At It Again

I saw the Philip Roth Unmasked film at Film Forum the other day. FOR FREE! I highly recommend it, of course. However, there were just a couple odd moments that I continue to puzzle over.

1. Roth's attempt to convince the viewer that Nathan Zuckerman has practically no sexual experience throughout the Zuckerman trilogy. He does so in the context of arguing that he is no more sex-obsessed as a writer than your average joe. In that I happen to agree. It's just that, having read The Anatomy Lesson fairly recently, I can think of three women with whom Zuckerman has sex in the course of the novel. In fact, there are several references to his "harem." There might have been more than three; I'll have to go back and check.

2. The sequence re writers committing suicide. First, Roth has not committed suicide, so the relevance was not clear. Second, besides Hemingway and Woolf, I did not recognize any of the other names. I'm no great scholar, but I did find that odd.

3. Mia Farrow

P.S. Adam Gopnik wrote recently in The New Yorker about PR's 80th birthday. I liked his idea re Roth's retirement sounding like a plot for a new novel. He even attempts a short imitation.