excellent book/performance

I have listen to this audio book after watching Elegy a few years ago. The movie is a little bit more romantic than the book. Philip Roth is definitely trying to pursue the idea of flesh/body or what is more the animal body. Passion is what this animal body can withhold. The book is a mixture of well intended bibliography, modern family, drama, death and a most surprising sexuality. Roth at its best!

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Kepesh or Kaput???

Philip Roth is one of those writers who, whilst I?ve dipped into Saul Bellow, got lost along the way and this novella represents and interesting short interlude and a useful entr?e to ?Elegy? which is out currently and directed by Spanish writer and film maker Isabel Coixet.
On first taste, this looks like deep dish misogyny and if the intention is to serve with a patina of irony I certainly missed it. Philip Roth is now seventy five years old and the character of David Kepesh is supposedly sixty two ? yet his cultural references, all standard 1960s fare do not have the flavour of someone who was in their late teens or very early twenties in the sixties. So what or where is the authentic voice here? A college lecturer with a Sunday morning culture show on TV??..come on, keep up?this is 2001. The whole breast/fetish thing looks and feels so very ?John Fowles? but without the post-modern construct to obscure the lack of meaningful characterisation, warmth or depth. The control/lust relationship between the two protagonists also seems a little pointless. The lack of emotion, feelings ? I can see it, I know what it is?love is absent...but what do I learn, what?s the point? John Updike cooks up the same ingredients with more flavour and satisfaction without turning out a souffl? of emotions.
I?ll look for the film adaptation, made by a female who at first glance appears more Consuela Castillo than David Kepesh. Perhaps the trick I?m missing is that Conseula is the chef de cuisine?only further investigation of Philip Roth will determine.

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Cunning exploitation or pure lust

A wonderful introduction to one of America's greatest authors. A Pulitzer Prize winner American Pastoral

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