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The Dying Animal
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth
7 posts | 20 read | 3 to read
David Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twenty-four, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when he left his wife and child, Kepesh has experimented with living what he calls an "emancipated manhood," beyond the reach of family or a mate. Over the years he has refined that exuberant decade of protest and license into an orderly life in which he is both unimpeded in the world of eros and studiously devoted to his aesthetic pursuits. But the youth and beauty of Consuela, "a masterpiece of volupt" undo him completely, and a maddening sexual possessiveness transports him to the depths of deforming jealousy. The carefree erotic adventure evolves, over eight years, into a story of grim loss. What is astonishing is how much of Americas post-sixties sexual landscape is encompassed in THE DYING ANIMAL. Once again, with unmatched facility, Philip Roth entangles the fate of his characters with the social forces that shape our daily lives. And there is no character who can tell us more about the way we live with desire now than David Kepesh, whose previous incarnations as a sexual being were chronicled by Roth in THE BREAST and THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE. A work of passionate immediacy as well as a striking exploration of attachment and freedom, THE DYING ANIMAL is intellectually bold, forcefully candid, wholly of our time, and utterly without precedent--a story of sexual discovery told about himself by a man of seventy, a story about the power of eros and the fact of death.
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review
Naz786
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Panpan

⭐️/5

review
Anchobi413
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Pickpick

As much as we want to romanticize our life as human beings, there are just things that are plain ugly. Whether we give into the ugly & somewhat natural temptation or just find ourselves thinking about them, Philip Roth captured & managed to tell it into a beautifully disturbing story. A book that may be testing us on our ability to face these realities rather than cringe and look away, I find myself picking up this book to re-read once in a while

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review
MaryJJ
L'animale morente | Philip Roth
Mehso-so

the expectations were very high but I do not know if they were fully satisfied.
the simple but ambiguous plot tells the story of a sex-obsessed professor who falls in love with Consuela. love ? I'm not sure. Consuela is the impersonation of his obsession and perhaps it is this that binds David.
☆☆\☆☆☆☆

1 comment
review
MaryJJ
L'animale morente | Philip Roth
Mehso-so

Le aspettattive erano molto alte e non sono ancora sicura che siano state soddisfatte appieno.
La trama alquanto semplice quanto ambigua lascia trasparire pian piano la storia di un professore che fa del sesso la sua ossessione. Non so se l'amore per Consuela sia autentico così come descritto cosa dovuta fatto che Consuela è l'impersonificazione della sua ossessione e forse è questo a legare David.

☆☆\☆☆☆☆

1 comment
review
scowler1
Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Pickpick

Short novel, my first by Philip Roth. Read in a single afternoon session and now I think I'll have to read the rest of his stuff. Excellent.

quote
GoneFishing
Dying Animal | Philip Roth

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

35 likes1 stack add
quote
GoneFishing
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

StacksNShelves My favorite. 8y
23 likes1 stack add1 comment