David Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York College, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twentyfour, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder and haunts him for the next eight years. Since the sexual revolution of the 196...
David Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York College, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twentyfour, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder and haunts him for the next eight years. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s freed him from his wife and child, Kepesh has experimented with living what he calls an 'emancipated manhood' beyond the reach of family or a mate. Over the years, he has refined that exuberant decade of protest and licence into an orderly way of life in which he is both unimpeded in the world of Eros and studiously devoted to his aesthetic pursuits. But the youth and beauty of this 'newly-hatched' woman - 'a masterpiece,' as Kepesh describes Consuela, 'of volupte' - undo him completely. His worldliness, his confidence, his reason desert him, and on the brink of old age, a maddening sexual possessiveness transports him to the depths of deforming jealousy. The light-hearted erotic tale with which he began evolves into a poignant, tragic story of love and loss. The Dying Animal is vintage Roth fiction, a masterpiece of passionate immediacy. It is intellectually bold, forcefully candid, wholly of our time, and utterly without precedent - a story of sexual discovery told about himself by a man of seventy.
Amazon.co.uk
The Dying Animal is the latest addition to Philip Roth's already considerable and highly celebrated oeuvre. The protagonist is David Kepesh, a recurring protagonist in Roth's work, having been introduced first in the Kafkaesque 1972 novella, The Breast, and again in The Professor of Desire (1979). Kepesh, now a 70-year-old arts critic and lecturer in critical theory, is a sexual adventurer, who feels himself liberated from marriage, children and old school sexual mores by the 1960s sexual revolution, and uses his celebrity and intellectual reputation to seduce the young women that he tutors. Written in the form of a conversational confession, Roth has Kepesh introduce the method of his sexual conquests and then the foil to his method, the beautiful, mannered and busty Consuela Castillo. So begins a description of a descent into the madness of love; "crazy distortions of longing, doting, possessiveness ... this need, this derangement. Will it ever stop?"
. What begins as a chronology of sexual conquest becomes an exquisite meditation on the destructive and addictive nature of love and lust. Notions of social freedom, and sexual emancipation are explored as Kepesh, who for so long has considered himself a free animal, finds himself caged in by his obsession. His journey of sexual discovery becomes one of self-discovery, and as his life journey nears its close he also begins to realise in himself and those around him, "the dying animal" (from Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium"),a different beast to the sexual animal yet still entwined with it through shared flesh.
This is a sexually candid novel, a brave and daring one, a novel that does not blink in the admission that so many of our actions are motivated by the sexual. In this it is reminiscent of the writings of Henry Miller, which are mentioned among the many literary references that populate this book. Every line of Roth's prose brings a desire to read the next; it is brilliantly written, and like the Yeats poem from which it draws inspiration, it is open to much interpretation.
美国六十年代至今的个人纵欲史。印象深的只有一个镜头,"Yes, that was something, wasn't it?" Kate said. And then with her weary smile she added, "I wonder who it is he thought I was." (另,豆瓣第二条评论是译文原文。。。
Hard to rate, you can dislike the content of the book but also you can be amazed by the vividness of his writing to capture this old man that you disliked.
0 有用 bunnie 2019-02-18 10:35:41
2.15-17| ruthlessly candid pervertedly arousing don't know what to make of the second part
1 有用 Yennefer 2019-03-05 00:44:12
He who forms a tie is lost. 一个多月来也一样的婆娑烟火,也一样言语不通但肉欲痴缠后更能明白了。
0 有用 michcc 2013-03-31 00:59:08
看完电影就开始垂涎原著了
0 有用 Rarseef 2013-06-01 06:51:46
美国六十年代至今的个人纵欲史。印象深的只有一个镜头,"Yes, that was something, wasn't it?" Kate said. And then with her weary smile she added, "I wonder who it is he thought I was." (另,豆瓣第二条评论是译文原文。。。
0 有用 Clumsy Girl 2018-01-02 09:19:17
书写男性欲望。
0 有用 喵呜咦 2023-09-30 03:58:56 澳大利亚
Hard to rate, you can dislike the content of the book but also you can be amazed by the vividness of his writing to capture this old man that you disliked.
0 有用 呼叫粒粒 2023-09-25 01:26:54 浙江
Love is an angel disguised as lust
0 有用 michaelmas 2023-02-13 04:23:30 上海
1,George O'Hearn的存在不太令人信服,“我”大概率是不应该有一个亲密的同性友人的;2,从写作风格上说,1999年12月31日像是一个分水岭,前面精心描摹的徐悲鸿突然一下变成了火柴人;3,书名为何不随封面的Modigliani叫Le Grand Nu呢,甚至K.457,都好很多吧。
0 有用 layla 2022-05-13 02:06:36
着实有点恶心
0 有用 Socker 2021-02-18 15:25:18
哎确实感觉作者尽力了让本书“当代美国” 然而巧言令色赶不上纳博科夫 universality和冷眼看人的observation比不上库切 只能说自由国度美国的性欲我无法了解 为什么这个国家的人(当然这里指的mostly特定时段老白男)不愿意花一丁点的精力“成为”他人 本书主角的问题就在于拒绝理解他人固守自己particularity 拜托一个literati cant do without自己的t... 哎确实感觉作者尽力了让本书“当代美国” 然而巧言令色赶不上纳博科夫 universality和冷眼看人的observation比不上库切 只能说自由国度美国的性欲我无法了解 为什么这个国家的人(当然这里指的mostly特定时段老白男)不愿意花一丁点的精力“成为”他人 本书主角的问题就在于拒绝理解他人固守自己particularity 拜托一个literati cant do without自己的trophe搞什么飞机(而且还比humbert humbert蹩脚很多)写到最后就是一个老年人whining/wishful thinking not productive at all(然而political wise女性视角的这种topic叙述完全可以更多 我觉得直男desire尤其老年人就是辣鸡 (展开)