Braless in Gaza

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE BREAST

by PHILIP ROTH

78 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

$4.95.

This, in his own words, is the story of David Alan Kepesh, a 38-year-old lecturer in comparative literature, who, between midnight and 4 a.m. on Feb. 18, 1971, turned into a sightless, 6-ft., 155-lb. female breast. "At one of my ends," says Kepesh from his hammock in a New York hospital, "I am rounded off like a watermelon; at the other I terminate in a nipple, cylindrical in shape, projecting five inches from my 'body.' "

Kepesh's condition is not covered by Blue Cross. For that matter, he is uninsurable by any of society's institutions. His metamorphosis cannot even be explained scientifically. As a vestigial literary intellectual, Kepesh himself can only offer reasons that are as powerless as spitballs against the whale of his new reality. He is only sure of two things: "I am really quite as alone as anyone could ever wish to be," and "Human I insist I am, but not that human."

Immobile in his special hammock, fed through tubes and benevolently cared for, he receives only a few close visitors. Kepesh is the ideal erogenous zone. In addition to having some sort of organs of speech and hearing, the Breast is capable of unlimited sexual excitement. Nurses massage it; the girl friend caresses it--although always a step behind Kepesh's erotic imagination. A graduate of five years of psychoanalysis, he seems to have become the literal embodiment of the Hefnerian dream. In fact, Kepesh is the King Midas of sex. "Beware fanciful desires," he warns. "You may get lucky."

In the logic of the absurd, Kepesh is a huge success--a post-Freudian wonder who no longer needs to adjust to civilization's discontents. As he comes to realize this, he assumes the arrogance of the chosen and decides to milk his uniqueness for all the pleasure and celebrity it is worth. "This, my friend," he cries, "is the Land of Opportunity in the Age of Self-Fulfillment, and I am David Alan Kepesh, the Breast, and I will live by my own light!" Visions of big money and fame join his fantasies.

Yet it is Kepesh the former lit professor who must have the last word. He is full of contempt for the "morons and madmen," anyone who would laugh, gape or exploit him. Nevertheless he feels the urge to lead this uneducated herd to drink from the reservoir of great art. In concluding what is surely the most stylish lecture of his career, he quotes "Archaic Torso of Apollo," by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Rilke's poem, which seeks to close the Judaeo-Christian wound between spirit and flesh, ends with the line "You must change your life." It is hardly needed as a reminder that The Breast represents a change in Philip Roth's perspective. Coming to grips with small r reality has been the strife of his writing career. Nearly a dozen years ago, he joined the chorus of writers and critics who complained that the bizarre reality of American life exceeded anything a writer could invent. It was really a way of saying that for the moment, he was stumped. That moment passed with Portnoy's Complaint, in which reality was handled as painfully funny fantasies on a psychiatrist's couch. The Breast is the next risky step: an attempt to outflank reality by being more grotesque than it can be. Remarkably, Roth does it without descending to the level of a vulgar joke. The Breast is more touchingly human than funny, whether read as a fable or credo. Roth can even be charged with committing uplift--especially in his awe of Rilke, who kept his shape as a great artist by refusing to submit to the probings of clinical psychology. Rilke's inspired reason was that if his demons were exorcised, his angels would leave him too.

. R.Z. Sheppard

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