I'm looking over at a bookshelf, where I can see two distinctive yellow dust jackets: the first Roth book I ever purchased, more than 40 years ago -- "Portnoy's Complaint" -- and, down the row, the one I purchased most recently, "Nemesis."

"Nemesis" is a heart-stirring and heartbreaking story set against a polio epidemic in Newark, New Jersey, in the summer of 1944. If it does in fact turn out to be Roth's last novel, then these words -- and telling you this here is not giving away the plot -- will be the final sentence in the final Philip Roth novel:

"Running with the javelin aloft, stretching his throwing arm back behind his body, bringing the throwing arm through to release the javelin high over his shoulder -- and releasing it then like an explosion -- he seemed to us invincible."

Indeed.