The Dying Animal

I read Philip Roth's first few books then missed a couple of decades. Upon joining an online discussion group I read this book and find he has become just another old goat looking for young poon. Is he vying for that rascal Henry Miller`s mantle as Dirty Old Man of American Letters? I know that art can be about anything but an essay on the changes in society over the last forty years would have sufficed. Like many Woody Allen fans I prefer the older, funnier work.Roth is a fine writer and unlike some best selling authors he does have a lot to say. I just could not get past the story of a twenty year old entering into a liaison with a senior citizen. As young coeds in the sixties, my friends and I would never entertain such thoughts about even the youngest instructors. "He must be at least thirty and probably married." We had plenty of callow frat boys buzzing around who didn't know anything about anything and it suited us just fine.Attending college in Canada, the Vietnam War did not really affect us except for the occasional kid with a Yank accent panhandling on the street. Draft dodgers. We kept our distance because American boys had a reputation for being fast..... By the seventies I was safely married sat on the sidelines during the devolution of the freedom movement into the disco era. That generation jettisoned the ideology and kept the drugs. A writer of Roth's stature would have no end of groupies willing to sit at his feet or do anything else he wanted. It was amusing when he invoked the US Constitution to bolster his case for doing exactly as he pleased. Rogering as an Inalienable Right.His alter ego in the book is not an altogether hopeless case. Anyone as erudite and cultured as David Kepesh cannot be all bad. I found it endearing that he persisted with his piano playing even though he kept hitting wrong notes. He was truly attached to his friend George and went out of his way to make his last days meaningful even though it was an exercise in futility. We are all wary of being smothered by the very people from whom we seek comfort. Intimacy is fraught with danger. But being alone has pitfalls as well as pleasures.Having a peek beneath David's detached exterior it gives the reader hope that he will extend himself to the ailing Consuela. The affair that caused him to regress into adolescent jealousy and possessiveness may enable him to finally grow up. He only has to take the opportunity to redeem himself.

Mention Philip Roth to almost any literate woman and you'll hear a howl of outrage. "A male chauvinist pig, an unrepentant Don Giovanni, a loathsome narcissist stroking his ego and thinking it's his shlang! Or vice-versa." I'll wager very few woman readers get past the first ten pages of The Dying Animal. Honestly, I almost tossed the book myself, being more or less post-erotic and easily bored by other people's lust. But I soldiered on. I'm not unhappy I did. It's a book to love and hate with equal fervor, because it's about a "self" that one must love and hate with open eyes. Roth is often taken as a paragon of self-adulation, and his character in this novel -- a drama critic named David Krepesh -- anoints himself to be the ultimate evolutionary product of sexual liberation while simultaneously portraying himself as a hopeless victim of sexual obsession. Sex is life; sex is death.Alas, Roth's depiction of Krepesh as a hero/victim of the 60s jibes achingly with my own memory-image of myself in the throes of the "sexual revolution." I despise Krepesh. I am Krepesh. (Or I was Krepesh then and would probably still be Krepesh today except for etc.) Yeah, the book is literary smut, but so is life. And then it turns out to be just what the title proclaims: a book about Death. With highly amusing interpolations and meanderings. It's just 150 pages. You might give it a shot.

Roth is one of our greatest authors; his prose is not like any others in contemporary writings. His plots are so varied - I have read almost all his books and even if I am not in love with each plot, I must say they all surprise me. The main character is a mysteryin the beginning but by the middle, he is exposed and the beat goes on after that. The twists and turns kept me interested from thebeginning and I must say I did not want it to end. One has to be open to his sex scenes or they might be offended. I was notoffended as they fit nicely in the plot. I recommend this book as it is an excellent read.This is only a note on how much I enjoyed it but not wanting to give away the plot, I must say the plot was filled with insight into one man, his family and his lovers lives. By attempting to avoid outing himself he shows the pain he instills on others and mostly himself.

I greatly enjoyed the main character. It reads more as an inner monologue than a novel - almost at times like an essay or even a lecture, which makes sense, given the narrator's profession. Other characters are primarily props in his lesson - introduced for a purpose then dismissed when that purpose has been fulfilled. The narrator's discussion and reflections on sexual relationships and interactions between men and women are superb, and if you're of the right frame of mind, it's hard not to nod your head. Nevertheless, despite his emancipation from the slow death of a married life, he still finds himself trapped - drawn to a particular woman like a moth to a flame, and everything, including his self-esteem, is out the door. Is it because, as he asserts, his own mortality is staring him in the face, or is it something more? In the end, no amount of possession would ever be enough, with age both granting him the wisdom to recognize his ideal and denying him the ability to have anything but a secret or openly absurd (in his mind, at least) relationship. Many good quotes here!

As he approached the end of his career (and life), Philip Roth gave us a series of brilliantly conceived, often succinct, often meditative, novels, such as Everyman, Indignation and Nemesis and 2001’s The Dying Animal fits this same mould. Here, we have another Roth protagonist, the now ageing TV personality and academic, David Kapesh, reflecting on his maverick lifestyle, as divorcee and (past) serial bedder of his female students, with a particular focus on his obsessive relationship with the Cuban object of his desire and 40 years his junior, Consuela (memorably evoked by the novel’s cover depiction of Modigliani’s Reclining Nude). Roth was increasingly adept at summing up the key, real elements of the human (male) condition – here, understandably, the disorienting effects of sexual obsession and, by reference to both his narrator and Consuela, mortality – using flowing and on the mark prose and The Dying Animal is exemplary in this respect. This short novel may not have quite the unexpurgated, in your face, appeal of either Portnoy’s Complaint or Sabbath’s Theater, but I’m not really sure we would expect it to. Instead, we have arguably a more perfectly formed example of Roth at his mature peak.

Should be compulsory reading for all young girls and all middle aged men. …… and middle aged women! to remind themselves that despite the universal delusion of being a civilized and evolved species we are,quite simply animals,and the pain and suffering to the human soul when we forget this or consider that we are superior to the more basic instincts is beautifully portrayed, stripped back …… acutely relevant to our narcissistic society. It has been made into a classic movie …Elegy, starring a remarkable Ben Kingsley and a surprisingly good Penelope Cruz. Both the book and the movie are so good that I can honestly say that uniquely it doesn't matter if you watch the movie before reading the book or vice versa. Buy it, read it and re-read it.

I like these shorter Roth novels, because he always seems at his naughtiest and most daring best. This story of the really middle aged professor and his sexual attraction to a much younger woman is typical Roth, and it is easy to see why it got him into hot water. All in all, daring, explicit and at times beautifully written.

Excellently written and thought provoking. As an apologia for sexual irresponsibility and inappropriate relationships with troublesome age differences I found it unconvincing. It is nonetheless an intelligent, if self-indulgent and egocentric, piece of introspection on the human condition. However, for me it uncomfortably blurs lines; when does a manipulative adult educator become a sexual predator? I do not believe the American male psyche is as one dimensional, misogynistic, or impoverished as Roth would have us believe.

Great book and unexpected twist on expectations one has on love. The film ‘Elegy’ brings the book to life.