Arts

ffilf
i

RESTAU RANT
MID•EASTERN, CHALDEAN
& AMERICAN

• Lambchops • Lamb Shish Kabob
• White Fish Curry • Tabouleh • Hommus
• Vegetarian Entrees • Fresh Catch
• Chicken Shawarma • Etc.
• Fresh Juice Bar • Cocktails and Wine

ertaiument

On The Bookshelf

Back To `The Breast'

For Philip Roth's sex-obsessed bad boy,
growing old is anything but graceful.

6123 HAGGERTY RD. OUST N. OF MAPLE)
BLOOMFIELD AVENUE SHOPS
WEST BLOOMFIELD

(248) 668-1800

27060 EVERGREEN (AT 11 MILE & EVERGREEN)
LATHRUP LANDING
LATHRUP VILLAGE

DIANE COLE
Special to the Jewish News

(248) 559-9099
COUPON GOOD AT BOTH LOCATIONS

1

150% OFF1

Lunch or Dinner

With purchase of a second lunch or
dinner entree of equal or greater value

I • Dine In Only

• 1Coupon Per Couple I
• Not Valid With other Offers
• Expires 12/31/2001
Im mom EEO ME MEM ME MOM MI

Catering For All Occasions

"THE BEST FRESH

nor

SAPPORO

Japanese Restaurant

-

Lunch Special Bento $6.75
Sushi Lunch Special $7.95
Dinner Special
(Teriyaki or Tempura)
2 For Only $19.95

1•

:5% OFF YOUR BILL

(Dinner Only) I
a

8835 Orchard Lake Rd., West Bloomfield, Ml 48322

(at Did Orchard Mall, Farmer Jack Center)

(248) G26-8111

f Philip Roth has one trademark character, it's the
Jewish intellectual as sexual bad boy. The complaining
Portnoy is only one of Roth's many fictional personae,
all of whom make a habit of breaking the rules, both
sexual and social.
Moreover, because Roth the novelist positively glories in
breaking the literary rules, by deliberately confusing fact with
fiction, readers have often confused the "real" Roth — just
named by Time magazine as America's best novelist — with
the libidinous characters he invents.
And no wonder. In 1974, in My Life As a Man, Roth creat-
ed an autobiographical-sounding novel about a Jewish, sex-
obsessed novelist named Peter Tarnopol who, in turn, wrote
autobiographical-sounding stories about a Jewish, sex-
obsessed writer named Nathan Zuckerman. This same
Zuckerman has appeared in many of Roth's subsequent
books, including my favorite of all Roth's works, the
Zuckerman Bound trilogy of the 1980s.
This provocatively playful muddling of the boundaries
between fact and fiction is just as evident in Roth's recently
completed trilogy of thematically related novels — American
Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain —
in which Zuckerman plays a supporting role, as an analytical-
ly observant narrator.
Now, in The Dying Animal (Houghton ivlifflin;156 pp.;
$23), a brief, gritty tale of sexual obsession, Roth brings back
to fictional life another character who appears to share cer-
tain attributes with the author himself: David Kepesh, a
licentious writer who has traveled as far as he can, emotional-
ly and intellectually, from the Catskills hotel his Jewish
immigrant parents once owned and where he grew up.
Roth's invention of Kepesh dates to the 1972 novella, The
Breast. In a clever turn on Kafka's Metamorphosis (in which
Gregor Samsa turns into a giant beetle), Roth's character is mys-
teriously transformed into a giant female breast. It's up to the
reader to decide whether Kepesh is mad, or merely dreaming.
In any case, Roth made no mention of this episode when he
revived Kepesh as the main character of his 1977 novel, The
Professor of Desire. Perhaps there was no need to, since this novel
traced Kepesh's growing up and young adulthood as "a rake
,
among scholars, a scholar among rakes,> a saga that both pre-
dates and perhaps foreshadows his fantastical transformation.
Nor does Roth mention Kepesh's bizarre makeover in The
Dying Animal — an oversight that some readers may think a
flaw. But, for reasons I'll get to momentarily, I believe that
this seeming omission was not only deliberate, but in fact
adds resonance to all three books that make up what we now
may call the Kepesh trilogy.
As The Dying Animal opens, Kepesh is a 70-year old roue
long used to parlaying his role as a celebrity cultural critic into
a sophisticated ruse to seduce his female college students.

Diane Cole is author of the memoir 'After Great Pain: A New
Life Emerges" and book editor of the health magazine "In Touch."

7/20
2001

74

In all his years of perfecting and practicing his cold-blood-
ed technique for bedding without ever wedding his youthful
conquests, only once did he find himself drawn into a web
from which he could not escape. That snare had been cast
eight years before, Kepesh recounts, by the 24-year-old
Cuban beauty Consuela Castillo.
Kepesh never pretends to have cared for, or cared about,
any aspect of Consuela other than her body. Her intellect,
taste, and conversation he regards as altogether ordinary. As
one might expect from one of Roth's smart Jewish bad boys,

"Time" maga-
zine .on Philip
Roth, pictured,
whom the
:cation recently
named as
'America's best
novelist: "He has
delighted and
triated read-
ers for Jo' ur
decades. And as
his recent novels
show, he's still in
command."

Kepesh finds Consuela's exotic background of interest, but
only because it titillates him.
Ostensibly to avoid being hounded by gossip columnists
(Kepesh is a recognizable TV celebrity, remember), they
almost never go out together, nor do they reveal their
involvement to anyone. No, their affair is strictly, obsessively
limited to sex. And in particular, Kepesh is obsessed with
Consuela's breasts.
Kepesh believes in neither religion nor love, only in art and
in sex. Lacking faith in any connection with another beyond
the purely physical, Kepesh has spent decades fixated on the
getting and giving of sensual pleasure.
His expertise is great, but it is purely mechanical, and his
overwhelming need for Consuela at first stuns and then
engulfs him. He becomes jealous, possessive, in a constant
sweat that she will dump him.
And, after she does, he descends into despair, spending his
time morbidly fantasizing not so much about her, as about
the individual parts of her body, and especially her breasts.
But that is not the end of the story. After several years of
silence, Consuela calls in desperate need of Kepesh. She is
suffering from breast cancer; the surgeon must remove one

