The Professor of Desire is a 1977 novel by Philip Roth. It describes the youth, the college years and the academic career of professor David Kepesh, and beside that, his sexual desires. The book was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer.
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". The first NBCC awards were announced and presented January 16, 1976.
Plot summary
David is emotionally insecure. He grows up in the hotel his parents manage, where he is influenced by artist Herbie Bratasky, who, thanks to his ingenuity in imitating sounds of farts, defecation and toilet flushing, is credited with "mastering the whole Wagner scale of fecal Storm and Stress".
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
When he attends a college, he rooms with a lazy, often-masturbating, homosexual, draft-dodging, fellow student, who inadvertently adds to Kepesh's insecurity. At first, he seems to accept the odd facts about his colleague, but then he's shocked when he's told by others that he deviated from so many social norms.
David, often lusting after female co-students, never has a successful date. He often annoys girls by telling them they have gorgeous bodily features. Kepesh, with a Fulbright grant in his pocket, goes to London, where he meets two sexually interested Swedish girls, Birgitta and Elisabeth.
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs whose goal is to improve intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. It is one of the most prestigious and competitive fellowship programs in the world. Via the program, competitively-selected American citizens including students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists may receive scholarships or grants to study, conduct research, teach, or exercise their talents abroad; and citizens of other countries may qualify to do the same in the United States of America. The program was founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and is considered to be one of the most widely recognized and prestigious scholarships in the world. The program provides 8,000 grants annually.
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
Back in America, he moves to California, where he gets acquainted with Helen, a woman dreaming of opening a store. Helen has a history of promiscuity dating back to her early twenties, when she lived in Hong Kong and other places in Asia. Helen does not feel loved by Kepesh. She refuses to do household duties because Kepesh gives her only sexual attention; unable to speak of his emotions, Kepesh submits to that "fact" and ends up doing all the housework as well as teaching literature classes and writing papers on Anton Chekhov.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
Kepesh separates from Helen and goes to New York to give lectures in literature, but his emotional side not yet formed or refined, he has endless sessions with a psychoanalyst and even uses his literature class (which he later calls "Desire 341" after the course number) to contrast his own desires and experiences with those portrayed in works like Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. He even persuades the students to hear about and discuss his own love life. On a visit to Prague, birthplace of the equally sexually inexperienced Franz Kafka, he dreams of visiting the still-living prostitute of Kafka who invites him to look at her crotch; presuming he wants to see why it held Kafka's interest for so long.
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. As a devoted Spinozist, Flaubert was significantly influenced by Spinoza's thought. He was also a pantheist, like some other prominent Spinozists such as Goethe and Einstein.
Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.
Prague is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, the 14th largest city in the European Union and the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 2.6 million. The city has a temperate climate, with warm summers and chilly winters.
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