The Anatomy Lesson is the third in Roth’s Zuckerman series of novels. With both his parents dead, and estranged from his brother, Zuckerman has a undiagnosable pain in his neck that prevents him from writing, leaving him stricken on his back, with nothing to do but have increasingly one-sided sex with his nurse.
Out of very unpromising material – an author unable to write – Roth generates a profoundly intelligent and funny novel about grief, guilt, pain, nostalgia, literary criticism and (of course) sex.
Roth is astounding. He’s been writing non-stop for decades – another novel is due out next year – and yet he’s always intelligent, funny and provocative. All his novels (at least the ones I’ve read) are written in wonderful flowing prose, and are constantly thought provoking, profound and multi-layered. Horace Engdahl can go fuck himself: if Roth’s not worthy of the Nobel then the prize is not worth having.
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