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Dying Animal
Dying Animal | Philip Roth
7 posts | 20 read | 3 to read
"No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you re not superior to sex." With these words our most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book. The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete s critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated. The agency of Kepesh s undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous and humblingly beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged helplessly, bitterly, furiously into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. The Dying Animal is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger."
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Naz786
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Panpan

⭐️/5

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Anchobi413
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Pickpick

As much as we want to romanticize our life as human beings, there are just things that are plain ugly. Whether we give into the ugly & somewhat natural temptation or just find ourselves thinking about them, Philip Roth captured & managed to tell it into a beautifully disturbing story. A book that may be testing us on our ability to face these realities rather than cringe and look away, I find myself picking up this book to re-read once in a while

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MaryJJ
L'animale morente | Philip Roth
Mehso-so

the expectations were very high but I do not know if they were fully satisfied.
the simple but ambiguous plot tells the story of a sex-obsessed professor who falls in love with Consuela. love ? I'm not sure. Consuela is the impersonation of his obsession and perhaps it is this that binds David.
☆☆\☆☆☆☆

1 comment
review
MaryJJ
L'animale morente | Philip Roth
Mehso-so

Le aspettattive erano molto alte e non sono ancora sicura che siano state soddisfatte appieno.
La trama alquanto semplice quanto ambigua lascia trasparire pian piano la storia di un professore che fa del sesso la sua ossessione. Non so se l'amore per Consuela sia autentico così come descritto cosa dovuta fatto che Consuela è l'impersonificazione della sua ossessione e forse è questo a legare David.

☆☆\☆☆☆☆

1 comment
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scowler1
Dying Animal | Philip Roth
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Pickpick

Short novel, my first by Philip Roth. Read in a single afternoon session and now I think I'll have to read the rest of his stuff. Excellent.

quote
GoneFishing
Dying Animal | Philip Roth

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

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quote
GoneFishing
The Dying Animal | Philip Roth

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

StacksNShelves My favorite. 8y
23 likes1 stack add1 comment