The Dying Animal

By: Philip Roth

Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte

Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Philip Roth, one of the best-known and award winning literary masters of our time, engages his readership with insightful and challenging novels of the human condition.

With The Dying Animal, he revisits the character David Kepesh. At age 60, Kapesh is drawn out of his carefully ordered existence and into an obsessive affair with one of his students.

©2001 Philip Roth (P)2008 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Insidiously disturbing and completely irresistable...All sympathetic readers will find themselves wondering: Is Philip Roth now our finest living novelist?" ( The Washington Post)

"A distinguished addition to Roth's increasingly remarkable literary career." ( The San Francisco Chronicle)

“Roth is a mesmerizing writer, whose very language has the vitality of a living organism.” ( Los Angeles Times)

very good

an eternal subject: old man - young woman
Roth offers some powerful moments while dissecting his protagonist's life. He keeps it short and juicy. Truly recommendable.

interesting, enjoyable, a bit odd, but fun

I've only read/listened to a couple of Roth's books but they were both thought provoking, strange, a bit erotic, and fun. I guess more than anything else, his books make me laugh, but then sometimes, i'm not sure if i'm amused or repulsed... it's quite odd. Definitely worth listening to.

The Book was Very Strong

The book is an easy listen, but has some very powerful moments. The ending takes an interesting twist. Short book. Worth the time.

Sad manipulative teacher sexes all

Well narrated - the story gets to the heart of all the ends and outs of growing old dying and being unfaithful and self centered! I really had to get past the old man sexing to get to the message. I would not have read this if I really had known what it was about.

OK - but Odd

Still not sure how much I liked this book - it was odd - a bit hard to catch on to the story

Interesting, and different

I enjoy his insight into the human way with relationships. I like the way he writes. Worth you read and time.

Breathtaking...

Nothing in the summary hints at the sucker-punch that this book delivers in its heartrending conclusion. The frame of this novel is the love affair between an older college professor (David) and his beautiful student (Consuela), who is many years younger. The themes of this book include the struggle for meaning in life, loss of youth, mortality, connection, sexual fulfillment, familial loyalty and disloyalty, and honesty with oneself. The themes are developed by the primary story, as well as by a series of remembrances that David narrates from his life. Yes, there are quite a number of scenes of explicitly described sex and sexual fantasies. Gratuitous? No. Pornographic? No. Stick with this short novel to the end. It is well worth it. Very well narrated.

Of Love and Death – The Dying Animal

"The Dying Animal" explores those corners of human mind where the lust and sexual desires live.
The main character of the book is the aging man named Kepesh, an intellectual celebrity, amateur pianist and university scholar.
Divorced when was still quite young he kept his solitude as a virtue, a freedom and ... the ground for endless sexual adventures with his young female students. His life was well arranged, promiscuous and easy-going until, at age 62, he meets Consuela, a beautiful offspring of Cuban emigrants. Initially his desire for her is almost only bodily, almost fleshly and full of fetish obsession about her breast. But as Consuela demonstrates her freedom - he almost falls in love with her. This love reveals itself in a strange way - in his morbid jealousy for her, her friends, boyfriends and even brothers. I say "almost" because he maintains the sexual relations with his previous lover. Reading the book it is very hard to judge if Kepesh was only an animal with sexual desire to Consuela, or if he truly loved her, but was intimidated by his senescence, generation gap etc...
There is also an interesting part about father-son relations. Kepesh - the bad father, who forsook his son when he broke his marriage, has, nevertheless, an important role in boy's life.
The book ends in completely unanticipated and tragic way - shocking the readers at first. However, in the tragedy and uncertainty of the book climax lies its most important virtue - the reflection on, sometimes insecure and full of abeyance, yet true love and caring, the love that has a power to fight the death. That is my rendering of Kepesh final indecisiveness - contrary to many reviews I have read...

Roth's Death in Venice

“The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.”
― Philip Roth, The Dying Animal

The Dying Animal is the last instalment of Roth's David Kepesh novels. Isn't top-shelf Roth (American Trilogy), but isn't bad either. Of the Kepesh novels, I think it ranks above The Breast (think 36D Kafka) and below The Professor Of Desire. I think my subconcious understood, even before reading this novel, where Roth was coming from because what I thought was a random reading order for me: 1. Death in Venice and then 2. The Dying Animal, was actually quite useful. It isn't as much a tribute to Death in Venice as the Breast was a tribute to Kafka's Metamorphosis, but there were certainly similarities. Roth is exploring death and obscession of an artist, so in those ways it is a similar novella to Mann's earlier exploration (see my review). However, instead of the aging author/narrator being obsessed with a "perfect" 14-year-old boy, Kepesh* is obsessed with one of his Cuban student's perfect breasts. With a writer like Roth, it is hard to realize where the autobiography starts and where the fictionalizing ends. But it appears that AT LEAST Kepesh is a breast man. Another aspect of Roth is his brutal honesty about desires, impulses, and actions. Things others would hide, Roth flaunts. I think many (including my wife) feel he is a mysoginst. I would agree that Kepesh is. But Roth is a writer of fiction. He is exploring and discesting parts of American Culture that are indeed ugly, narcissistic, rough. But again, with Roth it is always difficult to know.

* I just saw I originally put Roth here. See?!?

What’s the deal with that narration,

Such a swell book and was looking forward to audible but the narration is caustic at best. I mean really, sounds like a histrionic narcissist convinced the delivery and abrasive changes in cadence and intonation coinciding with different characters was some how enriching. I’d Rather listen to Paul Rubens and Gilbert Gottfried arguing with Rosie O’Donnell in an echo chamber. Otherwise a great audible 🥺