Plot Summary of The Dying Animal

"David Kepesh is in his sixties, a professor at a New York college and TV culture critic when he becomes sexually obsessed with 24-year-old Consuela Castillo, the daughter of wealthy Cuban immigrants. He relates the course of their strange, 18-month relationship as well as referring briefly to earlier times of his life: his short, conventional 1950s marriage (long ended); his rotten relationship with his 42-year-old son; the way he went along permanently with the sexual revolution after coeds showed him the way. Roth's 2001 meditation on eros versus thanatos seems a little slim and schematic after his huge American Pastoral trilogy."

Kepesh is fascinated by the beautiful young Consuela Castillo, a student in one of his courses. An erotic liaison is formed between the two; Kepesh becomes obsessively enamored of his lover's breasts, a fetish developed in the previous novels. Despite his fevered devotion to Consuela, the sexually promiscuous professor maintains a concurrent affair with a previous lover, now divorced. He is also reluctant to expose himself to the scrutiny or ridicule that might follow from an introduction to Consuela's family. It is implied that he fears such a meeting would expose the implausible age gap in their relationship. Ultimately, Kepesh limits their relationship to the physical instead of embarking upon any deeper arrangement.
In the end, Kepesh is destroyed by his indecisiveness, the fear of senescence, his lust and jealousy. Consuela never subsequently finds a lover who can show the same level of devotion to her body as Kepesh had. After some years of estrangement, she asks him to take nude photographs of her because she will be losing one of her breasts to a life-saving mastectomy.

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