Barely a year after The Human Stain, the triumphant closing of his trilogy of post-war America, Roth is back with a coda, a short book in which he resurrects an earlier character: David Kepesh, the man who wanted to turn into a breast and whose life history we heard in The Professor of Desire (1977). We last saw Kepesh, the son of Catskill Mountain resort operators, established in academia with one disastrous marriage behind him. In a moment of supreme self-knowledge, looking at the body of the woman he loves, he recognises that his desire for her won't be sustained - that passion will turn to duty, and that he is both powerless to prevent this sexual boredom in himself and unwilling to contemplate the hypocrisy of adulterous married life.
Kepesh is now in his 60s, still an academic but nominally a celebrity, at least in New York, for his role as a cultural critic on public-service TV and radio. His creed remains his own declaration of sexual independence, pointing out to his estranged, disapproving son that America itself is founded on freedoms, so why constrain yourself? "Because only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are defeated in life purely if momentarily revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself."
The Dying Animal (Movie Tie-in Edition/Elegy) by Philip Roth - Trade Paperback - Random House. Guide.
The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Philip Roth’s *The Dying Animal*.
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