The Anatomy Lesson

A sculpture in my neighborhood called "The Resurrection of Frank, 2000"

Yesterday I finished reading The Anatomy Lesson. A great minor novel by Philip Roth. As my friend Marco (Roth) told me, Philip (Roth) is a great minor novelist. He has great novels, too, of course. But his minor novels are simply the apotheosis of the minorality.

(Are there any other Roth heads out there? I read my first Roth novel in September and now I’m hungrily speeding through them. Sabbath’s Theater, which I read in September I think, remains my strong favorite — a great Roth novel. The Anatomy Lesson almost reads like a first draft for it… a less marinated version of it. Same themes, climax in a cemetery.)

This one felt particularly apt for the current times because it’s about being trapped in one’s own body. The main character, a novelist, Nathan Zuckerman, has mysterious and unsolvable back pain. Roth is so rhythmic, his writing is almost designed for the description of chronic pain. Everyone tries to impute a psychological reasoning for the character’s pain, but he refuses all the explanations. They say, “You killed your father with your book! You gave him a heart attack. You must be suffering from the guilt of that.” No, Nathan says, pain is just pain. Pain cannot be sublimated. At the same time, the author cannot believe he is so run of the mill as to be experiencing normal, relentless pain.

I can’t say I’ve experienced this. But the quarantine does recall the body. It makes one obsessed with the body and the care of the body. Our minds are put in the service of meals, and meal prep, and the certainty of snacks, and the certainty of toilet paper and of soap. We want STAPLES all we can think about are staples.

I am becoming acquainted with my adult apartment in the same way that I was acquainted with the apartment of my childhood. My world has gotten a lot smaller. I notice a footprint in the dust near my bed. Jonah notices the flowers accidentally growing in that one square of non-sidewalk at the end of California St. I am getting a little belly. If I didn’t have so much work to do, I’d go crazy just rearranging objects in my home, and feeling the slight twinges in my body. I won’t go into them now.

I went on a “clandestine” walk with Kyle earlier (his word, very true) and we were talking about feeling trapped in the constant awareness of how we are alive. I said, “The old existentialism was about confronting death, the new existentialism is about confronting life.” Kyle texted me my quote back, but he used “contemplating” as the verb rather than confronting. Either way — confrontation or contemplation— it’s true: Existence is as hard to swallow as non-existence, when you're continually reminded and/or bombarded by it. (I remember as a child I told my mother during a church class that I didn’t want to live forever in heaven because living forever seemed scarier to me than dying.) 

Just like pain, to be continually reminded of the fact that you need to eat. To be continually planning meals. To have the constant impulse to touch your face. To be so aware of oneself as a physical being. I don’t know. Kyle, do you have anything to add?