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The Breast

by Philip Roth · 1972

Librarian note: An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here. Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned… more

5 quotes ★ 3.18 (6,299) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

For all that I announce at intervals that I want to go mad, it is apparently impossible: beyond me, beneath me. It took This for me to learn that I am a citadel of sanity.
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Gogol, Kafka y compañía… va a tener serios problemas si sigue por ese camino.
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I am a breast. A Phenomenon that has been vastly described to me as "a massive hormonal influx, "a endocrinopathic catastrophe" and/or "a hermaphroditic explosion of chromosomes" took place within my body between midnight and 4 A.M. on February 18, 1971, and converted me into a mammary gland disconnected from any human form.
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For those who prefer a fairy tale to life, a moral: “Reality,” concludes the embittered professor who for reasons unbeknown to himself became a female breast, “has style.
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E' stata la narrativa a ridurmi così? [...] Questo potrebbe benissimo essere il mio modo di essere un Kafka, un Gogol', uno Swift. Loro riuscirono ad immaginare l'incredibile, avevano il linguaggio, loro, e quei cervelli implacabilmente creativi. Ma io non avevo nè l'uno nè gli altri, non avevo niente - aspirazioni letterarie, e nient'altro. Amavo l'estremo in letteratura, idolatravo quelli che lo creavano, ero praticamente ipnotizzato dalle immagine e dalla loro suggestione... - E allora? Il mondo è pieno di innamorati dell'arte, no? - Dunque ho fatto il salto. Ho reso la parola carne. Non vede, sono più kafkiano di Kafka -. Dopotutto quale artista è più grande, quello che immagina la trasformazione meravigliosa o quello che meravigliosamente trasforma se stesso?
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About Philip Roth

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About the book

Librarian note: An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Like a latter-day 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 a 155-pound 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.

Book details

First published
1972
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
3.18 (6k ratings)

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