Philip Roth through the Lens of Kepesh

By: Paul McDonald, Samantha Roden

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Kepesh trilogy spans three decades of Philip Roth’s career, beginning with The Breast in 1972, and continuing with the Professor of Desire in 1977 and The Dying Animal in 2001. The trilogy has received limited attention to date, with several book length studies treating it either as a minor aside in Roth’s oeuvre, or ignoring it altogether. This is strange given that it often feels as though the character of Kepesh is close to Roth, perhaps as much as with his more obvious authorial surrogates like Nathan Zuckerman, and ‘Philip Roth.’ This study demonstrates that the trilogy is not only worthy of critical analysis in its own right, but also that an appreciation of its themes and strategies deepens our understanding of his entire fictional enterprise, offering an invaluable perspective on one of the world’s most important novelists.