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In THE PRAGUE ORGY, Nathan Zuckerman is back in fine form, recovered from the strange
affliction that gripped his body and his soul in THE ANATOMY LESSON. Taken "from
Zuckerman's notebooks," THE PRAGUE ORGY documents Nathan's excursion to Prague to
recover the notebooks of a potential "lost master" of the short story. Enlisted
by the man's son, Zuckerman must recover the notebooks from the son's jealous
ex-wife.
Not only does Roth mine rich comedic gold in THE PRAGUE ORGY, but so too does he give us a
haunting portrait of a city where the writers, teachers and scientists are now demoted to
menial tasks, and where crooks and drunks run the government agencies. Seeking to
understand the situation, Zuckerman ponders:
"I imagine Styron washing glasses in a Penn Station barroom, Susan Sontag wrapping
buns at a Broadway bakery, Gore Vidal bicycling salamis to school lunchrooms in Queens ---
I look at the filthy floor and see myself sweeping it."
Zuckerman experiences firsthand the paranoia under which his fellow writers must live when
he's accosted by the state police. Fearing for his own safety, he manages to procure the
manuscripts he's come for, only to be met again by government agents on his way out of the
country.
At only 86 pages, this book is a short but fitting epilogue to Roth's intense
concentration on the life of Nathan Zuckerman. The characters are steeped in comedic
appeal and Roth's look at Czech society under a totalitarian regime sees him at his
critical best. The ghost of Kafka hovers over this work as the combination of fear, guilt,
and doubt give THE PRAGUE ORGY a metaphorical quality that perfectly mirrors Roth's
portrait of the heart of Nathan Zuckerman.
--- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner
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