The most complex book so far in the Zuckerman series, at least in terms of metafictional elements. It contains stories within stories, all written or potentially written by Zuckerman, to the point where it is unclear when you are reading the actual story or a fabricated story.
April 2008 Archives
The Prague Orgy is a slim novella and a slight departure for the Zuckerman series. In it Zuckerman travels to Prague in a search for a fellow writer's father's writings. As always, the novel deals with issues of writing, fathers, sex, and powerlessness. I didn't quite enjoy it as much as some of the other books. I'm constantly amazed by Roth's ability to extend a conversation or a speech for pages and pages and pages and have it seem like a forward-moving novel.
My Zuckerman reading project continues with the third book in the "series."
The Anatomy Lesson is funny and somewhat excruciating in its chronicle of inexplicable pain.
In this book, Zuckerman has been fallen by seemingly causeless pain. Everyone attempts to "explain" his pain through non-medical means: it's his feelings of guilt manifesting themselves, the pain is actually something he wants so he can regress into self-pity, etc., etc. But Zuckerman tells us again and again there is no meaning to the pain except pain.
In a way, it's a novel-length rant against those who would force interpretations onto literature. Perhaps that's a bit of an overly metafictional reading (and an overly simplified reading). It's hard for me to avoid overly metafictional readings of the Zuckerman books, however, since these books are all about an author dealing with people reading his books metafictionally. (It's also hard for me to avoid overly simplified readings of the Zuckerman books because I have an oversimplified brain.)
