Word: kepesh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hero of Philip Roth's tenth book is Jewish and unhappy. So what else, as Alexander Portnoy's mother might say, is new? Indeed, David Kepesh is the same slick monologuist that Portnoy was, given to frequent exclamations, flurries of rhetorical questions ("Is she not the single most desirable creature I have ever known?") and carefully italicized emphases. He tosses off one-liners (calling, for instance, his Aunt Sylvia "the Benvenuto Cellini of strudel") as if he has a stable of Borscht Belt writers churning out his material. On the psychiatric couch, Kepesh is a regular lie-down...
...Kepesh's condition is not covered by Blue Cross. For that matter, he is uninsurable by any of society's institutions. His metamorphosis cannot even be explained scientifically. As a vestigial literary intellectual, Kepesh himself can only offer reasons that are as powerless as spitballs against the whale of his new reality. He is only sure of two things: "I am really quite as alone as anyone could ever wish to be," and "Human I insist I am, but not that human...
Immobile in his special hammock, fed through tubes and benevolently cared for, he receives only a few close visitors. Kepesh is the ideal erogenous zone. In addition to having some sort of organs of speech and hearing, the Breast is capable of unlimited sexual excitement. Nurses massage it; the girl friend caresses it-although always a step behind Kepesh's erotic imagination. A graduate of five years of psychoanalysis, he seems to have become the literal embodiment of the Hefnerian dream. In fact, Kepesh is the King Midas of sex. "Beware fanciful desires," he warns. "You may get lucky...
...logic of the absurd, Kepesh is a huge success-a post-Freudian wonder who no longer needs to adjust to civilization's discontents. As he comes to realize this, he assumes the arrogance of the chosen and decides to milk his uniqueness for all the pleasure and celebrity it is worth. "This, my friend," he cries, "is the Land of Opportunity in the Age of Self-Fulfillment, and I am David Alan Kepesh, the Breast, and I will live by my own light!" Visions of big money and fame join his fantasies...
...Kepesh the former lit professor who must have the last word. He is full of contempt for the "morons and madmen," anyone who would laugh, gape or exploit him. Nevertheless he feels the urge to lead this uneducated herd to drink from the reservoir of great art. In concluding what is surely the most stylish lecture of his career, he quotes "Archaic Torso of Apollo," by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke...