Customer Reviews

Professor of Desire

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Philip Roth's 1972 novella, "The Breast", a take-off on Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis", introduced us to David Kepesh, a professor of Literature, who one morning wakes to find himself transformed into an enormous mammary. David Kepesh reappears as the title character of Roth's 1979 novel, "The Professor of Desire". Besides borrowing characters from the earlier story, Roth works in lots of references to Kafka, includes a long episode describing Kepesh's pilgrimage to Kafka's grave in Prague, and at one point compares Kepesh's relation to his body to K.'s relation to the authorities of "The Castle":

". . . I can only compare the body's single-mindedness, its cold indifference and absolute contempt for the well-being of the spirit, to some unyielding, authoritarian regime. And you can petition it all you like, offer up the most heartfelt and dignified and logical sort of appeal - and get no response at all. If anything, a kind of laugh is what you get."

I wasn't able to buy all this Kafka business. To me it seemed pasted-on and extrinsic to the spirit of the rest of the novel. But this is quibbling. "The Professor of Desire" is a delightful story, in which Philip Roth exuberantly displays his many quite un-Kafkaesque gifts. First among them is a magical gift for characterization; it seems that every character in this novel, and there are many, springs effortlessly to life as a complete individual, from Herbie Bratasky on the first page to Mr. Barbatnik on the last.And then there's Roth's eerie gift for dialogue. His characters' words seem always to flow from their own personalities, not the author's, and their speeches are often masterpieces of comic invention.

Though perhaps it falls short of Roth's best, this is a wonderful book. I heartily recommend it.

David Kepesh, the aforementioned professor, towards the end of "Professor of Desire," contemplates the introductory lecture he is to deliver to his class on comparative literature:

"Indiscreet, unprofessional, unsavory as portions of these disclosures will surely strike some of you, I nonetheless would like, with your permission, to go ahead now and give an open account to you of the life I formerly led as a human being. I am devoted to fiction, and I assure you that in time I will tell you whatever I may know about it, but in truth nothing lives in me like my life."

This passage may as well be an introduction to this book, one of Roth's most potent and stirring novels from his earlier days. Through the chronicles of David Kepesh's early life, Roth examines the paradoxes of love and desire, the bridges between literature and life, and our nearly-lunatic search for identity.

In this book, we follow Roth's familiar character David Kepesh from his childhood in the Catskills hotel owned by his parents, to a post-college year of sexual freedom in Scandinavia, to a tempestuous/disastrous marriage to Helen Baird, followed by a winter of despair, and concluding with his relationship with Claire Ovington, marked by a love that is blemished by waning desire.

In the end, although more questions are posed than can ever be answered, Roth's novel can resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with the mysteries of love and self-discovery - namely, everyone. And along the way, the reader can revel in the wit, wry humor, and intellect adored by every Roth fan.

This is the first novel by Philip Roth that I actually like. Portnoy's Complaint was a good hundred-page novella, spread out over a three-hundred page book; the other pages were filled with the dross of his political opinions, and his kvetching about his parents. Operation Shylock was also too pre-occupied with pushing a political agenda (but just what agenda, we are never sure). This is Roth's primary fault as an author - he is too didactic. I find that I really don't care much about what Roth's political opinions are. Ironically, this is probably one of the attributes that make him a critical darling - it shows that he thinks "deep thoughts."

The Professor of Desire is blessedly free of politics. In it, Roth sticks with the subjects he knows best: sex and relationships. Young David Kepesh is a sexually frustrated young student. That changes while studying abroad in Swinging London, where he finds that what they say about Swedish girls is true. Things take a turn for the worse after the end of his disastrous marriage finds him crushed by loneliness in New York. With the help of a psychiatrist, Kepesh tries to discover if he will ever be able to commit to anyone or experience happiness.

The Professor of Desire finds Roth at a more mature place in his career. Gone is the odious kvetching about his parents that polluted so much of Portnoy's Complaint; the parents in this book are treated with sympathy. At one point, a character points out to Kepesh that there is no point in mining the workings of a Jewish family for his fiction anymore. He is also less homophobic in this novel - but not much so. There are still things about Roth's style that take getting used to; I don't think there's anything profound in his refusal to offset dialogue into separate paragraphs - it just makes it harder to keep track of who is speaking. However, The Professor of Desire is a short, lyrical novel that is the best of anything I've read of his so far.

Written in 1977, this is the second book by Philip Roth featuring David Kepesh, here a young man who is starting his career as a literature professor. As he pursues different women in different continents, the question always in his mind is if he should settle for marriage and love or for sex without commitment. A side trip to Prague is not only a homage to Kafka but one of the best passages of the book. By the next installment of Kepesh in the Dying Animal, written almost a quarter century later, he is a man in his sixties, who has chosen to live without a commitment and therefore now feels lonely and vulnerable to young women. Roth's stream of consciousness style is sometimes infuriating but often illuminating about the conflict between love and desire after the sexual revolution. Reading Roth can help you develop a quite realistic understanding of many aspects of the contemporary world, even if you find such aspects quite appalling.

To be an intellectual character in a Rothian novel is to be consigned to a life of reflection, self-analysis, self-doubt, and periods of unhappiness, all of which seem to be accentuated by being Jewish. David Kepesh, a thirty-something professor of literature, finds himself in a cabin rented for the summer in the Catskills, near his boyhood home, with twenty-something Claire Ovington, a teacher with qualities of wholesomeness, simple beauty, buxomness, openness, and imperturbability. Yet here he is, in a time of stability and happiness in his life, anticipating a time in the not too distant future when sensuality will disappear and total boredom will be all that is left.

By the time Kepesh, a smart Jewish kid, gets to college, he makes it his mission to be sexually forward with numerous coeds, the more innocent the better; his line being "Studious by day, dissolute by night." His success ratio is quite low. But it is during his time in England on a Fulbright grant that he discovers that his unrestrained carnal indulgences with a pair of Swedish girls turn damaging to one of the girls and to his studies. Later, while at Stanford pursuing his doctorate, Kepesh becomes consumed with Helen Baird, an exquisite California beauty who has traveled the Orient as a kept woman. Marrying Helen, despite all the warning signs of which he was well aware, results in both a divorce three years later and a loss of sexual desire for which he pays a New York psychiatrist a lot of money to sort through.

The writing, as in all of Roth's books, is simply unparalleled in its erudition and dialog, although that's not to say that the constant replay of Kepesh's conflicts and agonies does not get a bit tedious. Also, his indulgence in free format dialog at times leaves the reader guessing about the speaker's identity. Being a literature professor, Kepesh finds both Chekhov and Kafka pertinent to his dilemmas and visits the birthplace and resting place of Kafka in Prague with Claire. Kepesh has certainly been chastened and has mellowed from his fixations on bodily pleasures by the time he meets Claire, which makes it all the more difficult to understand in a highly intelligent, introspective man a persistence in tendencies towards self-destructiveness. I suppose Kepesh is teaching us something - just not sure what.

In THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE, Roth intertwines three subjects. These are the academic travails and career of professor David Kepesh; the struggle between the professor's lustful nature and his search for love in marriage; and the simultaneous closeness and distance that exists between the sophisticated professor Kepesh and his parents, who owned a hotel in the Catskills.

For each of these subjects, Roth shows a professor Kepesh who is highly conflicted. As a lustful young Fulbright scholar, for example, Kepesh connects to two Swedish college students. As a ménage a trois, they push the boundaries of sex, expressing a need deep in David. But in doing so, Kepesh loses his academic focus and becomes obsessed with the anguish the ménage inflicts on one partner. Later, Kepesh marries Helen, who is an image of female perfection and an apparent solution to his sexual and marital desires. But Helen is unhappy in mundane marriage and tortures David, makes him impotent, and causes him to behave strangely with his pupils. Ultimately, Kepesh is able to sublimate his intense sexual drive, creating a great-books course where sex is the preoccupation of each author. But such sophistication separates him from his salt-of-the-earth parents. And, it does nothing to accommodate professor Kepesh to the ordinariness of a steady relationship and mature love.

TPOD is an engrossing book but ultimately very sad, with Kepesh identifying dynamics in his life that resemble the literature of Chekov--where characters are quietly unsatisfied--and Kafka--where a blocked and distorted sexuality often energizes the narrative. Says the professor of desire: "And this life I love and have hardly gotten to know! And robbed by whom? It always comes down to myself!"

Reading `The Professor of Desire' is like trying to track down trails of rambling thoughts as one should have expected from reading Philip Roth, the pleasure one normally derives from the `effect' rather than the `cause', where the plots are generally almost non-existence in this work, instead all efforts are made to explore one individual's inner world through a series of trivial events and fragments, expand from his childhood into his adult life.

I can't say I have been successful in my attempt to fully understand the book, and neither I can claim thoroughly enjoy a good story -for there is none to begin with but if one should read carefully into the pagers, one may find Roth at his best for exploring the depths of human mind -I suppose that's where and why one is attracted to Roth in general, his strength in penetrating the deepest human side and relating such to his readers. David Kepesh, our professor of desire, has taken an odyssey of self-discovery and in pursuit for LOVE where he must overcome his own strong inner conflicts of constant longing of DESIRE, and at the end unable to find a balance between LOVE and DESIRE in term of breaching the gap. The relationship between LOVE and DESIRE may also let us draw a distinction between `WANT' and `NEED'. Life poses a series of struggles for the co existence of `WANT' and `NEED', where the `NEED' is more of a psycho-physical being predefined within us while `WANT' is what we expect ourselves to attain in life; and the quest for happiness in life lies in whether we can resort within ourselves a peaceful coexistence for the two.

I suspect in reality we must all more or less being predestined to let a bit of such human tragedy lives within us, to face choices for and between `WANT' and `NEED'. Not exactly always a personal choice to be made, like in David Kepesh's case, a person destined to fail in relationship, where fate offers no choice but the impossibility in breaching a gap between LOVE and DESIRE; any choice, one over the other, must surrender him insurmountable sacrifice while no single choice can render him any happiness. Some of us, I for one, should not find it a surprise to cope with this paradox in real life.

Philip Roth, I presume a master at his own game as his reputation warrants more credits than I can truly appreciate his talent. Either the philosophical means in this novel is too much beyond my comprehension or I am thinking way too much in term of substance this book never means to offer. To retract my earlier mentioned `cause' and `effect' about reading Roth, for I may not be the best person to pass this judgment base on having read only three of his books, first the `The Dying Animal', then `The Ghost Writer' and now this `The Professor of Desire'; given none of the three is said to best represent Roth except him being praised on achieving high quality in ALL his work.

Frankly speaking I can't find such impressiveness in any of the three books I read, and meanwhile, an inner voice keeps reminding me for reading more of him or a second-read on 'The Professor of Desire', in order to find new meaning and greatness I might have missed - can it be another case of `WANT' and `NEED' recurring into real life that I must get myself ready to do battle with Roth?

From his Jewish boyhood (early 50's) at his parent's resort hotel in the Catskills until age 58, we explore life with David Kepesh. Much of this experience concerns sex, failed relationships, family, and, uh, did I say sex?
David has become a literature professor and is a man trying to come to terms with who he is emotionaly; struggling with his desire but seeming inability to commit to a longterm relationship.
The writing, dialogue and characters are all perfect.
Each time period and locale transports you there, eagerly, grateful to be able to see and feel and taste every word Roth uses.
There is not an uninteresting sentence in the book. I'll go so far as to say every word was perfect and was placed exactly where it should have been to make this read exhilarating.
The dry humor is pure joy. The interpersonal relationship insights are breathtakingly real and refreshing - often despairing and painful, often hilarious, often tender and beautiful - just plain magnificent in scope. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
I loved this book. Loved every single minute reading this book. One of my favorites and highly recommend it. A great book to pick up after finishing "The Ghost Writer" - another superb read.

In his earliest works, Roth shows many of the same qualities and themes that made him a successful writer. In "The Professor of Desire", David Kepesh is a gifted young man who hits all the bumps in the road of life. While much of the focus is on Kepesh's love life, his professional and family life are entangled with his love life. At his choice, his romantic relationship become the focus.

Finding love is never easy. As is the case David's first love Helen, early instincts of love are often misguided. Fragmented by the failure of his first marriage, David then finds Claire. With his emotions no longer distracting from his professional life, David is able to be honest with himself. He tracks the life of Kafka in Eastern Europe, meeting the former [mistress] of Kafka which helps to place his own love life in perspective, only to have it confused by a returning Helen. There would seem no better way than to put one's personal crisis aside than to compare it to the great human tragedy of the Holocaust. It is not until the final pages that Roth's literary device makes sense.

In the scope of Roth's work, "The Professor of Desire" is a very raw work that shows the promise of his later career. Like many of Roth's characters, David Kepish's life is spiraling out of control. The overall storytelling and humor make this a great read. The weak ties between the conflicts leave a certain degree of doubt about the author's intent and leave a dissatisfactory payoff.

David Kepesh, the aforementioned professor, towards the end of "Professor of Desire," contemplates the introductory lecture he is to deliver to his class on comparative literature:

"Indiscreet, unprofessional, unsavory as portions of these disclosures will surely strike some of you, I nonetheless would like, with your permission, to go ahead now and give an open account to you of the life I formerly led as a human being. I am devoted to fiction, and I assure you that in time I will tell you whatever I may know about it, but in truth nothing lives in me like my life."

This passage may as well be an introduction to this book, one of Roth's most potent and stirring novels from his earlier days. Through the chronicles of David Kepesh's early life, Roth examines the paradoxes of love and desire, the bridges between literature and life, and our nearly-lunatic search for identity.

In this book, we follow Roth's familiar character David Kepesh from his childhood in the Catskills hotel owned by his parents, to a post-college year of sexual freedom in Scandinavia, to a tempestuous/disastrous marriage to Helen Baird, followed by a winter of despair, and concluding with his relationship with Claire Ovington, marked by a love that is blemished by waning desire.

In the end, although more questions are posed than can ever be answered, Roth's novel can resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with the mysteries of love and self-discovery - namely, everyone. And along the way, the reader can revel in the wit, wry humor, and intellect adored by every Roth fan.