The Breast by Philip Roth

Author:Philip Roth [Roth, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nepalifiction, TPB
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SOMETIME BETWEEN the first and the second of the two major “crises” I have survived so far here in the hospital—if hospital it is—I was visited by Arthur Schonbrunn, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook, and someone I have known since Palo Alto, when he was the young hot-shot Stanford professor and I was there getting my Ph.D. It was as the chairman of the newly formed comparative-literature department that Arthur brought me from Stanford to Stony Brook eight years ago. He is nearly fifty now, a wry and charming gentleman, and for an academic uncommonly, almost alarmingly, suave in manner and dress. It was his social expertise as much as our long-standing acquaintanceship that led me (and Dr. Klinger) to settle finally on Arthur as the best person with whom to make my social debut following the victory over the phallic cravings of my nipple. I also wanted Arthur to come so that I could talk to him—if not during this first visit, then the next—about how I might maintain my affiliation with the university. Back at Stanford I had been a “reader” for one of the enormous sophomore classes he lectured in “Masterpieces of Western Literature.” I had begun to wonder if I couldn’t perform some such function again. Claire could read aloud to me the student papers, I could dictate to her my comments and grades … Or was that a hopeless idea? It took Dr. Klinger several weeks to encourage me to believe that there would be no harm in asking.

I never got the chance. Even as I was telling him, a little “tearfully”—I couldn’t help myself—how touched I was that he should be the first of my colleagues to visit, I thought I could hear giggling. “Arthur,” I asked, “are we alone—?” He said, “Yes.” Then giggled, quite distinctly. Sightless, I could still picture my former mentor: in his blue blazer with the paisley lining tailored in London for him by Kilgore, French; in his soft flannel trousers, in his gleaming Gucci loafers, the diplomatic Dean with his handsome mop of salt-and-pepper hair—giggling! And I hadn’t even made my suggestion about becoming a reader for the department. Giggling—not because of anything ludicrous I had proposed, but because he saw that it was true, I actually had turned into a breast. My graduate-school adviser, my university superior, the most courtly professor I have ever known—and yet, from the sound of it, overcome with the giggles simply at the sight of me.

“I’m—I—David—” But now he was laughing so, he couldn’t even speak. Arthur Schonbrunn unable to speak. Talk about the incredible. Twenty, thirty seconds more of uproarious laughter, and then he was gone. The visit had lasted about three minutes.

Two days later came the apology, as elegantly done as anything Arthur’s written since his little book on Robert Musil. And the following week, the package from Sam Goody’s, with a card signed, “Debbie and Arthur S.” A record album of Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.

Arthur had

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