The Breast

This book was suggested to me during a discussion about an irksome segment of the 20thC literary canon: middle-aged male Americans obsessed with adultery, daddy issues or declining sexual appetite, usually relayed through obnoxiously academic or otherwise “intellectual” main characters, who think their navel-gazing is Such Serious Business. My example was John Updike; a friend suggested this novella by Philip Roth as a fun example of the subgenre.

And fun it was: The breast deals indeed with an aging American academic who is full of himself and who is obsessed with grandstanding through bragging about his intelligence and his sexual prowess. One day, though, he finds he has transformed into a female breast unattached to a body, an show more excessively grotesque development which leads to an unholy amount of introspection.

The fun part is that the novella is run through with a layer of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness: Roth walks the line between playing the subgenre straight and highlighting its pathological absurdity. Its over-the-top quality is what saves it: I don’t think it would have worked if any of it were any less outrageous. show less

Kafka for the 20th Century, this is not. What The Breast is is one of the most hilarious explorations of the occurrence of the utterly absurd ever written, almost as if it were a cross between "The Metamorphosis" and The Stranger.

What's most fascinating is that the reader never questions the conceit of the novella: we never once doubt that Kepesh can hear, speak, or even think. And it is this delicate balance between the sublimely ridiculous and the perfectly normal that Roth handles so well here.

The evolution of Kepesh's thoughts regarding "This" (what he calls his transformation) are completely natural and very human: from contemplating his situation to the awkwardness of sexual satisfaction to, eventually, the very nature of his show more reality.

And by the end, as Kepesh finds himself forced to deal, somehow, with his new reality, we have realized that this novel, which more or less pretends to be about a giant breast, is actually a lucid and fascinating exploration of the human condition. That, and it's positively hilarious to boot. show less

Only Philip Roth could tell this story of a middle aged man who metamorphoses into a 155 pound breast. Yes, you read that right. This is unlike any other novel I have read by Roth due to its Kafkaesque nature. What does it mean to change from a person to an object? Roth is somehow able to do the question justice with wit and psychological depth. Wonderful novella!

I really do believe that Philip Roth has some issues with sexuality that somebody needs to work with him on. The Breast is an updated Metamorphosis - but more nauseatingly absurd and with less to be said about it. Is it about our society's fixation on sexuality, particularly female sexuality? How men are rendered helpless by the female form? Is it just absurd for its own sake? In any case, it was disconcerting and unpleasant to read

Premise: A man is transformed in a Kafkaesque manner into an enormous breast. With a plot as seemingly silly as this, it's a little hard to imagine The Breast being a serious novella about self-control, insanity, and sexuality - and yet that's what it is. Not Philip Roth's best work by a long shot, but worth checking out if you're looking for a short, quirky read that's light-hearted yet thought-provoking.

This is a short novella by Philip Roth and like Kafka and Gogol, the narrator becomes something else. He becomes a 155 lb female breast. While a cockroach is disgusting and a nose would be odd at least it doesn't require clothing, a breast is sexual and generally kept covered. I will quote, "Roth has a genius for making everything potentially beautiful and joyful filthy and disgusting. . . . Roth writes dirty books, not pornography." https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-New-Fable-for-Critics%3A-Philip-Roth%27s.... There is a good deal of sexual writing that I did not appreciate. The question is, did Roth write this to make some quick money, did he sit down and think, I can write something like Kafka and Gogol. Not long. Fast to the show more publisher. The Breast is concluded with a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo". The last line, "You must change your life." The breast is an object, a thing that really is just passive. It is not fully human. The breast cannot communicate much on how it feels other than arousal. To live life, you must become more that a statue, you must be active, make changes. show less

Typical middle-aged white male literary angst (bored with attractive younger mistress, not taken seriously by work colleagues, etc), with a weird, Kafka-esque twist. I'm still deciding what I think about this one - though, since it's the holiday season, I will say that it'd definitely be an interesting (read: ill-advised) gift. I can only imagine what the recipient would assume was being implied by the choice.