The cutting effect of getting old, the rotten smell of death lurking around the corner, and the childlike insecurity in back to the future like mode is inflicted on every page of Roth’s two Kepesh novels- The Professor of Desire and The Dying Animal.
In both novels the recurrent theme is breaking away from all barriers that stifle you, primary target being the institution of marriage.
Professor of desire takes a close look at commitment, its flora and fauna along with its desert.
Freudian- desire conquers all. Whatever the situation, whoever is at the receiving end, irrespective of time and place, human beings are susceptible to desire like no other emotion. How many times has the background faded before your eyes and all you could see was someone’s movements in the mist of your agonizing lust? Has there been any barrier as to who has smitten you- age, color, religion, relation, conflicting ideas, no ideas? Only the act or the dreams.
It can be the bride in a wedding, a nurse in a hospital, a nun in a church, someone’s wife, another’s girlfriend, or someone just walking down the street. Pangs of desire hit you and hit you hard, like a meteor of some another planet and you shake under that spell for long after the hit. Does it take even a minute to feel weak in your knees on seeing a drop of sweat trickle down someone’s neck? Or a hand lifting a glass? A foot resting atop a table? Just the careless loop of hair, from the back, on a bus? Cleavage lurking beneath chiffon? Buttocks pushing you at the edge of universe? Skin waiting to be pricked and licked? Sigh.
Has the eyes ever been more intent and the heart more content than on seeing an Aphrodite galloping on wings of ecstasy? Your ecstasy. I don’t remember. Do you?
A masterpiece. No Picasso, no Mozart nor Shakespeare, but the slight protrusion at the back of a wavering figure amongst the crowd. Euphoria.
Roth’s prose has the same sharpness, the same perfection, the same longing and desperation, as of a female form. Cuts straight through, your eyes, your senses, your realm. And of course with the meticulous inch of the cut.
The dying animal is more ruthless. Here the confusion transforms in to almost begging. Running for breath, trying to reassure him that sea-sawing emotion inside oneself is an antithesis to what has been sold from time immemorial. Love doesn’t bring two people together enough than pulling them further apart.
The confusion is paramount. And in your last days you are bound to go with your theory that you have established and believed over the years.
You can’t help but marvel at his love for the skin, the scrutinizing eye, for giving words to our most common yet indecipherable, inexplicable aching.
The animalism let run loose. The stigma dissolved in its own flavor and drunk with a pinch of salt. Release.
Yes, I’m a voyeur. Roth is. All of us are. Beneath all that socialized, civilized, logical, pragmatic face lies that original, instinctive yearning for the human form that drives you to a cliff and thrown you off it with just a wave of a hand or a flash of an eye.
Scratch the surface, unleash the beast.
In both novels the recurrent theme is breaking away from all barriers that stifle you, primary target being the institution of marriage.
Professor of desire takes a close look at commitment, its flora and fauna along with its desert.
Freudian- desire conquers all. Whatever the situation, whoever is at the receiving end, irrespective of time and place, human beings are susceptible to desire like no other emotion. How many times has the background faded before your eyes and all you could see was someone’s movements in the mist of your agonizing lust? Has there been any barrier as to who has smitten you- age, color, religion, relation, conflicting ideas, no ideas? Only the act or the dreams.
It can be the bride in a wedding, a nurse in a hospital, a nun in a church, someone’s wife, another’s girlfriend, or someone just walking down the street. Pangs of desire hit you and hit you hard, like a meteor of some another planet and you shake under that spell for long after the hit. Does it take even a minute to feel weak in your knees on seeing a drop of sweat trickle down someone’s neck? Or a hand lifting a glass? A foot resting atop a table? Just the careless loop of hair, from the back, on a bus? Cleavage lurking beneath chiffon? Buttocks pushing you at the edge of universe? Skin waiting to be pricked and licked? Sigh.
Has the eyes ever been more intent and the heart more content than on seeing an Aphrodite galloping on wings of ecstasy? Your ecstasy. I don’t remember. Do you?
A masterpiece. No Picasso, no Mozart nor Shakespeare, but the slight protrusion at the back of a wavering figure amongst the crowd. Euphoria.
Roth’s prose has the same sharpness, the same perfection, the same longing and desperation, as of a female form. Cuts straight through, your eyes, your senses, your realm. And of course with the meticulous inch of the cut.
The dying animal is more ruthless. Here the confusion transforms in to almost begging. Running for breath, trying to reassure him that sea-sawing emotion inside oneself is an antithesis to what has been sold from time immemorial. Love doesn’t bring two people together enough than pulling them further apart.
The confusion is paramount. And in your last days you are bound to go with your theory that you have established and believed over the years.
You can’t help but marvel at his love for the skin, the scrutinizing eye, for giving words to our most common yet indecipherable, inexplicable aching.
The animalism let run loose. The stigma dissolved in its own flavor and drunk with a pinch of salt. Release.
Yes, I’m a voyeur. Roth is. All of us are. Beneath all that socialized, civilized, logical, pragmatic face lies that original, instinctive yearning for the human form that drives you to a cliff and thrown you off it with just a wave of a hand or a flash of an eye.
Scratch the surface, unleash the beast.
1 comment:
man!!!!!!!!!! am lovin the works even before havin a look
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