Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz in "Elegy"

A few days back I was teaching Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal, a novel that is superb in about a dozen distinct ways. One of these being its narrative of how a professor of literature who has spent his career sleeping with his female students is eventually smitten by one in particular.

By the end of our tale, the renowned arbiter of High Culture has endured quite a transformation. No longer the predator but the disoriented victim, he is reduced to obediently photographing the breasts of his one-time student at her demand.

She is the work of art. The professor is now a mere shuttering chronicler. He recounts his eight-year metamorphosis to us in anticipation of a phone call from the cancer-afflicted source of his infatuation.

And then the call arrives. By text’s end,…

Read More