SOURCE: Smee, Sebastian. “January and April.” Spectator 286, no. 9021 (30 June 2001): 39-40.

In the following mixed review, Smee contrasts The Dying Animal and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

In an age of relentless ranting passing itself off as commentary, Philip Roth may be the only writer we have who is at once a great ranter and a great novelist. One wishes, at times, that he would ease up on the pedal; but when one sees what he can do with the good old-fashioned tirade, the harangue—what uncomfortable truths he arrives at—one is grateful to have him just as he is.

The narrator of Roth's latest, The Dying Animal, is one David Kepesh, and escaper from two previous Roth excursions. The Breast and The Professor of Desire. The story-telling device is familiar, too: Kepesh is addressing himself to ‘you … at the corner of the sofa.’

In many other respects, the...