Tundraco's Daily Living Guide to Book Reviews

The Dying Animal By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Co. (2001), 156 pages ISBN 10: 0-618-13587-1

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - April 8, 2010

This novel is filled with sex; all kinds of sex, including men fascinated by seeing a woman menstruating and kneeling before her and licking the blood that flows down her legs, a dying half paralyzed man, unable to recognize the people surrounding his bed, groping for a woman's breasts, a man who forever focuses on sex unable to do so when a woman is scarred or misses a limb or a breast. Yet, there is what the Supreme Court called "redeeming social values."

Roth is a supremely good writer. He portrays how an older man (62 when the affair began) has relations with an extremely beautiful Cuban girl from a wealthy well-bred family who is a third his age (24). The girl breaks up the relationship when the man fails to do something the reader may think he was right not doing. Yet, years later, the girl returns because of a traumatic event in her life.

Roth explores how and when the man, a college professor, seduces the females of his class, how his son hates him for leaving the son's mother for other younger women while he, the son, has his own adulterous relationship and, curiously, visits the home of his mistress to meet her parents and, as if he were a conventional suitor, to get their permission for the adultery. He describes the impact of the revolution of the 1960s upon the sex life in colleges and the after-effects decades later. He also examines how various characters fear and face death.

Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of fifteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authors with Rabbi Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.gefenpublishing.com. The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes daily samples of the Targum books on www.ouradio.org

The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth.
This is a story about the tensions between literature and life, artistic truthfulness and conventional decency.

The Path to the Spiders' Nests, by Italo Calvino.
This book tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans.