man as boob

so i read through this 89-page novella rather quickly, if not furtively. i've had it on my shelf for a while, from a period when i was buying up all the philip roth i could find. (my favorite novel of his is still the human stain and i still don't see what the big deal is about american pastoral.) and this one, the breast, i put off reading for years, because it just sounded bizarre and offensive. a man turns into a 155-pound disembodied breast, a low-brow and grossly sexist homage to kafka's "the metamorphosis"? and now that i've read it, i still don't know what to think. the writing is, of course, good, and i like how roth describes the inexplicable transformation as "an endocrinologic catastrophe unlike any the endocrinologists had ever known before." the breast cannot move or see, so he relies on doctors, nurses, his shrink, his father, and his girlfriend to tell him he's strapped to a hammock in a hospital room; but he can hear and speak, and his nipple, of course, is quite sensitive to touch. so the book seems to be have half about the breast's denial of the entire situation (trying to convince himself he's insane) and half about his scheming to get women to touch, lick, and fuck his hypersensitive nipple. of course it could well be that there are finer meanings i'm missing; john gardner seemed to like the book a lot, whatever that's worth. i don't know. me, i'm moving on.