THE DYING ANIMAL - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Philip Roth - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

Roth, Philip

ISBN 10: 0618135871 / ISBN 13: 9780618135875

Published by Boston, MA: Houghton And Mifflin, 2001, 2001

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 156 pages. Published in 2001. The author's twenty-third novel. One of Philip Roth's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly copies that are signed on a tipped-in page. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal". Inaugurates his extended and productive departure from the full-fledged novel to the novella ("short novel" describes Roth's achievement more accurately). The phase culminates in his brilliant "Nemeses" Quartet, which also completes Philip Roth's literary journey. Revisits David Kepesh, now an old man, who first appeared in "The Breast" (1972) and subsequently in "The Professor of Desire" (1977). Describes with a delicate balance of pathos and irony the elegiac encounter between orectic desire and old age: "David Kepesh is an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college as well as an articulate propagandist of the Sexual Revolution. For years, he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete's critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated. When he becomes involved with Consuela Castillo, the humblingly beautiful daughter of Cuban exiles, Kepesh finds himself dragged helplessly, bitterly, furiously into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality" (Publisher's blurb). The basis of the very fine film adaptation, "Elegy", by Isabel Coixet, with career-defining performances by Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018 of congestive heart failure, literally of heartbreak, at the age of 85. An absolute "must-have" title for Philip Roth collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Philip Roth. It is signed directly on the title page itself, not on a tipped-in page, as copies available online are (even though they are not indicated as such). This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are in multiple subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Six of Philip Roth's novels were selected as among the Top 20 works of American fiction of the last 25 years: "American Pastoral", "The Counterlife", "Operation Shylock", "Sabbath's Theater", "The Human Stain", and "The Plot Against America". One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER PHILIP ROTH TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0618135871. Seller Inventory # 17555

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE DYING ANIMAL - Rare Pristine Copy of The...

Publisher: Boston, MA: Houghton And Mifflin, 2001

Publication Date: 2001

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

. 8vo pp. 158 Rilegato mezza tela, sovracoperta (half-cloth binding, dust jacket) Ottimo (Fine)

Review:

The Dying Animal is the latest addition to Philip Roth's already considerable and highly celebrated oeuvre. The protagonist is David Kepesh, a recurring protagonist in Roth's work, having been introduced first in the Kafkaesque 1972 novella, The Breast, and again in The Professor of Desire (1979). Kepesh, now a 70-year-old arts critic and lecturer in critical theory, is a sexual adventurer, who feels himself liberated from marriage, children and old school sexual mores by the 1960s sexual revolution, and uses his celebrity and intellectual reputation to seduce the young women that he tutors. Written in the form of a conversational confession, Roth has Kepesh introduce the method of his sexual conquests and then the foil to his method, the beautiful, mannered and busty Consuela Castillo. So begins a description of a descent into the madness of love; "crazy distortions of longing, doting, possessiveness ... this need, this derangement. Will it ever stop?"

. What begins as a chronology of sexual conquest becomes an exquisite meditation on the destructive and addictive nature of love and lust. Notions of social freedom, and sexual emancipation are explored as Kepesh, who for so long has considered himself a free animal, finds himself caged in by his obsession. His journey of sexual discovery becomes one of self-discovery, and as his life journey nears its close he also begins to realise in himself and those around him, "the dying animal" (from Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium"),a different beast to the sexual animal yet still entwined with it through shared flesh.

This is a sexually candid novel, a brave and daring one, a novel that does not blink in the admission that so many of our actions are motivated by the sexual. In this it is reminiscent of the writings of Henry Miller, which are mentioned among the many literary references that populate this book. Every line of Roth's prose brings a desire to read the next; it is brilliantly written, and like the Yeats poem from which it draws inspiration, it is open to much interpretation. --Iain Robinson