesso e medo do fracasso; medo de ser conhecido e medo de ser esquecido; medo de ser bizarro e medo de ser normal; medo de ser admirado e medo de ser desprezado; medo de estar sozinho e medo de estar acompanhado e medo de ter medo”.

“ O problema não é tudo ter de ser um livro. É tudo poder ser um livro. E não conta como vida enquanto não for”.

Património - 4* - Março 2012
Os factos - 4* - Agosto 2018
Quando ela era boa - 3* - Agosto 2018
Pastoral Americana - 4* - Agosto 2018
Casei com um comunista - 3* - Setembro 2018
A mancha humana - 4* - Setembro 2018
Todo o mundo - 3* - outubro 2018

[Hugh Dufour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roth does it again. Preceding Fight Club by about a decade or so with its fixation on bodily pain as an escape from depression, this rollercoaster ride of vanity, self-obsession, writer's block, and filial devotion is as moving as it is disturbing. The prose dances, crackles, irritates. The characters grieve, hope, lust. The plot meanders, jumps forward, stuns. Every book I read from this author is better than the previous one, and The Anatomy Lesson doesn't disappoint.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

As regular visitors know, I'm in the midst of reading all nine of the autobiographical "Nathan Zuckerman" novels that author Philip Roth has penned over the decades, from 1979's The Ghost Writer to 2007's Exit Ghost. And that's because, as a newish book critic (only three years full-time now), I'm continually trying to educate myself more about the periods of literary history I know the least about, which would definitely include the Postmodernist Era, which lasted roughly from Kennedy's death to 9/11 (deliberately depressing touchstones chosen because of this period mostly marked by a preoccupation with the downfall of America, or more generally the downfall of all post-industrial Western lifestyles); and many say that one cannot get any better of a dense yet simplified look at that era than to read all of Roth's Zuckerman books, since he not only spent most of his adult life in this period (in his thirties at the beginning, in his seventies by the end) but is also one of the more revered artists of this period, as a result living a very typical Postmodernist life (as dutifully recorded in these lightly fictionalized true-life tales) even while helping to shape what those "typical" issues were for society as a whole.

I've already covered his first book, The Ghost Writer, Roth's look back at his twenties as a hot young star of very late Modernism, publishing his first New Yorker stories at the same time as his fellow Postmodernist pioneers as John Updike, Norman Mailer and more, in the case of this book looking at it all through the filter of the naive Zuckerman attending a boozy "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" type dinner in rural New England with a Saul Bellow stand-in, an older and more successful writer who is ambivalent about his status as a 20th-century trailblazer in Jewish literature, actually written twenty years after the relevant events described; and I've already reviewed his second novel in the series as well, the highly popular Zuckerman Unbound, a frank and sometimes self-scathing look at Roth's thirties, when his funny and filthy Portnoy's Complaint became an accidental international bestseller, and helped kick off an entire countercultural series of nebbishly "sexy" young urban Jews like Woody Allen and the like, fictionalized here into Zuckerman's Carnovsky and which has ignited a mostly generational fiery debate among the Jewish community, for laying out in a funny yet revealing proto-Seinfeld way all the foibles and personality tics of that community, tropes we now generally find endearing (the guilt-inducing Jewish mother, the crazy uncle full of anti-Semite conspiracy theories) but that were highly controversial to talk about at the time that Roth did.

And the reason I mention this in such detail is that today's book under review, 1983's The Anatomy Lesson, is in many ways about the same subjects, just with Zuckerman now in his forties (the book's set in the Ford/Carter years of the mid-'70s), and how time and further revelations have now changed the way he look at all these topics. Because this is a sadder and more complicated Zuckerman we're seeing here, one whose parents have recently died and whose brother accuses Carnovsky of killing, which Nathan thinks of in a complex way -- sometimes wishing that he had done things differently, sometimes angry over the fact that his parents could've "gotten it" if they had tried, but had chosen instead to be deliberately insulted by him airing their community's "dirty laundry" to the cackling laughter of a Gentile audience. And like I said, this does two things at once; because since so many of Roth's fellow baby-boomers had similarly contentious relationships with their parents over their countercultural beliefs, and since it's so common to lose one's parents in one's forties, Roth ends up speaking to his entire generation in this novel, even as it also exists as a specific roman a clef about the ups and downs of intellectual fame, of being a reluctant sex symbol in a "let it all hang out" age, and more.

But let me also make it clear that, of the five Roth novels I've now read (the three mentioned, 2004's The Plot Against America, and 2009's The Humbling), this is the first one to make me regularly giggle out loud in public all the way through it, and I mean to the point where it was annoying my neighbors at the cafe; and that's because this is also a very funny look at the Male Mid-Life Crisis, and all the ridiculous attitudes and actions that come with it. That's actually where the name of the book comes from -- because as it opens, we find a 40-year-old Zuckerman suffering from a mysterious back pain that has nearly hobbled him, which a dozen different doctors haven't yet been able to diagnose, even as he is also becoming more and more aware of his rapidly corroding body (thinning hair, softening belly), eventually requiring just to get through his day his "harem of Florence Nightingales," a cadre of four women who play different roles in his life but in one way or another help to take care of him, some of whom also regularly have kinky sex with him despite his injuries. (He props up his head during oral sex with a thousand-page thesaurus, given to him by his proudly blue-collar immigrant father in the 1940s as he headed off for college at the University of Chicago; and that single sentence right there gives you a pretty good snapshot look at Roth's entire career.)

Tired of his role as a public intellectual and scourge of feminists and conservative Jews nationwide, on the spur of a moment one day Zuckerman decides that what he really wants to do is move back to Chicago and go to medical school (yet another development the novel's title alludes to), figuring that he'll be ready to have a nice quiet practice completely out of the limelight by the time he's fifty; but this is where the zany part comes in, as it often does with humorous Postmodernist Jewish artists, because Zuckerman happens to be self-medicating for his pain at the time, through a combination of vodka, weed, and Percodan overdoses, which makes him come to believe that a spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago is in order, to hit up an old college friend who's now a doctor for a med-school recommendation, the surrealism upped more and more through the continual cocktail of controlled substances he downs all the way there, which by the time he's in Chicago has him babbling in morphine-fueled monologues to anyone who will listen about how he's actually a Larry-Flynt-type publisher of hardcore smut who is there to kick Hugh Hefner's ass, proudly proclaiming his name to be actually the name of a Jewish book critic who has panned all of Zuckerman's books. (And for my fellow Chicagoans, don't miss the amazingly nostalgic and detailed reminisces about the city in the 1950s that Roth offers up in this section, including fantastic descriptions of a run-down Mid-Century-Modernist Loop, and getting drunk with Thomas Mann in the still-existing Hyde Park dive-bar institution Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap.) The whole thing culminates, then, with a series of wonderful little surprises which is why I won't spoil things, but suffice to say that things end on a somber note but that has interesting things to say about the aging and maturation process.

It's Roth really at the top of his form for the first time, coming into his mature voice here in the early '80s just in time for his most revered work, award-winning novels like American Pastoral and The Human Stain that he will be best remembered for; but at the same time, it's also a timeless look at middle-age and the issues that all people in their early forties go through (although especially nebbish, oversexed intellectuals in their early forties), which on top of simply being a good history book now gives you triple the usual reasons to read it yourself. I have to say, three titles in now, I'm really glad so far that I decided to take on the Zuckerman novels, and this latest has me looking that much more forward now to the next in the series, 1985's provocatively titled The Prague Orgy, an experimental novella in which we follow Zuckerman's journal as he travels to Communist Czechoslovakia to seek a missing manuscript from a martyred Yiddish writer. Here's hoping it'll be as good as the first three volumes.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I've given it the same rating (something I don't put a terribly large amount of importance in, by the way, assigning numerical scores to signify my enjoyment or lack thereof for books/movies/albums/etc.), The Anatomy Lesson strikes me as a somewhat better book than its predecessor, in part because Zuckerman's struggle with pain (physical and psychic) and a sense of alienation from everything in his life, which dates back to the final pages of the preceding work in the series, make for more compelling drama than his relatively banal struggles with new-found fame in Zuckerman Unbound, and Zuckerman is a more active protagonist perhaps as a result. Roth also captures, as well as any writer I can think of, with gut-grabbing, skin-crawling accuracy the sense of queasy, cringe-inducing imminent doom that is part and parcel of so many interactions that those in the throes of addiction have with friends, family and acquaintances, reaching a tragicomic high-point with the snowbound cemetery scene in which his long-simmering anger toward his Jewish critics, his grief and regret regarding his dead parents and estranged brother, and the excruciating and heretofore inexplicable neck pain at last boil over for the intoxicated Zuckerman into a full-blown, boiling meltdown. The fulfilling, noble writer's existence to which he aspired all those years ago has become nothing but an empty husk devoid of any sense of accomplishment or enjoyment-- let alone the sort of soul-nourishing one Zuckerman, during a particularly fine passage reminiscing about his college years in Chicago, recalls hearing the great Thomas Mann speak so eloquently about in a lecture-- and to continue in that vein seems untenable to him, even if the aforementioned debilitating neck pain didn't leave him prostrate on a mat on the floor most of the time anymore, and so he resolves to become a doctor. But we see that even this "new calling," to which he feels drawn by a desire to contribute something more "concrete" to society and that he believes will instill in him a sense of self less disappointing and distasteful, is not just greatly idealized and simplified in his imagination, but is, like his initially very funny but eventually tiresome riffs about being the pornographer behind the magazine "Lickety Splits" (using the name of his harshest critic Milton Appel), just a further example of his narrative-building and character-creating tendencies borne from his deeply ingrained need to write. It seems that Zuckerman, for better and/or worse, is stuck with himself and with his writing and, for the time being at least, little else.

[Leggo Quando Voglio · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Il problema non è che tutto dev'essere un libro. È che ogni cosa può essere un libro. E non conta, come vita, finché non lo è."

Sono passati due anni da quando ho cominciato a leggere le opere di Philip Roth e, ormai, mi posso considerare una lettrice esperta di questo autore, per quanto mi manchino ancora da leggere diverse sue opere e che sia consapevole che, finché non avrò letto la sua intera bibliografia, non potrò dire di conoscerlo come chi, invece, l'ha già fatto.

Come è giusto che sia, da maggiore esperienza deriva anche una maggiore aspettativa; continuo a stupirmi della sua genialità e della sua bravura, ma è inevitabile accorgermi che, pur trattandosi di un livello sempre molto alto, non tutti i suoi libri sono ugualmente belli.

Il caso di La lezione di anatomia è lampante; non ho dubbi che, se l'avessi letto per primo, avrebbe ricevuto un voto ben più alto di questo, però io lo sto leggendo ora, dopo aver scoperto autentici capolavori dell'autore e, perciò, la mia critica sarà ben più aspra di come lo sarebbe stata se non avessi già conosciuto ed apprezzato, in precedenza, la grandezza di Philip Roth.

Prendete perciò il voto in stelline e in decimali e il giudizio pro, indifferente e contro, per quello che sono; un paragone con le altre opere dell'autore e non un giudizio in senso assoluto.

Gli argomenti su cui si va sempre sul sicuro con Roth sono due: lo stile e l'ironia.
Fortemente collegati tra loro, questi due aspetti rendono piacevole la lettura di qualsiasi cosa possa uscire dalla penna dello scrittore; se pubblicasse la lista della spesa scritta alla Roth la leggerei estremamente volentieri.
Questo perché per me, il valore principale di un autore, soprattutto se di letteratura alta è il suo stile, il resto viene solamente dopo. Se uno stile non è ben riconoscibile o non mi piace (sia per criteri oggettivi che soggettivi), allora non riuscirò ad apprezzare nulla del romanzo, per quanto oggettivamente possano esserci aspetti ben trattati e definiti che, indubbiamente, evidenzierei per voi nella mia eventuale recensione.

Il resto della recensione al link http://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/libro...

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps...perhaps the comparisons to Kafka aren't entirely unjustified.

***
My "problem" with approaching Roth has always been the instinct that his books were about him.

Well, no surprise: they are. Or at least this one is.

Even the dialogue comes off sounding like he's sitting there at his typewriter, furiously talking to himself putting the anger into Zuckerman's voice, and the dissenting opinion into the voice of the Female Who Adores Him.

"Push!"
"Pull!"

Or, more correctly:

"Jews push!"
"Jews pull!"

Or, even more exactly:

"Newark Jews (second-generation sons) push!"
"Newark Jews (second-generation sons) pull!"

Still, Roth's prose is amazingly easy to read. Your eyes just glide over the words; he seldom plays with the words, gets limber with the language (though there is a definite muscular musicality). So, yes, the ease of it all is a plus...but, also, it's a very simple vocabulary. And the man is considered America's finest writer, showered with praise. Why?

Even Joyce Carol Oates isn't this one-trick-pony-ish.

She actually has, you know, pushed towards dark, albeit imaginary, corners (much more the impulse of "a fine American writer").

I mean, look at what Newsweek said: "It was bold of Roth to write a novel about being famous...a comic stroll in a hall of mirrors."

Bold? I think the past ten years of Internet have proven that writing about oneself is not bold, but a national compulsion that finds its greatest, boldest exponent in the writing of 14-year-old girls on MySpace.

***
"There was talk of a counterculture daughter, a dropout from Swarthmore who took drugs."

Damn, but that's a musical sentence.