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"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. He'd never had so many
women at one time, or so many doctors, or drunk so much vodka, or done so little work, or
known despair of such wild proportions. Yet he didn't seem to have a disease that anybody
could take seriously."
Wracked by pain, Nathan Zuckerman --- a writer by trade --- is unable to concentrate on
anything but the alleviation of his misery, and he seeks it in the bevy of women who he
has enlisted to take care of him. He's tried the medical approach, but not one of his
doctors can find the root of his illness.
With his writing at a standstill, his parents both dead, and his brother estranged,
Zuckerman contemplates whether or not his sickness is the result of his guilt over the
complications his writing has wrought on his family.
THE ANATOMY LESSON is both the bleakest and most hilariously profane of the Zuckerman
novels which include THE GHOST WRITER and ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND. The epigram to the novel,
taken from the TEXTBOOK OF ORTHOPEDIC MEDICINE by James Cyriax, M.D.,
states: "The chief obstacle to correct diagnosis in painful conditions is
the fact that the symptom is often felt at a distance from its source."
Roth has taken Zuckerman to a crossroads of truth and responsibility searching for that
source. Though the path may be dark at times, along the way we're treated to
his comic genius and his poignant insights. THE ANATOMY LESSON is a dissection of a soul
in turmoil, and Philip Roth wields his scalpel with deft precision.
--- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner
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