The Professor of Desire - Softcover

Philip Roth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099389010 ISBN 13: 9780099389019

Publisher: Vintage Books USA, 1995

Synopsis

David Kepesh, an adventurous man of intelligence and feeling, tries to make his way to both pleasure and dignity through a world of sensual possibilities. Temptation comes to him in both its ordinary and spectacular forms, and the novel charts the history of his desire from the early years, when he is acceded to it totally, to the time when he attempts to domesticate his passions (and his wife's) and finally to that most surprising moment when desire ebbs and, frighteningly, seems on the brink of disappearance. The book explores in all its painful ramifications, the pursuit and loss of erotic happiness.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Ranks among the major achievements in the literature of our time." —Village Voice

"No one writing can juggle the somber and the ludicrous more adroitly than Roth." —Time

"Philip Roth is a great historian of modern eroticism.... [He] speaks of a sexuality that questions itself; it is still hedonism, but it is problematic, wounded, ironic hedonism. His is the uncommon union of confession and irony. Infinitely vulnerable in his sincerity and infinitely elusive in his irony." —Milan Kundera

"A thoughtful...elegant novel.... A fine display of literary skills." —The New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize how prophetic this motto will be--or how damning. For as Philip Roth follows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a menage a trois in London to the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremely intelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemma of pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggle to make a truce between dignity and desire.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099389010
• ISBN 13: 9780099389019
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 263