I love those “author anthologies” with the red and white stripes on them. I recently borrowed the “Zuckerman Bound” version featuring Philip Roth’s Zuckerman trilogy. Nathan Zuckerman is the most thinly veiled portrayal of an author in a book that I’ve ever read- and all the novels, The Ghostwriter, Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson, and the epilogue, The Prague Orgy seem to resonate as biography with a twist. I enjoy Roth’s style and happened to really enjoy Portnoy’s Complaints, so the explanation Roth gives in the form of these novels of his motivation and the fallout of that scandal-making book was exciting to read, and a rare chance readers get to have their answer to the ubiquitou “how did you get the idea for this book” question.
I read the collection and enjoyed the epilogue, The Prague Orgy, most, since it was an exciting almost espionage inspired tale of an author visiting Bohemian and repressed Prague. The story of Zuckerman is mostly the story of Roth, so this experience is lent the excitement of travel and adventure.
Where Portnoy’s Complaint is lewd and in your face, the actual trilogy is more reserved, with echoing shadows of the elements that so startled readers of Roth’s first famous novel. Sure, there was sex in these books, and even a little narcissism, but Roth was able to strip away the frantic and the fantasy to create a more realistic and even relatable character- which readers will come to see as Roth, not Zuckerman. Even though the excitable in Roth is appealing, the pathetic (as in the Anatomy Lesson when Zuckerman is debilitated with pain and a following addiction to pain medication) is enthralling in the watch-a-car-crash-aftermath kind of way. One senses a self-pitying and successful man consumed with guilt and egotism- and you want to shake him.
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