The Anatomy Lesson.

ROTH, Philip.

$4,800.00

Item Number: 84755

New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1983.

First edition of the third novel from Roth to feature Nathan Zuckerman as the main character. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by Roth to his wife Claire Bloom on the title page, “To my dearest Claire- Who was there at Zuckerman’s birth and has helped me see him through his fury. My love and my love and my love P. Oct. 1, ’83.” Roth first met Bloom in 1966, when they were both in earlier relationships. “To have such a mind as Philip Roth’s fixed on your every word and gesture is both daunting and extremely flattering”, she recalled of this first encounter. The couple finally began their relationship in 1975, and started living together at an early stage. An excellent example in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Sigrid Spaeth. An exceptional association copy.

Preceded by 1979's The Ghost Writer and 1981's Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson is a continuation of the story of Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who finds himself having just buried his father and facing middle age. Fellow novelist Martin Amis wrote of the book: "'The Anatomy Lesson' may be the third and final installment of the Zuckerman trilogy, but it is also Roth's second consecutive novel about what success is like. Such fixity!... He has now written two autobiographical novels about the consequences of writing autobiographical novels," adding, "no modern writer, perhaps no writer, has taken self-examination so far and so literally." "The Anatomy Lesson is a ferocious, heartfelt book...lavish with laughs and flamboyant inventions" (John Updike, The New Yorker).