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4.0étoiles sur 5
laughing, Aoû 21 2009
From a previous reviewer
"Upon joining an online discussion group I read this book and find he has become just another old goat looking for young poon."
Oh my lord that is so hilarious, and yes, yes it is true. This is a story of an old goat looking for young poon, or any poon really. But that old goat is starting to notice he is getting old and this book is how he struggles to deal with the vulnerability that comes with aging - the fear of death or maybe even worse the fear of being totally alone.
I find Roth raw and blunt in a way that appeals to me but some may find his protagonist (who some say is based on Roth himself) arrogant and self centered. He is. But I don't always want to read books with perfect characters leading the story.
Parts that stuck out for me: At the bedside of his dying friend, the strained relationship with his son, how he views Consuela (sad really) his life feels hollow and unfulfilled despite all his success career-wise.
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3.0étoiles sur 5
Wallflower at the revolution, Mars 14 2004
I read Philip Roth's first few books then missed a couple of decades. Upon joining an online discussion group I read this book and find he has become just another old goat looking for young poon. Is he vying for that rascal Henry Miller`s mantle as Dirty Old Man of American Letters? I know that art can be about anything but an essay on the changes in society over the last forty years would have sufficed. Like many Woody Allen fans I prefer the older, funnier work.Roth is a fine writer and unlike some best selling authors he does have a lot to say. I just could not get past the story of a twenty year old entering into a liaison with a senior citizen. As young coeds in the sixties, my friends and I would never entertain such thoughts about even the youngest instructors. "He must be at least thirty and probably married." We had plenty of callow frat boys buzzing around who didn't know anything about anything and it suited us just fine. Attending college in Canada, the Vietnam War did not really affect us except for the occasional kid with a Yank accent panhandling on the street. Draft dodgers. We kept our distance because American boys had a reputation for being fast..... By the seventies I was safely married sat on the sidelines during the devolution of the freedom movement into the disco era. That generation jettisoned the ideology and kept the drugs. A writer of Roth's stature would have no end of groupies willing to sit at his feet or do anything else he wanted. It was amusing when he invoked the US Constitution to bolster his case for doing exactly as he pleased. Rogering as an Inalienable Right. His alter ego in the book is not an altogether hopeless case. Anyone as erudite and cultured as David Kepesh cannot be all bad. I found it endearing that he persisted with his piano playing even though he kept hitting wrong notes. He was truly attached to his friend George and went out of his way to make his last days meaningful even though it was an exercise in futility. We are all wary of being smothered by the very people from whom we seek comfort. Intimacy is fraught with danger. But being alone has pitfalls as well as pleasures. Having a peek beneath David's detached exterior it gives the reader hope that he will extend himself to the ailing Consuela. The affair that caused him to regress into adolescent jealousy and possessiveness may enable him to finally grow up. He only has to take the opportunity to redeem himself.
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2.0étoiles sur 5
A woman's point of View: David Kepesh; The Dying Animal, Mars 12 2004
I had read some amazing reviews on this book. Very high ratings from different sources. I felt compelled to read this book. Obligated.
I am a woman, and to most people it would seem this book was out of my league. I am a young woman at that, and I was curious to understand the male mind and the powers of love, obsession, and desire.
This is what I got. A sad book with even more disturbing characters. I wondered how this sad excuse of a man managed to get so many female students in bed with him? If it was because of intelligence, I would say he was a walking robot of mostly useless knowledge one attains from many years of boredom, being alone, and not exactly having much of a life. Ok so David Kepesh, compulsive womanizer, sex addict and crazy old man syndrome still in the age of trying to live young, or at least pretend he is young is a man skewed with reality.
I kept reading.
I could never relate to any of these characters, not even Consuela , a year apart from me in age, similar background and family story, and yet she seemed so blah besides her nice clothes and apparent other assets. This would be the kind of girl to go to bed with a much older man, perhaps a professor.
But why? What seriously compelled her to fall for him? Is it because she had younger boyfriends and they didn't please her in bed?
So now, men and women of all ages are just completely helpless to sex?
I can't believe in a story if the characters are so shallow and limitless. I can't cheer for a character if there is absolutley not a single good soul in the entire novel.
I kept reading.
I think what I really expected was the story to show the process of growth and change. A man, a woman, people who learn from life's events and make better because of it. It was clear that David Kepesh would start the book as a perverted, sexaholic man with bad choice of consistent words ( you'll learn these words early if you read the book ), and end it in the very same way...no dignity, no true emotions or feelings, still at 70 years old obsessing over a former students breasts.
There was no closure in this book, it left you suddenly hanging and didn't even give you hope that maybe this character of 156 pages had changed.
I was so pumped to read this book, and I can certainly tolerate flawed characters, but I can't really bear the idea that people live their whole lives the exact same way, no regret, no changes or growth occur for them, no revelations, no wake up calls to alert them. Nothing. Just 70 years of a shallow life and a woman who comes to him after 8 years pass. Because she wants him by her in her time of need. Could David Kepesh really fulfill a need like that?
I didn't think so. For me it was a story about a sad man and a sad woman, with parts of other characters not lovable or even likeable.
I'm waiting for the next novel when perhaps Philip Roth lets David Kepesh finally grow up, of course I wouldn't read such hogwash, and certainly by then this Kepesh character will be gone from this world.
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