Customer Reviews

The Breast

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Being a fan of Kafka's work as well as Roth, I was intrigued by this quite bizarre concept. As I read the book it not only reminded me of Kafka's "Metamorphisis", but it also brought to mind Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" with its theme of the loss of self.

This book is designed to be somewhat of a parody of "Metamorphisis", yet it takes Kafka's story from a different angle. While Kafka's story focuses on a general theme of isolation and loneliness, Roth further develops his recurring character Robert Kepesh's sense of sexual frustration. Along the way, Kepesh struggles with whether he really is a breast while being visited by Claire, his father, and a less than sympathetic colleague. With these visits, he tries to accomodate his new status with continuing a normal life. Yet we never seem to grasp the motive or reason for Kepesh's change.

"The Breast" is certainly a strange work in the scope of Philip Roth's writing. Many who enjoy his other works may be repulsed by the image of this book. While it is certainly not a recognized as some of this other writings, I believe it is near the pinnacle of his list of works.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

- opening sentence of "The Metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka Gregor had it easy compared to Professor David Kepesh, a college professor who wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a gigantic breast, in Philip Roth's aptly-titled "The Breast."

"It began oddly," Roth starts the 89-page book, and from the opening sentence readers are plunged into the new world of Kepesh.

Refreshingly enough, Roth refrains from turning "The Breast" into an extended pornographic joke. Instead, he spends his time exploring David's state of mind- how would you feel if you suddenly transformed into a giant mammary gland?- which makes for an interesting psychological drama.

First, David describes the experience of being a breast as though he does not quite believe it himself: Is it all a dream? How is he able to communicate with the others around him? Where'd his face go?

Later, David's mentality changes, first to a perverted interest in a female nurse who washes him, then utter paranoia that he is under constant surveillance while in his hospital room, and finally a blatant refusal to accept his condition and the belief that he has gone mad.

Things degenerate to the point where Kepesh believes he cannot hear his doctors' actual diagnoses; because of his "insanity" he only hears what he wants to hear.

Throughout all this, we see how David's wife, Claire, deals with her husband's new state, as well as the reactions from his father, his doctors and nurses, and his mentor, who collapses in giggles at the sight of David the Breast.

"The Breast" is one big fat Franz Kafka admiration camp, where all the questions about

"The Metamorphosis" apply. Is David really a breast? Or is he mentally insane? Is he really being watched?

But the Kafka homage doesn't end there. Kepesh mentions strained relations with his father. Gregor's daddy wasn't a picnic either. Kepesh also calls the two hairs growing from his nipple his "antennae."

At one point, David even comments that most of the characters' names begin with the letter "K".

To which his doctor, Dr. Klinger, replies, "The alphabet only has twenty-six letters. And there are four billion of us in need of initials for purposes of identification."

It's a smart book, one's that's certainly different from the usual literary offerings. It's certainly a concept film director Spike Jonze should contemplate following "Being John Malkovich" up with.

It's a wild, short ride of a tale and one worth taking just for the sheer spectacle of it all.

Phillip Roth opened the door to many readers with this illusional essay on a human transforming into a human breast and describing all of the stimulus that a female erotically invites. With this work of art, Roth welcomed me into his world of descriptive narrative and made me a fan for life. This should be a stepping stone unto other Roth works such as the"Professor of Desire". I have yet to read another novel as eccentrically interesting.

This is more of a long short story than a novel. It is Roth's take on The Metamorphosis. Worth the read.

The allusions to Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in comparison to this work seem a little easy and not altogether reliable--yes, there is a transformation, but the result of the transformation goes a little more in the way of Gogol's "The Nose," how the aftermath becomes more comical and grounded in social satire, than through the family exploration of Kafka. Roth, no doubt, had some sense of this when he referenced Gogol in the work itself, but I tend to look at this work a light closer to Trumbo's _Johnny Got His Gun_, with the subject matter exploring more of the sexual revolution than war. Trumbo may be a little more heavy-handed, but the lack of limbs in Kepesh when he transforms into a gigantic mammory gland, and his limited perception of and contact with the outside world, make this work more akin to Trumbo with a sprinkling of Gogol.

But one thing is never in doubt--and that this book is FUNNY. Roth has an amazing handle of comedy on the page--a tough craft to master, mind you. This read is very short and quick, but it sure gives you some images to haunt and humor you for a long time. Kepesh's sudden sexual voraciousness and his lapses into hysteria and out-and-out psychosis, all while burbling about as a giant breast in a makeshift bra in a hospital bed, are the very stuff of sexual revolution, the sensual and boundlessness of desire overtaking the stuffy life of the mind that Kepesh had allowed himself to fall into. A breast that cries and screams and develops a desire for women to use its nipple for their pleasure? I would be surprised if no graphic novelist has considered making this work visual--that would be either a failure of imagination, or simply a certain amount of illiteracy.

_The Breast_ is an early work from a man who has found the most admirable essence of the American spirit--somewhat crude, almost perverse, but readily able to ponder life's deeper issues and nobility. A good read that easily lends itself to more exploration of this master.

This is one of my favourite Roth fictions and has the sort of funny, mad, energetic exuberance of Portnoy's Complaint, while being much more absurd and surreal in its premise. There is nothing else quite like it in Roth's oeuvre. From the opening line 'It began oddly.', you are drawn into a first-person story told by David Kepesh, a literary professor (and the principal character in two subsequent novels by Roth, The Professor of Desire, and The Dying Animal (Movie Tie-In Edition) (Vintage International)). It is wondefully comical, addresses both serious and fantastical issues, and all the while is utterly intriguing and intelligently done.

David Kepesh, as the title of the novella makes clear, finds himself turning into a human breast, '[...] an organism with the general shape of a football, or a dirigible; [...] weighing one hundred and fifty-five pounds [...] and measuring, still, six feet in length.' The story deliberately and knowingly plays on two classic stories of the absurd: Kafka's most famous and brilliant, The Metamorphosis Thrift Study Edition (Dover Thrift), in which Gregor Samsa struggles, denies, and agonises over coming to terms with his turning into a beetle, and Nikolai Gogol's The Nose, an equally absurd tale, in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, where the character, Major Kovalyov, finds his nose abandons his face one day, and begins to assume a life of its own, much to Kovalyov's chagrin.

While Roth could have made this story simply absurd and comical (and it succeeds on those levels alone, especially the relentless, obsessive sexual fantasies and agonies Kepesh experiences, wanting to have intercourse and oral sex using his nipple), what is impressive is the serious, angst-ridden, matter-of-fact way in which Kepesh tries vainlessly, and painfully, to rationalise his situation, believing at one point that he is simply dreaming, another that he is suffering some terrible mental breakdown, and even that, because he believes he taught Gogol and Kafka's work with such conviction, it resulted in him becoming a breast (a lovely satiric dig at Kepesh's/certain academics' belief in their own brilliance and their ability to make an impact on their world through teaching).

Highly recommended for fans of the absurd, fantastical, and joyfully original fiction. The only caveat - frankly, a gripe - is the cost of this novella (as well as other paperback editions); after all - 96 pages for $12.95 RRP, admittedly generously discounted by 27% by Amazon to $9.42. Fair enough, there's the age-old argument that it's not the 'quantity', but the 'quality' that counts, but I would normally hope that, for this sort price and paltry number of pages, to expect a beautiful physical object/high-quality edition, such as those by, for example, Hesperus Press and Europa, with their French wrapper jackets and quality paper. But please don't take this moan as a justification not to purchase the title - it really is such an original, terrific read, it's still worth the price, as far as I'm concerned!

Mr. Roth asserts himself into the territory of metamorphosis when his protagonist awakens one morning and discovers that he has become a giant breast.

While the novella is well written and provocative, the hero of the piece tries very hard to use his feminine context to assert himself in a distinctly masculine way. As a result does not manage to transcend the masturbatory, and remains a fetishistic curiosity. We can thank Mr. Roth for creating a literary stepping-stone between Kafka and later books on transformation, like Euginides' "Middlesex", but not for anything more.