Procure The Breast Depicted By Philip Roth Represented In Print

plot is similar to Kafka's Metamorphosis, but he turns into a giant breast rather than a giant cockroach, I just couldn't get with this book, Maybe I'm not interested enough in breasts But I'm male, so that seems unlikely, I give up.
Il seno, opera breve di Philip Roth, vede come protagonista David Kepesch, che comparirà in molti altri romanzi dello stesso autore,
Proprio come accade ne Le metamorfosi di Kafka, dove il protagonista dell'opera kafkiana si tramuta in scarafaggio, anche qui si assiste a una metamorfosi, a una trasformazione di se stessi.
La metamorfosi che Kepesch vive è quella di tramutarsi in seno,in un seno femminile del peso di settanta chili,
Pian piano, il nostro personaggio dovrà affrontare e comprendere la sua difficile situazione, Una situazione non semplice, complicata, dove sente e parla, ma non può vedere e riesce a percepire quanto succede solo attraverso il tatto e le percezioni tattili, Proprio attraverso il tatto, percepisce tutte le sensazioni ed emozioni, compreso il piacere sessuale,
Il protagonista prova ad accettare questa situazione con la quale convive, ma fa fatica e non sempre gli risulta facile,
Con una scrittura grottesca che mescola l'ironia e la drammaticità, Il seno si rivela essere un racconto visionario, surreale, a tratti inquietante, che mette in luce i molti aspetti di Roth, dei suoi personaggi e di David Kepesch, in particolare.
He turns in a boob, literally, : This isn't a bad book to read when you're sitting around aimlessly for a few days as I am, . . and it's a nice, short bookobviously a,page epic about a manboob would be impressive, but hard to imagine,

What's interesting is the tension between the absurdity of his reality and his tendency to want to think of his predicament as merely allegorical, He has to cede to the logic of his health status and the reality checks of his doctor more than his literary mind is comfortable with,

It's another one of those books where a loving female looks past her man's major issue, Of course The Breast is metaphorical, but what's great is the extent to which Roth can convince you that it's not, Maybe, like a lot of Roth, it's about accepting age and disease, physical selfimage, spikes a lulls in libido, work vs, apathy, etc and/or it's just about a guy who turns into a breast,

It's only lightly stated, but the character is the same guy from The Professor of Desire, Librarian note: An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found sitelinkhere,

Like a latterday 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 apound 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.
I wonder if Philip Roth sat down and said "I want to write Metamorphosis again, but instead of the story being fascinating I'm going to make it mildly amusing.
Oh, also, instead of a giant bug, my character is going to turn into a giant boob, Yeah. Good times". I don't know how much of my moderate disliking of this had to do with the actual story, and

how much had to do with the fact that I found the image of a giant consious boob repulsive.
That being said, I liked that the character figured, eventually, that he was not in fact a giant boob but was just insane and thought he was a giant boob.
And everyone is like "no, really, you're a boob" And he's like "See, you just told me that I'm NOT a boob, I'm sure, but I heard that you said I am.
I've clearly gone crazy". And I also liked when someone came to visit him and just laughed hysterically and left, Hah. Otherwise. . eh. Πέμπτο βιβλίο του Φίλιπ Ροθ και μπορώ να πω ότι μου φάνηκε πιο αδύναμο ακόμα και από το "Η ταπείνωση" που διάβασα πέρυσι. Όχι ότι δεν ήταν κάτι που δεν περίμενα με βάση τις κριτικές αριστερά και δεξιά αλλά και με βάση την ίδια την ιστορία, αλλά κουβέντα να γίνεται. Τουλάχιστον ήμουν σχετικά προετοιμασμένος. Πάντως κακό βιβλίο δεν είναι. Απλά είναι αρκετά παράξενο και ιδιόμορφο αλίμονο, ο πρωταγωνιστής μεταμορφώνεται σε βυζί, τι περίμενες, το όλο στιλ και ύφος σίγουρα δεν είναι για όλα τα γούστα, τα όποια αλληγορικά στοιχεία που σίγουρα υπάρχουν, είναι μάλλον δύσκολο να τα χωνέψουν όλοι έτσι απλά. Η γραφή είναι σίγουρα καλή, αν και σε μερικά σημεία κάπως παραληρηματική. Προφανώς έκανε και την πλάκα του ο Ροθ όταν έγραφε το βιβλίο αυτό, πάντως κατάφερε να θίξει και κάποια ζητήματα. Απλά δεν μπορούσα να βγάλω από το μυαλό μου ένα τεράστιο βυζί να σκέφτεται και να επικοινωνεί με άλλους ανθρώπους, μιας και λίγους μήες πριν ήταν κανονικός άνθρωπος και όχι βυζί! Χα, δεν μπορώ να πω, πέρασα καλά, αλλά πάμε παρακάτω εκεί που έκλασε ο Κάφκα. Σε ένα από τα λιγότερο αντιπροσωπευτικά έργα του, ο Φίλιπ Ροθ “συνομιλεί” τρόπον τινά με τον Κάφκα και τον Γκόγκολ, προσφέροντας τη δική του εκδοχή μεταμόρφωσης, τον δικό του Γκρέγκορ Σάμσα. Μόνο που η μη ανθρώπινη μορφή που εντελώς αναίτια και αιφνίδια θα λάβει εν μία νυκτί ο ήρωάς του δεν είναι καθόλου αυτή του σκαθαριού ή της κατσαρίδας αλλά ενός γυναικείου στήθους, ενός βυζιού Είμαι βυζί Κάτι τέτοιο έγινε μέσα στο σώμα μου από τα μεσάνυχτα έως τις τέσσερις π. μ. τηςης Φεβρουαρίου, και μεταμορφώθηκα σε θηλαστικό αδένα, χωρίς καμιά σχέση με την ανθρώπινη μορφή! Σκαμπρόζικη και μέχρι ενός σημείου ενδιαφέρουσα, στην αναπόφευκτη σύγκριση με τη “Μεταμόρφωση” και τη “Μύτη” η ολιγοσέλιδη αυτή νουβέλα του Ροθ έρχεται τρίτη και καταϊδρωμένη. In many ways, THE BREAST is a wonderfully original novel, The idea of metamorphosis is by no means new, but that doesnt mean that Roth doesnt give it its own signature touch, The protagonist of this story is a literature professor Kepesh who, quite literally, gets turned into a giant breast,

While The Breast obviously takes inspiration from Gogols THE NOSE and Kafkas METAMORPHOSIS a fact often mentioned in the book itself, it is very much written in Roths style.
In other words, it is fabulously absurd and more than a little grotesque, It is written very cleverly it had to be for it to be readable, for lets face it it is bizarre in a whole new way, It walks a fine line, mixing banal and vulgar topics with more substantial ones,

There is a fair share of intertextuality in this text, Our narrator/protagonist, trying to explain his unexplainable transformation, makes many references to works of classic literature, These kind of bookish meditations give an interesting balance to more fleshy observations of the protagonist prof, Kepesh, who often ponders the means of having sex in his condition Does the fact he is turned into a giant female breast make him a lesbian, The author also doesnt miss the chance to make fun of the academia the protagonist is one of those professors who take themselves very perhaps a bit too much seriously.


I did enjoy reading this one, Professor Kepeshs predicament gives us an opportunity for a philological exploration of who we are and to what extent we are limited by our body, In particular, the protagonists constant questioning of his own sanity was well written and seemed to invite further questioning, I felt that this novel raised a lot of interesting questions about who we are and how we interact with others as well as managed to comment on the fragility of human identity.
However, I also felt that the book was too brief and sometimes also too banal to really explore these issues in depth, It is certainly unique, fresh and edgy, but thats about it,

When I compare this novel to other Roths works, I do feel it's somewhat lacking, In my view, this is NOT one of Roths best work, Still, The Breast is fabulous in its grotesqueness and it even manages to be easily readable, It is also a short read, so if youre not totally grossed out by imagining a grown man in a form of an enormous breast interacting with others, do give it a read.
It might not be his best work, but it is distinctly his in terms of writing style and topics it explores,
Представям си разговора между Рот и издателя на книгата да е протекъл по следния начин:
Слушай, Рот, трябва ми нещо ново.
Лари примерно нямам нищо готово.
Няма значение. Искам да е кратко, сексуално и шокиращо. Забъркай пак глупостите, които беше чел от Фройд. Сложи и щипка от еврейския въпрос.
Ами какво ще кажеш за новела отстр. , в която главният герой се превръща в женска гърда
ТОВА Е! Гениално! Ти го заби от първия път! Чакам ръкописа ти до края на деня!
И така, мили дечица, се появила "Гърдата". The Breast is one of my favourite Roth fictions, It has the sort of funny, madcap, energetic exuberance of Portnoys Complaint, while being much more absurdly surreal in its premise, There is simply nothing else quite like it in Roths oeuvre,

From the opening line It began oddly, you're entranced by a firstperson story told by David Kepesh, a literary professor and the principal character of two later and better known fictions by Roth, Professor of Desire, and The Dying Animal.
It's wonderfully comic, yet addresses both serious and fantastical issues, and all the while is utterly intriguing and intelligently done,

David Kepesh, as the title of the novella makes clear, finds himself turning into a human breast, an organism with the general shape of a football, or a dirigible weighing one hundred and fiftyfive pounds and measuring, still, six feet in length.


The story deliberately and knowingly plays on two classic stories of the absurd: Kafkas most famous and brilliant, The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa struggles, denies, and agonises over coming to terms with his turning into a cockroachlike insect, and Nikolai Gogols The Nose, an equally absurd tale, where the character, Major Kovalyov, finds his nose abandons his face one day, and begins to assume a life of its own, much to the owners chagrin.


Roth could have made this story simply absurd and comical and it does succeed on those levels, especially the relentless, obsessive sexual fantasies and agonies Kepesh experiences, wanting to have intercourse and oral sex using his nipple.
In fact, what's more impressive is Roth's serious, angstridden, matteroffact way in which Kepesh for most of the time tries without success, and painfully so to rationalise his situation, believing at one point that he's simply dreaming, then another that he's suffering some terrible mental breakdown and that, because he believes he taught Gogol and Kafkas work with such conviction, it turned him into a giant breast a lovely satiric dig at Kepeshs/certain academics belief in their own brilliance and their ability to make an impact on their world through teaching.


Highly recommended for fans of the absurd, fantastical, and joyfully original fiction, A plot worthy of Woody Allen initially turned me off, but I'm reevaluating my impression toward Roth, and this was short enough to read in one sitting,

Pristine prose stylings are why I read this author, Not always polished to a high gleam, not Nabokov, but wellrhythmed, easy to read, often intelligent in scope and content, That's Roth in a nutshell, When he is in good form,

I can say I was surprised by this one, It ponders tried and true questions: Hypochondria, old age, shame, fear, the neuroses of modern men all trademark Roth, He makes use of extreme intimacy, as usual, to gain the readers trust, A skillful manipulator of language, his stock libidinous narrator is back, giving us a skewed look at the trials of marriage, attraction, and deception, the cruelty of fate, the slippery slope of selfmedication, the persistence of psychological wounds, all familiar territory, but displaying much compassion for the human condition.
The introduction of the absurdist concept is the primary thrust into a debate of these topics in the form of a relentless interior monologue, He never slides into pure surrealism, but the book calls for strong powers of suspension of disbelief, You will be glad to know the author retains his formal approach to storytelling, and rewards the attentive reader,

Bitterness, dry wit, and morbid humor pervade the whole, and sophisticated, clinical descriptions create vivid, nauseating mental images throughout, while the sheer ridiculousness, and the Freudian fixations can be wearying, its nonetheless brutally compact, verging on inane only to blossom into a meaningful meditation on the fear of mortality “The will to live.
” A vivid evocation of desperation, helplessness, being trapped in a physical body which eternally fails to live up to expectations, and becomes, over time, a prison such are the trappings of this brief, and seemingly outofplace publication.


Contemplating the triviality of life, the narrator confronts the meaninglessness during the ad hoc recovery process resultant from his dreamlike predicament, Learning to live with oneself, ones shape or condition, and facing hideous reality becomes the central proponent and ultimately won my esteem,

It asks, how much can one man take Roth has mastered a wellconstructed sentence and a balanced prose voice, This is no exception. His novels are examinations of the human emotion, strained and entering trial, but taking small comfort in daily interactions, and usually, bodily functions,

With The Breast, he manages to convey an engrossing inner conflict, shows that, as in Gogols and Kafkas stories of metamorphoses, human nature is not altered by bodily transformation.
Objectification, taboos, selfloathing, and some apt observations and wellpulledoff sentences round out the reading experience, No matter how off the rails Roth gets, he always has something striking to say about our plight as human beings,

As the narrator says:

This is not tragedy any more than it is farce, It is only life, and I am only human, ”
.