The Dying Animal

It comes as no surprise that Roth handles death, dying, sex, and the effects of all three on the human psyche with more honesty, more ease, than any writer this country has produced. The Dying Animal is a perfect book that accomplishes so much more in its allotted pages than the average novel in twice, three times as many. David Kepesh has come a long way from the lit student-turned mammary - oh, how breasts reprise their role! In Deception-like fashion, Kepesh tells the story to some other figure in the room about an affair unlike any other. Consuela, a twentysomething Cuban immigrant, and one of Kepesh's students, is one of the fiercest and most interesting (female) characters that Roth has invented. She's the contender in the room show more that has Kepesh, whose list of sexual episodes reads something like an anonymous survey of male fantasies, damn near trembling with insecurity. Roth's mastery over the series of events that has these two meet, fuck, separate, and meet again, is nothing short of brilliance. And with Dying in the title, the reader can expect this novel, in which a Casanova Jewish intellectual is caught in the middle of a war between eros and thanatos, to come with painfully beautiful Rothian meditations on the inevitable end of life. Kepesh is finished. show less

Roth was one of those authors who's name carried the weight of importance to literary minded wannabes like myself, so it was inevitable that I would have to read him and find out for myself. I purposely avoided the better known works that were always being name-checked in every magazine profile, and by chance, this slimmer work appeared on my local library shelves just as I'd began looking for alternatives.

Roth, who seemed to have a reputation with fixating on sex in his work, did not disappoint in this tale of a literatue professor who becomes physically involved with a young student. As a younger man, I easily related to the level of devotion he has to the beauty of the female form, but it wasn't until I was older and re-read the book show more from that perspective to appreciate how much he defined himself by the physical relationship with his young lover. Still my favorite Roth novel. show less

The protagonist is an almost ruined man — ruined presumably by the sixties, but more generally the victim of his own appetites. Roth paints him as loathsome: isolated, selfish, a prig. But he's redeemed by his relationship with a student. It happens slowly, and to the reader the pleasure is in watching it unfold.

In short: this is not a book about the fantasies of elderly men, neither the protagonist's nor Roth's. It does Roth an injustice to read it in that way.

I had given up on Roth. I was put off by Sabbath's Theater. Too much of it felt like offensive passages were just there to show Roth could get away with being offensive and people would still idolize him. That didn't work for me. I was just offended. So I started reading this book expecting more of the same. Yes there are offensive passages here but they fit in the total picture and more importantly there are insights which ring true. I'm about to approach my 79th birthday. This is the first book I've felt was full of understanding what it means to be an older male and to face the realization that much of what was possible in the past is no longer possible. Things change, you change, your outlook changes. This book captures that show more beautifully.

Roth often uses an alter ego as the main character in his novels, normally Nathan Zuckerman. As Roth aged he turned to another alter ego. David Kepesh, a single, older, esteemed professor of literature in a major college, sound familiar. Even more, he has a fixation on sex. This book takes that fixation to another level. Sex motivates everything he does. But rather than merely blurting out offensive material, David is much more introspective, he tells us how his conclusions come about. More importantly what he thinks makes sense. It is relatable. Your reaction is more likely to be why didn't I think of that. You identify with what he says. Fascinating.

Now to the plot. Young women are drawn to his course. He always finds one who stands out from the rest. But he has a rule. They are off limits until they finish his course. He throws a party when the course ends. At this point one is likely to throw themself at him. He's available and his combination of older guy with no attachments seems to be the right brand of honey. He barely needs to lift a finger. But the beautiful girl this year is more mature and a bit standoffish. Consuela comes from a Cuban family and knows she's gorgeous. But she's interested. She lets him know immediately she will never marry him. That interests him even more because that potential issue is off the table. Their relationship turns sexual. Very erotic. She is interested in experimenting. She is in control. Amazingly he finds himself falling in love with her. That frightens him. He was once married and found it too constraining and somewhere he never wants to go again. He's very conscious she's less than half his age, he's 62. He begins to think about ending it before she inevitably will. But he can't. They go this way for months. What ends it is when she wants him to attend the graduation party her parents are giving for her. She wants to finally show him off, he's a celebrity and he's hers. That's too much for him and on his way there he pulls over and calls her to tell her he's having car trouble and won't be able to make the party. That ends it. He never hears from her for several years.

This is where the story takes a radical turn. She calls him and lets him know she needs to tell him something, face to face. She arrives wearing a fez. Something is wrong. She tells him she's ill. She has cancer, breast cancer. She noticed a lump in her armpit. Two doctors assure her there's nothing to worry about. But another correctly diagnoses it. She has a mass in her left breast but because she has large breasts and it is deep she could never feel it. She's scared. Very scared. Chemo has not been enough. They want her to have surgery to remove the mass. Yikes. Why has she come to David? He's the only one she can talk to. She knows how much he loved her body. She is convinced she will be deformed and no one will want her body again. She has a special request. She wants him to photograph her while she still has her breasts. And she wants him to take her picture in all the sexual positions. She knows he will understand. Now we know why the book is titled The Dying Animal. He wants to be with her for the surgery. Things have changed. Where will this lead, We never find out.

I was amazed that a movie has been made based on this story. The book is very cerebral and short on dialogue so I anticipated much narration. The casting is very well done, Ben Kingsley play David and Penelope Cruz plays Consuela. David's best friend, a philandering poet, is perfectly played by Denis Hopper. I can't imagine better casting. Normally when a book is turned into a movie I expect subplots to be removed or just alluded to to save time. This is a short book so much of the story is intact. But there are some critical omissions/changes. In the book we learn of other girls before Consuela. The movie focuses on her and omits almost all the others. A critical sentence is omitted from the movie. In the book she tells David early on she will never marry him. It's omission from the movie begins to show us this is a somewhat different story. And then there's the title change. It's now called Elegy. My guess is The Dying Animal was too dark for people to greenlight. They also needed to take out some of the more explicit features like David's licking menstrual blood from Consuela's leg. They do allude to menstruation briefly as when David's long time sexual partner, brilliantly played by Patricia Clarkson, discovers a tampon that's not hers. In the movie it's unused, not so in the book. In the movie David has a darkroom in his apartment. In the book finding someone to discretely develop the pictures is a source of angst. In the book the title leads us to believe this will end badly. In the movie it ends with them returning to walk along the beach together, a much happier ending.

Both book and movie are worth your time. show less

During my adult life to date, when asked about their favourite authors or current reading, intelligent successful and middle-aged women that I would befriend would often reply: Philip Roth. I had no idea who he was or what he represented but they would always assume I knew and say things like "I know he's sexist and horrible...." But it was the way their faces always lit up in not-so-guilty pleasure at telling me this.

Well I have finally read my first book by him, and I must say I quite like him. Not at all so horrible and sexist as he seems to be reputed. The mere existence of male sexuality isn't the same thing as sexism as far as I understand it.

What's more, while the book is narrated by an anti-love pro-sex cynic who is forthright show more and convincing in his arguments, all the same there are brief flashes of correction in which we realise that our narrator offers a deeply distorted view of reality:
- The woman he believes does not love him back is profoundly attached to him.
- The dying animal is not his old self but the young woman.
- And despite all his belief that it is only sex that matters and sex that binds, after all his fear of being unable to sexually perform or unable to sexually compete in old age for the object of his love - all that she deeply asks from him is to come to her graduation, spend new year's eve with her, and hold her hand in the hospital operating room.

It puts many issues on the table and up for a discussion in a way that discarding the "masculine" perspective a priori would not be able to do. How can we connect in love through our insecurities when each of us believes they are uniquely tortured weak and vulnerable? show less

Szex és halál, másról nem is lehet regényt írni. Roth pedig kimaxolja: a szexről és a halálról is ír.

Van ez az elbeszélő. David. Aki öregszik. Settenkedik felé a halál, mint sanda macska az egér felé. David számára az elmúlás nem a lélekkel kapcsolatos, nem mint spirituális félelem érinti meg. Sokkal inkább testi jelenség: hogy eddig ment a szex, de nemsokára már nem fog menni a szex. Eddig be lehetett cserkészni a gusztusos tanítványokat, de ezek után már nem lehet. (Merőben köttertamási trauma ez, csak nem ügyvédekkel és pénzügy tanácsadókkal a középpontban, hanem irodalomprofesszorral.) Ez a tragédia kibillenti jól felépített egyensúlyából, és olyasmire készteti, amit eddig show more tudatosan és sikeresen elkerült: az érzéki tapasztalatokat kiterjeszti érzelmi síkra. Szerelmes lesz, magyarán szólva. Ami – értelmezésében – a legnagyobb hiba, amit elkövethet.

Eszemben sincs azon filózni, hogy a könyvből áradó gondolatiság Roth véleménye-e. Mindenesetre a szövegnek határozottan Schopenhauer-szaga van: az elbeszélő szentül hiszi, hogy személyes autonómiája csak úgy tartható fenn, ha kerül minden érzelmi viszonyulást partnereihez – akik így persze szükségszerűen alkalmi partnerekké válnak. Ami nekem nem különösebben szimpatikus. Hisz így sűrűn megejtett szexuális kiruccanásai voltaképpen csak arra szolgálnak (a kielégülés abszolválásán túl), hogy fenntartsa a kontrollt saját élete fölött. Hogy újra és újra elhitesse magával, ő még férfi, aki képes becserkészni a nemes vadakat. Amely nemes vadak a tanítványai – hát oda ne rohanjak. Oké, az egész köré tetszetős filozófiát kovácsol a szabad szerelemről, és piedesztálra emeli a hippikorszak merész, egy-egy numerára mindig kész papnőit. Csak hát hibádzik ez a magyarázat is, hisz ő nem ezeket a papnőket cserkészi be, hanem – ismétlem! - a tanítványait. Erre azt mondani, hogy egyenlő felek kölcsönösen előnyös döntéséről van szó, önhazugság.

Különben jó könyv. Őszinte, keresetlen, okos, pontos, kemény. (Önmagával szemben is az.) Hogy nem szeretem az elbeszélőjét, nyilván eltörpül ezek mellett az erények mellett.

Megj.: amikor egy fordító arra talál magyarítani egy angolszász nyelvi leleményt, hogy "csoszogó pacuha", kicsit megdöccenti az olvasói élményt. Lehet, hogy 20 éve ez egy trendi kifejezés volt, de mára az elhagyott vályogviskók dohszagát árasztja. És úgy hiszem, egy fordítónak azt is számba kell vennie (ha egy mód van rá), hogy az általa használt szavak évtizedes távlatban is elevenek maradnak-e. show less

I read this book in one sitting; I just could not put it down. This was also the first book by Philip Roth that I have read, and was absolutely floored. I am in love with his ability to craft sentences, and his easy allusions to great literature and music.

I went through a variety of emotions regarding Kepesh as the story progressed: I admired him, I despised him, and I ultimately pitied him. Consuela remains an unobtainable, unknowable enigma to me, as she was to Kepesh.

I was astonished at the unflinching honesty when it came to Kepesh's descriptions of sex and relationships.

I cannot wait to read more of this series.