Read an Excerpt

"Can you imagine old age? Of course you can't. I didn't. I
couldn't. I had no idea what it was like. Not even a false image
--- no image. And nobody wants anything else. Nobody wants to face
any of this before he has to. How is it all going to turn out?
Obtuseness is de rigueur."

Gentle readers, if you are one of those hapless Casanovas that
loves women, and I mean women in all shapes, sizes, colors and
inclinations, then this book is for you. If you are a
dyed-in-the-wool Philip Roth fan who has matured enough to not
become childishly squeamish at sexually explicit scenes rendered in
an uncomfortable manner barely a notch above John Irving-esque
seaminess, then this book is also for you. If you are an aging
college professor with a penchant for seducing the nubile coed
fillies in your charge, then this book is definitely for
you.

THE DYING ANIMAL is a slim volume, told in mostly conversational
manner (the premise is that the narrator, college professor David
Kepesh, is telling his tale to an unnamed listener who speaks but a
few lines at the very end of the tale). Skillfully weaving in what
is essentially a brief history of the sexual revolution in America
and all the repercussions that have since shaped our modern sexual
landscape, the main plotline revolves around Kepesh's greatest love
affair --- his obsession with a young Cuban woman, Consuela
Castillo, whom he describes as "[a] good heart, a lovely face, a
gaze at once inviting and removed, gorgeous breasts, and so newly
hatched as a woman that to find fragments of broken shell adhering
to that ovoid forehead wouldn't have been a surprise. I saw right
away that this was going to be my girl." Of course, they begin a
torrid affair, which, for once, completely undoes Kepesh and strips
away the facade of the cultured, sophisticated academic and turns
him into the eponymous title of the book.

There is, however, another dying animal in this story. As Kepesh
discovers years after their affair ends, Consuela has breast cancer
and is undergoing both chemotherapy and a mastectomy. (The time is
ripe for the reviewer to insert various theories on Roth's
objectification, demystification, and deconstruction of the body,
but alas, time, space, and the fact that the college years have
long since passed for this reviewer obviate the purpose of such
analyses.)

THE DYING ANIMAL, is both pornographic and poetic, sexual and
sentimental, and ultimately, a socio-sexual history lesson, a love
story, cultural commentary, and dirty old man's fantasy all rolled
into a pithy 156-page package. This truly is a book for the
thinking man's lothario, and Roth, as usual, masterfully balances
some of the most pressing intellectual issues of the past 50 years
with the most pressing issues of the flesh that has faced man since
time immemorial.