Language English Media type Print (hardcover) ISBN 0-03-003716-6 Originally published 1972 Page count 78 Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Publication date 1972 Pages 78 OCLC 482720 Genre Novella Country United States of America | |
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Similar Works by Philip Roth, Fiction books | ||
The breast pump of the future is here now and it s called freemie
The Breast (1972) is a novella by Philip Roth, in which the protagonist, David Kepesh, becomes a 155-pound breast. Throughout the book Kepesh fights with himself. Part of him wishes to give in to bodily desires, while the other part of him wants to be rational. Kepesh, a literature professor, compares his plight with that of fictional characters such as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's short story The Metamorphosis and Kovalyov in Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Nose". Throughout the novel, he describes the various sexual and physical feelings he has while people handle him, while initiating sex with his girlfriend, and while he is alone.
During a stay on the beach with his girlfriend, Claire, Kepesh had wished to have breasts, to be a breast, and he struggles with the idea that apparently this wish was fulfilled while other more important wishes were not.