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.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
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
"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
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.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
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.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By JMack
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover
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.
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.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"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.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Bomojaz
Format: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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Different cover
I ordered this book thinking that I was going to receive this exact copy, however I did not. I received a copy that was much much older. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Squinter!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful, funny, surreal novella in the knowing tradition of Gogol...
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. Read more
Published 24 months ago by bobbygw
3.0 out of 5 stars
Roth as Kafka
This is more of a long short story than a novel. It is Roth's take on The Metamorphosis. Worth the read.
Published on October 6, 2008 by JR Pinto
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kafka goes Endocrinopathic
Mr. Roth asserts himself into the territory of metamorphosis when his protagonist awakens one morning and discovers that he has become a giant breast. Read more
Published on September 13, 2008 by Jeffrey C. Gillespie
4.0 out of 5 stars
painfully funny--I almost felt that I should be reading this only when...
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... Read more
Published on May 4, 2007 by Mr. Richard K. Weems
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weird
All that I will say about this little book is that it was written in the early 70s - and you can certainly tell. This is a truly bizarre book, yet interesting. Read more
Published on February 23, 2007 by Bradley Beightol
4.0 out of 5 stars
Grade B Roth
This is Roth's effort at being Kafka. But the transformation made here does not have the striking originality and effectiveness that Kafka's does. Read more
Published on January 19, 2005 by Shalom Freedman
4.0 out of 5 stars
funny & moving
philip roth's novella the breast is an absolutely enchanting read, while comparisons with kafka and gogol are inevitable, roth himself acknowledges it as the protagonist, a... Read more
Published on May 6, 2003 by madhu m
3.0 out of 5 stars
Slight but worthwhile
Ah, Phillip Roth. The dirty old man of American literature; if he didn't exist, someone would have surely created him. Read more
Published on September 19, 2001 by Jeffrey Ellis
3.0 out of 5 stars
Roth does Kafka
More a curiosity than great literature, and certainly not representative of the best Roth has to offer as a novelist. Read more
Published on May 27, 2001 by J. F Malysiak
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
