Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka’s protagonist turned into a giant beetle, the narrator of Philip Roth’s richly conceived fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast. What follows is a deliriously funny yet touching exploration of the full implications of Kepesh’s metamorphosis—a daring, heretical book that brings us face to face with the intrinsic strangeness of sex and subjectivity. “The Breast is terrific . . . inventive and sane and very funny. The trick which is the heart of the book is brilliant . . . and rich with meaning.”—John Gardner, The New York Times Book Review “Hilarious, serious, visionary, logical, sexual-philosophical; the ending amazes—the joke takes three steps beyond savagery and satire and turns into a sublimeness of pity. One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture.”—Cynthia Ozick
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A radical, complex, and moving book...the best example yet of Roth's astonishing prowess when he is at the top of his talent and control." —Ted Solotaroff, Esquire
"A new shock world of sensual possibility.... Need one say again that Roth is an admirable novelist who never steps twice into the same river?" —Anthony Burgess
"The Breast is terrific...inventive and sane and very funny. The trick which is the heart of the book is brilliant...and rich with meaning." —John Gardner, The New York TImes Book Review
"Hilarious, serious, visionary, logical, sexual-philosophical; the ending amazes—the joke takes three steps beyond savagery and satire and turns into a sublimeness of pity. One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture." —Cynthia Ozick --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
"A new shock world of sensual possibility.... Need one say again that Roth is an admirable novelist who never steps twice into the same river?" —Anthony Burgess
"The Breast is terrific...inventive and sane and very funny. The trick which is the heart of the book is brilliant...and rich with meaning." —John Gardner, The New York TImes Book Review
"Hilarious, serious, visionary, logical, sexual-philosophical; the ending amazes—the joke takes three steps beyond savagery and satire and turns into a sublimeness of pity. One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture." —Cynthia Ozick --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a giant beetle, the narrator of Philip Roth's richly conceived fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast. What follows is a deliriously funny yet touching exploration of the full implications of Kepesh's metamorphosis?a daring, heretical book that brings us face to face with the intrinsic strangeness of sex and subjectivity.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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More About the Author
In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient." In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians Award for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003--2004." In 2007 Roth received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Identifying with the absurd,
By Bomojaz (South Central PA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Breast (Paperback)
What should David Kepesh make of the fact that he's been transformed into a human breast? That's the premise of this Kafkaesque short novel (perhaps better thought of as a long short story). And of course as Kepesh deals with his own identity crisis (after the to-be-expected "why me!?" outburst, he questions the nature of reality, thinks he might just be insane, and finally is forced to face the fact that he indeed is a breast), other characters must deal with his transformation as well. Some of the most humorous scenes involve his academic colleague sending him tapes of "Hamlet" and his father acting as if his son is just suffering from a temporary illness. Although carrying it too far into the extreme, Roth's point in the book is that nothing in life is a sure bet, and that the totally absurd often becomes one's reality and must be accepted as such. Point well taken, but as a novel there isn't much else going on besides Kepesh accepting and internalizing this single idea, which makes it better thought of as a short story. Good, but not a major Roth achievement.
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Roth does Kafka,
By
This review is from: The Breast (Paperback)
More a curiosity than great literature, and certainly not representative of the best Roth has to offer as a novelist. For that, you're better off picking up a copy of "American Pastoral". What works here is the sheer audacity of Roth's style and the effortless flow of his narrative."The Breast" is the first in a trilogy completed by the recently published "The Dying Animal". Professor of comparative literature David Kepesh wakes up one day to discover himself in the hospital, having been transformed into a 155-pound female breast. The ensuing 89 pages depict his rationalization for such a sudden and drastic change, his trying to convince himself and others - his girlfriend, his father, his doctor, and a university mentor - that he has only gone insane, and his quest to satiate an ever-present, raging libido. None of this really amounts to much and it certainly isn't great literature. I kept expecting it all to come to some elevated meaning. It doesn't. But that aside, I did enjoy reading it, found myself cracking a grin or two, and as ever with Roth, I was in awe of the flow of his narrative and the strength of his voice. It's an hour or two's diversion but by no means much more than that. Bottom line - not bad, but not earth-shakingly good. For that, crack open "American Pastoral", which is in my opinion one of the greatest American novels of the 2nd half of the 20th century.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Slight but worthwhile,
By
This review is from: The Breast (Paperback)
Ah, Phillip Roth. The dirty old man of American literature; if he didn't exist, someone would have surely created him. Ironically enough, that someone would probably be one of the people who find him and his work to be terribly offensive. At times, Roth seems to be writing specifically to offend, as if he knows that without his dirty thoughts, a lot of self-appointed puritans would have a lot less outrage to keep their days active. Certainly, The Breast is a book that superficially seems to be designed specifically to offend delicate sensibilities. The book's narrator wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into a huge female breast. The rest of this rather short book (I completed it in a little less than an hour) is devoted to detailing how this one man adjusts to his new life as a breast. Though Roth never goes for any glib explanations as to how or why this transformation took place, one can't help but get the feeling that the narrator -- so obsessed with sex -- finally just transformed into that which he had become fixated. However, one can't also help but feel that this explanation is a result of reading too much into Roth's whimsical, deadpan fable. Anyway, as for the meat-and-bones of this review, this is a book that I have to recommend to all Phillip Roth fans and to anyone with an affinity for bizarre, off-center satire. If you don't like Roth, you probably won't care much for this book. As well, this is not a book to read if you're looking for an introduction to Phillip Roth. Though amusing, its certainly not anywhere near his best work.
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