Philip Roth, recalling a visit to Prague in 1971, said he was struck by the contrasting situation of writers in a country that is not free and in the United States. Here, it seemed to him, "everything goes and nothing matters"; there, "nothing goes and everything matters." It is this concern that seems to underline the trilogy that Roth began with "The Ghost Writer," continued with "Zuckerman Unbound" and now concludes with "The Anatomy Lesson."

Certainly, Roth's fictitious novelist, Nathan Zuckerman, faces neither censorship nor imprisonment in his rapid journey up the freeway of American literary notoriety. What Zuckerman does face is an ambitious and egocentric self, strong on nerve and stomach, weak in empathy—an impoverished self that is at once his only resource and his major stumbling block. In "The Ghost Writer," Zuckerman is a young beginner who tastes critical approval without the popularity that is the...