The Breast

The Breast (1972) is a novella by Philip Roth, in which the main character, David Kepesh, becomes a 155-pound breast. Throughout the book Kepesh fights with himself. Part of him wishes to give in to bodily desires, while the other part of him wants to be rational. Kepesh, a literature professor, compares his plight with that of fictional characters such as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's short story The Metamorphosis and Kovalyov in Nikolai Gogol's short story "The Nose". Throughout the novel, he describes the various sexual and physical feelings he has while people handle him, while initiating sex with his girlfriend, and while he is alone.

During a stay on the beach with his girlfriend, Claire, Kepesh had wished to have breasts, to be a breast, and he struggles with the idea that apparently this wish was fulfilled while other more important wishes were not.

Works by Philip Roth
Fiction
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Letting Go
  • When She Was Good
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • Our Gang
  • The Great American Novel
  • My Life As a Man
  • Sabbath's Theater
Kepesh Novels
  • The Breast
  • The Professor of Desire
  • The Dying Animal
Zuckerman Novels
  • The Ghost Writer
  • Zuckerman Unbound
  • The Anatomy Lesson
  • The Prague Orgy
  • The Counterlife
  • American Pastoral
  • I Married a Communist
  • The Human Stain
  • Exit Ghost
Roth Novels
  • Deception
  • Operation Shylock
  • The Plot Against America
Nemeses: Short Novels
  • Everyman
  • Indignation
  • The Humbling
  • Nemesis
Short Stories
  • "The Conversion of the Jews"
  • "Defender of the Faith"
  • "The Kind of Person I am"
  • "Epstein"
  • "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings"
  • "Eli, the Fanatic"
  • "Philosophy, or Something Like That"
  • "The Box of Truths"
  • "The Fence"
  • "Armando and the Frauds"
  • "The Final Delivery of Mr. Thorn"
  • "The Day It Snowed"
  • "The Contest for Aaron Gold"
  • "Heard Melodies Are Sweeter"
  • "Expect the Vandals"
  • "The Love Vessel"
  • "The Good Girl"
  • "The Mistaken"
  • "Novotny's Pain"
  • "Psychoanalytic Special"
  • "An Actor's Life for Me"
  • "On the Air"
  • "His Mistress's Voice"
  • "Smart Money"
  • "The Ultimatum"
  • "Drenka's Men"
  • "Communist"
Collections
  • Zuckerman Bound
  • A Philip Roth Reader
  • Library of America series
Non-fiction
Memoirs
  • The Facts
  • Patrimony
On Writing
  • Reading Myself and Others
  • Shop Talk
Adaptations
Films
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • The Human Stain
  • Elegy
Philip Roth bibliography

Famous quotes containing the word breast:

    “O what to me the little room
    That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;
    He bade me out into the gloom,
    And my breast lies upon his breast.”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)