Philip Roth: Intellectual and Sensuality

Finished The Dying Animal, The Breast, and just started The Professor of Desire.

The sequence of the sequal was: The Breast, The Professor of Desire, and The Dying Animal. First part of The Dying Animal was OK, second part below OK. The Breast, no matter how good it might be in literary history, nauseates me. Literarily. I had this faint physical discomfort (even disgust) the whole time I was reading it; the image is simply too repulsive. It probably takes a man to come close to understanding that kind of obsession with the female breast - was never quite able to "enjoy" Kafka.

I think the age of the protagonist is the main reason for my discomfort. David Kepesh was already 70 years old in The Dying Animal, and he was remembering his love affair with a 24 years old when he was 62. Not that I'm against old man vs. young woman; it's just that I never considered a 62-old man a sexual being. I consider any sexual relationship between a sexual being and a non-sexual one repulsive, against the laws of love and sensuality. :) Guess I'm wrong to write a 62-year-old off from the sexual world, but still, picturing a 62-year-old naked in bed cannot be pleasant; the worst scene in The Human Stain is when Antony Hopkins showed his bare chest with gray chest hair (OMG), and that's not even during an act. :)

But Roth does touch upon an interesting topic: how simple-minded, innocent young women were drawn towards sophisticated intellectuals (at least in the mind of that intellectual - is there any Freudian complex in here? :)). Once the women feel attracted, they are willing to ignore the age difference, although physically this older man is far less desirable than men of their own age. the same can be said about money: some women are genuinely attracted to rich men, not just because of the money itself, but also because of the charm, the flavor, and the aura that money added to these men, who have proven their capability by accumulating wealth, the same way intellectuals gained their knowledge and wisdom. In this sense, intellect is no more sublime than money. :)

on the other hand, men were drawn towards women mostly because of the women's youth, their body, their energy, and their innocense (naivette, stupidity, you name it.) David Kepesh gave up hope for a family life and went on a lifetime pursuit of young women: steady supply from students of his own seminar. :)

But all of a sudden he realized his own mortality, so he started feeeling attached to this 24-year-old who left him for her own life; but how could he begin to understand the depth of her sense of loss upon the prospect of losing her breast and possibly her life; he did not seem to have replaced the breast as a plaything with any sense of love, companionship, and life itself.

The Professor of Desire began with a higher note: at least David Kepesh was young when the story unfolded. You could forgive a young person for his adventures, even if many of them have stepped out of boundaries: it is through looking at extraordinary lives of extraordinary folks that we see life more clearly; literary creations are fine sample of human specimen.