Just when it seemed Philip Roth had finally acquired some semblance of seer-like authorial detachment he has U-turned back into the angst and outrage of male sexuality that have dominated his mid to late work. Roth's abiding theme throughout his rollercoaster career - in which moments of greatness, as in The Counterlife (1987) or the elegiac lament, American Pastoral (1997), contrast with lengthy interludes of self indulgence - has been, of course, himself. Of late he has proved a shrewd chronicler of American life as lived by characters at the mercy of their flagging desires and, increasingly, their ghosts.
This self-styled great American Jewish writer of male outrage has always relied upon his team of alter egos, good old Nathan Zuckerman, the various Philip Roths, and then David Kepesh - remember him, star of The Professor of Desire (1977) who, as a 38-year-old college professor, metamorphosed into The Breast (1980) - in order to tell his story, which has really always been the story of himself and his sexual odyssey.
Kepesh, now 70, opens this new novel with an almost muted directness. "I knew her eight years ago. She was in my class." The tone seems to prepare the reader for a portrait of an individual, as Zuckerman did with Dutch in American Pastoral or with Iron Rinn, born Ira Ringold, in I Married a Communist (1998), another of his late, great works. Kepesh announces: "I'm very vulnerable to female beauty , as you know." Hmm.
As Roth veterans will know, his fiction has always been more about sex than aesthetics. The object of his vulnerability - object being the word, in Rothland - is a Rubensesque female who looks very different from her student peers, dressing with the efficient elegance of a professional secretary: "She's well spoken, sober, her posture is perfect." Niceties aside, Kepesh gets down to his central interest, her body, its dimensions and how to experience her massive breasts. "Consuela Castillo. I saw her and was tremendously impressed by her comportment. She knew what her body was worth."
And so the narrative goes on. Kepesh has age, status and a public face as a media culture guru; Consuela has a splendid body. At no time does Roth or Kepesh - does it matter which? - create a sense of a relationship existing beyond his obsession with her body and her interest in his affirmation of her beauty. Instead, the narrative, such as it is, develops into self-analysis. This is fiction as confession or therapy, or both. Kepesh takes us all down memory lane describing how he availed of the sexual freedoms of the 1960s and walked away from his wife and son. Since then, life has been about sex and freedom - his freedom.
He dislikes his ex-wife almost as much as their son dislikes him. Even allowing for the fact that Roth's fiction and autobiography have always raced along hand in glove, at no time does this slight but possibly profound declaration convince as fiction. The narrative has little texture, scant humour; the story is almost irrelevant. Forget the Yeatsian regret of the title: what we have here is anger without the grandeur.
The Dying Animal is a personal tract. Having lived through most of the mess that passes for human life and experience, Roth can now diagnose all ills. The sickness here is the terrifying and pathetic nature of male sexuality and the power-based, narcissistic quality of the female version. True to his love of outrage, Roth makes sure his readers see Kepesh as a ruthless adventurer who in his twilight years has taken to playing the piano with the same determination he once stalked sex. There is no intimacy in any of the sex, it is all performance art looking for the ultimate thrill in the ultimate distraction. "Sex is also the revenge on death," says Kepesh.
Kenny, Kepesh's son who married his pregnant girlfriend against his father's advice to ignore responsibility, is now some years and children later, an unhappy husband with an angry wife and, surprise, surprise, an unhappy girlfriend in the wings. The middle-aged son takes to running to dad, if only to blame him for everything. The narrator eventually gets around to remembering that his sexual episodes with Consuela were superimposed upon a long-term affair he had with another of his former students, albeit one of a previous generation.
Much of the narrative is sordid and shameful, although Roth is clever enough and sufficiently skilled as a writer to ensure that most readers will shiver in recognition of more than they would care to admit. Behind all the indulgence and the deconstruction of sex itself is the abiding rage that sustains the piece. "Can you imagine old age? Of course you can't. I didn't. I couldn't. I had no idea what it was like. Not even a false image - no image. And nobody wants anything else. Nobody wants to face any of this because he has to."
It takes Kepesh three years to wean himself off sex with Consuela. Then she returns. The narrator's response is contrary to his life's ethic. Yet there is a desperation about it as well. Unnerving though not fully convincing - indeed, almost ridiculous - this is an odd, manipulative, furious, even sickly little book directed at the reader as confessor, psychiatrist, voyeur or fellow sinner. Take your pick.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
