Breasts

In Roth’s first novel about David Kepesh, The Breast, he is transformed into a giant mammary gland, and while there isn’t necessarily a literal connection between that novel and this one—David is still a breast by the novel’s end—the main character traits carry over: both are professors of literature, “professors of desire” (to borrow the title of the second Kepesh novel), and men infatuated with infatuation. Even when David is a giant breast, he cannot stop thinking about sex and ways to satisfy himself. Breasts, it seems, is a not so subtle symbol for David’s obsessive desires, his preoccupation with the female form and all its aesthetic beauty. The larger the breasts, the better; David wants the classical form of femininity. He wants Consuela because she reminds him of a painting: she is not a skinny tomboy. She is traditional...