Half a Lemon, Half an Egg

Abstract

One of the many things that fascinate me about Philip Roth’s work is his fascination with asceticism — with the deliberate frustration of desire, the denial of appetite, the refusal of gratification. My title combines two strikingly ascetic images, one taken from the Zuckerman novels, the other from the Kepesh novels. In The Ghost Writer, E. I. Lonoff asks for half an egg for his breakfast — a humorous gesture but not trivial, because of his habit of self-denial and self-limitation (p. 158);¹ and in The Professor of Desire David Kepesh tells Claire how Kafka shuddered at the sight of an office-mate eating a sausage for lunch, and said, ‘The only fit food for a man is half a lemon’ (p. 168).