Existential Revision in Philip Roth's The Breast

James Duban

Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Volume 18,
Number 1, January 2020, pp. 83-99 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2020.0004

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Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast

James Duban
University of North Texas

Eight years following the publication of The Breast (1972), Philip Roth
created a revised edition, the emendations only recently receiving schol-
arly attention.1 This study suggests that key changes enhance what I have
elsewhere (Duban 2017) identified as Sartrian resonance in Roth’s 1972
account of David Kepesh’s transformation into a breast. That outlook
invites the suggestion that first-person narration in the earlier edition re-
lates to the tenet, in Being and Nothingness (L’être et le néant, 1943),
that consciousness arises as an upsurge of nothingness amid the dross
of non-reflective Being. Unlike the stasis of mundane matter, the noth-
ingness at the core of self-reflection features existential potential and

1 
The 1980 edition is publicized as “newly revised” on the paperback cover of A Philip
Roth Reader (1980), though that collection’s scholarly introduction (Green) does not discuss
the revisions to The Breast. With the incorporation of the 1980 version of The Breast into
the 2005 Library of America edition of Roth’s works (Miller 656), the 1972 edition stands
to fade from citation and eventually from popular and scholarly regard. The present article’s
variorum emphasis takes into account Mike Witcombe’s Library of Congress, archive-based
analysis of Roth’s unfinished manuscript sequels to The Breast and an apparently private
1989 edition that contains illustrations by Philip Guston — though Witcombe notes that
Roth did not publish a further revision of The Breast after 1980 (55). The Guston sketches,
along with Roth’s introduction to the 1989 illustrated narrative, reappear (Witcombe 62n6)
as Roth’s chapter “Pictures by Guston” in Shop Talk (see also Posnock 246). Witcombe
offers several observations about differences between the 1972 and 1980 editions of The
Breast, though in isolation from existential concerns. An existential reading challenges the
claim that Roth’s “changes are best summarized as subtle modifications to the narrative style
that alter the portrayal of some of the novella’s main characters” (Witcombe 53). Fascinat-
ing, nonetheless, is the prospect, in Roth’s abandoned sequels, of Kepesh’s becoming an
“author-God” (Witcombe 49) and of his effecting a possible “body swap” (51). In view of
the unfinished sequels, Witcombe’s attention to Kepesh’s evasion of a “fixed text” (47) finds
an analogue in my emphasis on Roth’s existential co-option of narrative consciousness in
the 1980 printing. I agree that the 1980 text makes Kepesh “more articulate and its narra-
tor less frantic” (53); imbues Kepesh with more “control,” non-sexual “reason,” and “more
eloquence” (55); and that, overall, Roth’s ongoing revisions reduce the value of Freudian
psychoanalysis (58–61), a topic that I prefer to discuss in the context of existential psy-
choanalysis. As argued elsewhere (Duban 2017), moreover, I am inclined to appreciate the
development of the Kepesh trilogy within an existential framework.

Partial Answers 18/1: 83–99 © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press

84 James Duban

possibility, as implied by Kepesh’s rehabilitative imagination.2 Building

on such concerns, the current study argues that the numerous changes
between the novel’s first and revised editions have philosophical nu-
ance that enhances, beyond the Sartrian cognition of David Kepesh, the
work’s already-complex narrative artistry. My analysis rests on a detailed
comparison of the earlier and later editions, taking account of minor and
major deletions and insertions. That laborious exercise took root in my
2017 existential analysis of the 1972 edition of the novel, a study that
led me to wonder if the 1980 revision of an already-published work pos-
sibly featured vital enhancement of the existential framework. Using the
book’s first printing to mark out second-edition deletions and to enter
later insertions, I brought into focus otherwise elusive changes, many of
which suggested that Roth had indeed sculpted the 1980 revision to make
the voice of Kepesh even more temperamentally existential than it had
been in its already-Sartrian predecessor. We are now positioned to iden-
tify key emendations and appreciate how the second edition incorporates
vital enhancements in the existential consciousness of the narrator.
This endeavor supplements existing studies dealing with more read-
ily identifiable metamorphoses in The Breast, and specifically as such
studies (e.g., Cushman; Davidson; Sánchez-Canales) pertain to the in-
fluence of Kafka’s and Gogol’s narratives of bodily transformation. We
would do well, however, to heed Roth’s suggestion that, “unlike Gregor
Samsa, who accepts his transformation into a beetle from the first sen-
tence, Kepesh is continually challenging, questioning, and defying his
fate, and even after he consents to believe that he has actually become a
mammary gland, his mind is alive with alternative ways of being one”
(Roth 1972a: 58–59). Thus, consistent with the current study is the sug-
gestion that “Kepesh possesses the reflexive consciousness to tell him
that he both is and is not his material body” (Shostak 1999: 321), which
bolsters the claim that The Breast explores “the existential question of
selfhood” that pertains to the “simplistic binary of male and female”
(Shostak 2007: 118). Such readings urge attention to the existential

2 
On possibility, see Sartre 1956: 129, 200, 565, 603. For additional attention to Roth’s
understanding of existentialism — as concerns Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew and how that
work’s depiction of how “authentic” personality may influence identity formation in Roth’s
narratives — see Morris-Reich 104–106, 117–19; Rubin-Dorsky 90–103. For the more gen-
eral influence of existential philosophy on a host of American Jewish writers, see Codde. On
Roth’s attention to possibility and a rejection of determinism, see Mikkonen 33; Rice; Aarons
3. See Posnock 66–72, 196 on the playful function in Roth’s fiction of rudeness and imma-
turity, relative both to “being game” and to Robert Musil’s dramatization of “possibilism.”
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 85

implications of Roth’s significant revision of an already-Sartrian novel.

To that end, we shall examine how, in the 1980 revised text, Roth im-
bues his once-independent narrator with levels of authorial cognizance
that in some sense subordinate Kepesh’s and Roth’s early outlooks to
the consciousness-usurping reflection of the author of a twice-told tale.
Indeed, I argue that the revised novel features, relative to authorial intru-
sion into an already-published text, something akin to Sartre’s descrip-
tion of the existential “look,” which stands to usurp the consciousness of
“the Other.” Roth’s comprehensively revised novel is not merely about
Roth’s out-Kepeshing Kepesh, but also about Roth’s out-Rothing Roth,
though in a gesture of consummate existential transcendence.
As concerns the “look,” we recall that Sartre, in his appropriation
and modification of ideas advanced by Hegel and Heidegger, addresses
the conflict between varied fields of consciousness, seeing as inevitable
— via the objectifying power of the look — the usurpation of the con-
sciousness of the Other. Sartre claims that “a look fastened upon us,”
along with our “consciousness of being looked at” (1956: 258), reduces
a person to the status of non-reflective substance (242). To Sartre, the
instinctive response is that of “absorbing” the intrusive “Other” (364) in
a reciprocal look, thus regaining the status of conscious observer rather
than being cognitively usurped. As argued elsewhere, Roth was familiar
with this Sartrian phenomenon and, in The Anatomy Lesson, has nar-
rator Nathan Zuckerman, masquerading as literary critic Milton Appel,
usurp the usurper’s habit of casting the “evil eye” on Zuckerman (Duban
2014: 20–21; see also Morris-Reich 118–19). Moreover, without men-
tioning Sartre, one commentator explores related emphases in The Dying
Animal, pertaining to Consuela’s usurpation of Kepesh’s objectification
of her breasts (Shostak 2004: 62–64).3 For the current study the ques-
tion is one of determining the degree to which authorial intrusion in an
3 
The objectification of others in “the look” is, of course, but one component of Sartre’s
effort — in Being and Nothingness and in Notebooks for an Ethics (1983) — to reconcile
the inevitability of being-with-others and the dominating tendencies of the For-Itself (Keefe
96–104). This ambivalence finds precedent in Heideggerian existentialism, which recog-
nizes both the fact of being thrown among others (that is, among the “they”) and in the
“dictatorship of the ‘they’” over individual Dasein (Heidegger 164; also see Dreyfus). In a
related but inverted manner, Simone de Beauvoir praises the essential freedom of the other
but sees patriarchy as distorting such prospects of mutual respect (Bergoffen, 188, 190, 195).
Devaluation of the other, because of colonialist and sexual circumstance, is similarly at issue
in the early writings of Camus (see Margerrison). My current study focuses on how Roth’s
Kepesh navigates the dominative Sartrian “look.” For a broader analysis of existential ethics,
as those pertain to relations with others, see Giles.
86 James Duban

already-published book similarly tends to usurp the consciousness of

the first-edition narrator, while having the author outdo even himself.
At issue, then, are the philosophical implications of the post-publication
transformative artistry inhering in Roth’s revision and transcendence of
Kepesh’s already-existential consciousness and narrative perspective. If
Kepesh is finally able to claim, because of his metamorphosis, that he
has “out-Kafkaed Kafka” (1972: 73), then Roth, pursuant to the Sartri-
an For-Itself, has out-Kepeshed both Kepesh and himself. This he does
by usurping and surpassing the existential consciousness of the fictive
breast and thus outpacing his own creativity.
Of course, some readers might claim that if an author revises a pub-
lished novel or autobiography, then so be it: accept the writer’s sense
of what best represents his artistry or life, unless the alterations emerge
from second-edition censorship. The latter qualification, for instance,
mars the reliability of Melville’s Typee (see Howard 285–86) and of
Meyer Levin’s In Search: An Autobiography (see Duban 2015a). Bar-
ring such complications, and granting the author his creative disposi-
tion and need of stylistic upgrade, why bother with notions of existential
intrusion and cognitive usurpation? Because the philosophical concerns
of The Breast — preoccupied as the novel is with existential becoming
and transformation — call for inquiry into ways that narrative voice and
authorial consciousness welcome new possibilities, made available by
the pre-existing existential vision of the novel’s main character and nar-
rator. I suggest, in fact, that the novel’s attention to existentialism invites
an alignment of post-publication revision and the first-instance upsurge
of consciousness. We might recall that, in his depiction of writer Nathan
Zuckerman in The Anatomy Lesson (1983), Roth appears aware of Sar-
tre’s disposition to regard les mots of writing as kindred to the flight of
the For-Itself (Sartre 1956: 394, 518; see Duban 2014: 22–23). Since, in
The Breast, categories pertaining to Being and Nothingness inform the
emergence of Kepesh’s consciousness, Roth’s revision of a completed
novel — especially one whose narrative outlook is consonant with Sar-
trian possibility — encourages further analysis of an increasingly mer-
curial author-narrator. Indeed, the novel’s co-optive narrative technique
philosophically contextualizes Roth’s return to The Breast to enhance
his narrator’s cognition, in a manner that disrupts the stasis of an already
settled narrative — in Sartrian terms, settled into the stasis of what we
shall explore as Being-In-Itself, a potential-less state that serves as back-
drop for the ascendance of consciousness.
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 87

The revised Kepesh, unlike his predecessor, speaks of locating within

his transformed self “the higher functions of consciousness” (Roth 1980:
451), which stand related to Roth’s reflections about narrator Nathan
Zuckerman in The Anatomy Lesson. Indeed, in an interview about that
narrative, Roth says of Zuckerman’s consciousness, “My hero has to be
in a state of vivid transformation or radical displacement. ‘I am not what
I am — I am, if anything, what I am not!’” (Roth 1984: 182). These
words signal the appropriation of Heideggerian Dasein in Sartre’s Be-
ing and Nothingness, which sets forth the “three requirements” for the
nothingness (or For-Itself) of consciousness: consciousness has “(1) to
not-be what it is, (2) to be what it is not, (3) to be what it is not and to
not be what it is — within the unity of perpetual referring” (1956: 137).
Using Heidegger and other philosophers as points of departure, Sartre
defines consciousness as not being the insensate things it perceives —
that is, not being the perpetually stable and non-transformative substance
of Being, or Being-In-Itself. In Roth’s comprehensive revision of The
Breast, the ever-changing and creative possibilities of revising — i.e., of
re-visioning, or revivifying — a published text comprise, beyond artistic
expression, the transcendent possibilities of the For-Itself of Dasein, as it
outpaces the For-Itself of the past.
Such, in both editions of The Breast, is the project of David Kepesh,
who resists being defined as the In-Itself casing of “a big brainless bag of
dumb, desirable tissue, acted upon instead of acting, unguarded, immo-
bile, hanging, there, as a breast simply hangs and is there” (1980: 473).
Such da lacks self-reflective sein. On the other hand, Kepesh’s dissocia-
tion from the mere tissue of the In-Itself connotes the nothingness of self-
perceptive Dasein, or of the For-Itself which, at cognitive distance from
the In-Itself, is capable of positing the breast as simply being “there.” As
negation, consciousness thus disrupts the stasis and plenitude of the In-
Itself. So also does Roth’s revision of The Breast (1980), which treats the
established 1972 text, along with its narrator, as belonging to the past, as
existing as settled Being in need of negation and transcendence. The sce-
nario anticipates the transformative latitude of ever-evolving narratives
and what, with regard to The Counterlife (1986), Roth calls “counter-
possibilities” (1987: 216) — the novel itself enacting the Sartrian empha-
sis on existential flight and alternative beginnings rather than definitive
conclusions (see Duban 2014: 24).
Sartrian metamorphosis likewise informs a number of post-publica-
tion enhancements to The Breast. Whereas, for example, in the novel’s
first edition, Dr. Klinger asks Kepesh, “What comes to mind? Anything
88 James Duban

at all?” (1972: 54), the revised phrasing has Kepesh recall the psychia-
trist’s linking cognition to nothing: “Nothing comes to mind? Nothing at
all?” (1980: 470). Similarly, Kepesh’s memory of having been sexually
stimulated when washed by nurse Clark — as he experiences sensations
that came to him “in a state of complete helplessness, in utter darkness,
and from a source unknown to [him]” (1972: 18) — morphs, in the later
edition, into “my state of utter helplessness, and out of nothingness, and
from this source dedicated solely to kindling my excitement” (1980:
453–54).4 In isolation, these later insertions of “nothing” and “nothing-
ness” appear perfunctory. However, considered amid the many changes
in the 1980 work — and relative to the existential resonance of Being and
Nothingness in the first edition of The Breast and in other Roth works
— such changes intimate enhanced cognition via the possibilities of Sar-
trian Being-For-Itself.
Hundreds of less important emendations effect little more than an
economy of prose, lacking philosophical implications — other, perhaps,
than to indicate that clear writing is clear thinking. Of interest, though
also short on philosophical significance, are changes clarifying diction,
sequence, or meaning. For example, the statement, “I began to feel the
sort of sensations that accompany erotic play” (1972: 17) becomes the
more nuanced, “I began to experience the sensations that accompany
erotic fondling” (1980: 453); the word “experience” connotes the differ-
ence between lived, empirical sensation and that which may simply be
perceived or imagined.5 The original “I understand, I have compassion,
I see the joke. If only I could sustain the laughter for more than a few
seconds, however — if only it wasn’t so brief and so bitter” (1972: 11)
becomes “I understand, I have compassion, I too see the joke. Enjoying
it is another matter. If only I could sustain the laughter for more than a
few seconds — if only it weren’t so brief and so bitter” (1980: 449; my
italics). The revised phrasing suggests that those few seconds of laughter
emerge from disenchantment rather than from physiological distress, the
narrative veering toward deeper emotive reflection.
Enhancing that higher level of second-edition consciousness are in-
sertions effecting rhetorical refinement and flourish. For instance, rather
than saying “the wit was bitter, but it was wit at last” (1972: 13), Kepesh
more succinctly and cleverly comes to refer to “embittered wit, but wit at

Note also the evocative replacement of “complete” with “utter.”

4 

Such is the meaning of the word experience that dominates William James’s descrip-
5 

tions of mystical perception in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).

 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 89

last” (1980: 450). Also indicative of raised consciousness is a departure

from the first-edition description of Nurse Clark’s oil rubs. The earlier
“That feels nice” (1972:17) becomes “Oh, . . . that does feel nice” (1980:
453). The new phrasing resonates with enhanced appreciation, as does
Kepesh’s recollection of how he and Claire, following a beach soirée,
enjoyed a lobster dinner and a movie. In the first edition, they “sat in the
movies, wind-burned faces and buttered fingers” (1972: 33). The revi-
sion is more elaborate and poetic in its use of alliteration and assonance:
“sat in the movies, big, hearty, hairy carnivores, reduced in the cozy dark
to nothing more than wind-burned faces and buttered fingers” (1980:
460). Also enhanced is Kepesh’s description of his jokes — from “a little
bitter and quite lame” (1972: 22) to “my mordant little jokes” (1980:
455). Similarly indicating refined perception and utterance is Kepesh’s
sense of Nurse Clark’s “soft palm” (1972: 17), an enjoyment which later
accounts for the way her palm moves “in caressing circles on that face-
less face” (1980: 454). The revision features Kepesh’s newly pensive and
creative perspective of his condition (both physical and psychological).
Such leaps between first- and second-edition narrative consciousness
also characterize the transformation featured in Kepesh’s quip about
Claire’s willingness to tend to his nipple. The otherwise mundane obser-
vation “What Coolness” (1972: 31) becomes the more suave “Cool, im-
perturbable girl!” (1980: 459). Author-mediated enhancement likewise
leads Kepesh to analogy, as when the words “Perhaps passion isn’t the
right word” (1972: 10) evolve into the more elaborate, “But ‘passion’
is the wrong word: an infant in the crib doesn’t feel passion when it de-
lights in being tickled playfully under the chin” (1980: 448–49). These
are some of the augmented thoughts of a narrator who also comes to
recognize that his ever-devoted father, offering a brave “performance” of
support and encouragement, is a “great and noble man” (1972: 26) and,
in the later edition, “no simpleton” (1980: 457). Neither is Kepesh in his
author-mediated evolution as narrator.
With expanded consciousness comes enhanced sensitivity, as reflect-
ed in changes to the matter-of-fact statement, “Half of each hour that
Claire spends with me is given over to sensual pleasure, the rest of the
time we talk” (1972: 69). That observation grows to emphasize Claire’s
self-transcending impulse: Claire “for the first half hour of each hour, un-
complainingly and without repugnance attends to my pleasure. Converts
a disgusting perversion into a kindly, thoughtful act of love” (1980: 478).
The revision — more telling — attests to Kepesh’s refinement of con-
sciousness and fellow feeling. And whereas, in the original, he compares
90 James Duban

himself to both a porpoise and a beached whale (1972: 23), the revision,
eliminating mention of the whale, features the highly entertaining — at
least for an academic audience — “Porpoise with a Ph.D. Associate Por-
poise Kepesh” (1980: 456). Thus, just as the phrase “in my mind’s eye”
(1972: 69) reemerges as “in my mind’s eye — a breast’s mind’s eye, to
be sure” (1980: 478), and just as the preceding emendations betoken the
added cognizance of the breast, so Roth’s rhetorical forays into a seem-
ingly impregnable and settled narrative further guide the author’s intel-
lect into “lived” acts of self-transcendence through identification with,
and even appropriation of, the consciousness of David Kepesh. Here
resides benign usurpation, but usurpation nonetheless — on a par with
Sartrian “reflection,” which Sartre characterizes as “a second effort by
the for-itself to found itself” (1956: 153). Such reflection is compatible
with the elevation of the For-Itself implied in the “look,” which usurps
the For-Itself of “the Other” by either “absorbing the Other” (364) or by
seeking “to get hold of” the “freedom” of the Other (367).
Author-inspired cooption of narrative identity occurs also when
Kepesh, becoming reconciled to his transformation, recalls how his pre-
viously distorted consciousness imagined itself as being rational in deny-
ing his new situation. David’s response to Dr. Klinger, “Ah, but I must
maintain my perspective” (1972: 73) morphs into “‘Ah,’ but I quickly
added, ‘I must maintain my sane and reasonable perspectives” (1980:
480). The latter more emphatically reveals the narrator’s awareness of
how he once cloaked irrationality with appeals to reason. Similarly tell-
ing of enhanced insight via author-mediated outlook is Kepesh’s recall
of past excuses for refusing to believe he was a breast. He remembers
attributing such disbelief to delusions of having led college seminar dis-
cussions on the transformative narratives by Kafka and Gogol. Kepesh
originally commences his explanation as follows: “whatever the trau-
matic event itself had been, it appeared that in or order to escape it . . .”
(1972: 60). The explanation later features enhanced post-factum insight
into his prior delusion: “whatever the trauma itself may have been . . . —
what I knew was that my escape route . . .” (1980: 473). In the revised
narrative, Kepesh clarifies the extent of his previous misconception by
advancing from a memory of appearances to one of belief that he was
functioning based on authentic knowledge. The revised claim highlights
the fallacy of his having earlier indulged in rational thought when he
actually, and irrationally, was evading the truth of his condition. Kepesh
was then anything but reasonable, with his fantasies veering wide of the
truth and its acceptance. The revision thus lends more self-analyzing
depth to Kepesh’s author-assisted recollective consciousness.
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 91

Advanced cognition appears in Kepesh’s recalling another instance

of trying to convince Dr. Klinger that he (Kepesh) was simply hearing
the opposite of what people were saying, suggesting that he was insane
rather than transformed. In the original narrative Kepesh recounts how
he thought his willingness to entertain the reality of being a breast “was
only momentary: I realized he [Klinger] must have said ‘Yes’ and I had
instantaneously turned it to its opposite, as we turn rightside up the im-
ages that flash upon the retina upside down” (1972: 55). More probing
yet is the later rationale for self-delusion, with Kepesh his own analyst:
“I was set back only momentarily. I realized I had inverted his meaning
as easily, and as unconsciously, as we turn right side up the images that
flash upon the retina upside down” (1980: 470; my italics). Roth thus
has Kepesh account more clinically for the subconscious impulses of his
earlier denial.
Roth similarly has Kepesh, in accordance with existential psycho-
analysis, occasionally dismiss deterministic accounts of his condition.
That is, he rejects the negation of freedom implied by Freudian psycholo-
gy.6 Relative to such concerns, Dr. Klinger’s and Kepesh’s opinion that
“what I had to struggle with next was more or less inevitable” (1972: 49)
becomes, “what I had to struggle through next was inevitable and can’t
be blamed on my three minutes with the Dean. Evidently nothing that has
happened can be blamed on anyone, not even on me” (1980: 467). Ac-
cordingly, and again, the author, Roth, playfully enters the text’s episte-
mological and artistic drama, in this instance downplaying psychological
determinism while exalting existential freedom and possibility.
Since many similar revisions contribute to the narrator’s heightened
consciousness and personality, we should not be surprised by the disap-
pearance, in the novel’s later edition, of a complete paragraph in which
Kepesh laments his lifetime proclivity to determine his “worth by com-
parison to others” and to admonish himself “for what [he] take[s] to be
deficiencies of understanding, emotion, and moral perspicacity.” Gone,
in the revision, are these and related lines, along with the prolonged refer-
ence to “relentless and morbid self-criticism” (1972: 28; cf. 1980: 458).
Consistent with this boosting of self-worth through deletion are several
pronoun changes that enhance Kepesh’s sense of selfhood: “A hair on
my body had been tugged” (1972: 14–15) becomes “A hair of mine had
been tugged” (1980: 451); “But how would I know if anyone ever left the
room?” (1972: 19) morphs to “But how do I know anyone has ever left

See Sartre (1956): 27, 50–54, 450, 561; Duban 2014: 17 and 2017: 379–80. For
6 

Kepesh’s challenge to psychological determinism, also see Rice.

92 James Duban

me alone . . . ?” (1980: 454); “what difference would it make? (1972: 19)

reemerges as “what’s the difference to me?” (1980: 454); “I awakened
to feel something strange happening to one of my extremities” (1972:
15) transforms to “I awakened to feel something new happening to me
at one of my extremities” (1980: 451); “The doctors believe that I could
not have been conscious for more than a minute” (1972: 16) becomes
“the doctors tell me that I couldn’t have been conscious for more than
a few minutes” (1980: 452); and, in particular, “No, the victim does not
subscribe to the wish-fulfillment theory” (1972: 34) reemerges as “No,
I refuse to surrender my bewilderment to the wish-fulfillment theory”
(1980: 461). Collectively, these revisions attest to Roth’s consistency —
while himself engaged in the creative flight implied by revising a settled
text — in endowing his narrator with a heightened sense of identity and
underscoring the elevated consciousness of a more self-assured and self-
oriented individual.
Also enhancing Kepesh’s authority and sense of selfhood is a revision
in which the passive — “I am told that these are the apertures of the lac-
tiferous ducts” (1972: 13) — becomes more authoritative: “These are the
apertures of the lactiferous ducts” (1980: 450). Enhanced self-awareness
is likewise indicated in the transformation of “My flesh is smooth and
‘youthful’ and I am still a ‘Caucasian,’ they say” (1972: 13; my italics)
to the more knowing “My flesh is smooth and ‘youthful,’ and I am still
a ‘Caucasian’” (1980: 450). With authority and autonomy comes the in-
crease of personal initiative and responsibility. Hence, a further revision
veers from the quasi-determinism of the first-edition questions “Isn’t it
from my mother that I inherited my determination to begin with? Isn’t it
to her example that I owe my survival?” (1972: 27; italics added) to the
later edition’s more personal combination of indebtedness and initiative:
“Isn’t it from my mother that I learned determination to begin with? Isn’t
it from her example that I learned how one goes on from summer to win-
ter to summer again, in spite of everything?” (1980: 457; italics added).
The elaborative revision — showing insight, beyond active involvement,
into the value of endurance, and specifically as applied to memories of
his mother’s success in helping to run a hotel from season to season —
reflects the more active evolution of Kepesh’s second-edition conscious-
ness. Such retrospective cognizance of endurance in the revised edition
is especially suggestive of existential outlook since a perceiver’s “con-
sciousness of a consciousness which endures,” relative to “the laws of
reflection” (Sartre 1956: 150), is a key feature of Dasein.
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 93

Enhanced evasion of the In-Itself is likewise evident in Kepesh’s sec-

ond-edition recall of his conversations with Dr. Klinger. The statement
“I try to go over with him the key events of my psychic life” (1972: 64)
becomes “I go over with him again the salient moments in my psycho-
logical development” (1980: 475). “Development” indicates an ongoing
growth, as do the fleeting “salient moments” — both compatible with the
ever-evolving flight toward the possibilities of the For-Itself. Kepesh’s
admonition “Reflect upon eternity, consider, if you are up to it, oblivion,
and everything that is a wonder” (1972: 3) similarly changes to “. . . and
everything becomes a wonder” (1980: 445). “Is” connotes stability; “be-
comes,” evolution. In the same spirit, Kepesh’s early remark about the
impossibility of preventing or arresting “the disaster” (1972: 6) morphs
into his failing to impede “what was underway” (1980: 447) — “un-
derway” implies the generative process of existential flight, or progress,
toward the possible.
Also suggestively linked to a Sartrian stance is the change in Kepesh’s
recall, both as student and professor, of how he approached literature. In
the first edition, his enjoyment of literature was “contaminated by self-
consciousness and the burden of verbalization; either I was learning or
I was teaching. But that is behind me, like much else, now I am just
listening” (1972: 71). The revision highlights his escape from obliga-
tion and seriousness: “As a student, as a professor, I experienced lit-
erature as something unavoidably tainted by my self-consciousness and
all the responsibilities of serious discourse; either I was learning or I
was teaching. But responsibilities are behind me now; at last I can just
listen” (1980: 479). The abdication of seriousness and responsibility is
vital when read in the context of Sartre’s equating such burdensome-
ness with the In-Itself rather than with the flight of consciousness that is
the For-Itself. For Sartre, the “serious man” in a “serious mood” avoids
existential “flight” through recourse to pre-existing “obligations” (Sar-
tre 1956: 39–40). Here resides the seriousness which the author-assisted
Kepesh annihilates in his flight toward possibilities — that is, toward the
freedom of nothingness.
Similarly evoking Sartrian escape from the In-Itself are references to
slime. For Sartre, slime represents the allure of the In-Itself, a threat to
the existential flight of the For-Itself (Sartre 1956: 607–12). As suggested
by his short narrative “Juice or Gravy?” (1994), Roth appears well versed
in Sartre’s description of this phenomenon (see Duban 2016: 77–79).
Reference to slime appears in the first edition of The Breast; its existen-
tial emphasis is enhanced in the revision. In the former, Kepesh seeks to
94 James Duban

fathom the origins of his transformation into the breast he longed to be

when erotically engaged with Claire in a Martha’s Vineyard sand dune.
The novel evokes Kepesh’s fathoming “the earliest hours of [his] human
existence” (1972: 64) — indeed, fantasizing that he is clawing “the slime
at the sea bottom but by the time I rise to the surface there is not even silt
beneath my fingernails” (1972: 63). That he associates the seabed with
the fullness of the In-Itself emerges from his description of the ocean
floor as kindred to the In-Itself — that is, “when the concave is the con-
vex and the convex the concave, my first thousand hours after my aeons
of nothing” (1972: 64). While those words alone may evoke the emer-
gence of nothingness from the undifferentiated In-Itself of mere Being,
the revision adduces further existential resonance, as Kepesh now wishes
“To dive to that sea bottom where I began — to find in the slime the se-
cret!” (1980a: 475). Sartre, we recall, distinguishes between a “dive into
. . . water,” indicating the freedom of the For-Itself, and the suction of
the “slimy,” symbolizing the draw upon the freedom-denying For-Itself
toward the fullness of “de-possibilized” mere Being (Sartre 1956: 610).7
Such references to slime and diving occasion speculation about revi-
sions advancing the work’s focus (through authorial reflection, rhetorical
enhancement, and narrative intrusion) on philosophical and artistic de-
velopment — specifically, those pertaining to the origins and perpetual
flight of consciousness and self-reflection.
With an eye toward such Sartrian consciousness, we shall now turn
to revisions  that enhance the narrative’s dramatization of the existen-
tial consciousness-usurping “look.” To that end, one suspects existential
nuance in the revision’s elimination of most lines describing Kepesh’s
academic boss, Dean Schonbrun. This is a major change that allows the
reader sooner to experience Schonbrun’s giggling and laughing at the
sight of Kepesh. The deletion of secondary information alerts the reader
to Roth’s attentiveness to the Sartrian “look,” which signifies the robbing
of “the other” of his status of For-Itself, thereby turning the object of
vision into an expression of the In-Itself.8 As argued elsewhere vis-à-vis

7 
Roth revised, between its first and second printings, his existentially laden Afterword
to the 25th anniversary edition of Portnoy’s Complaint. Although the revisions are, in the
main, stylistic, the one emendation of substance, involving reference to clear water, appears
to evoke the alternative to slime in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. See Duban 2016: 77–78.
8 
Sartre, 1956: 222, 228, 263–69, 379, 405–406. See Duban 2014: 20–21 for Nathan
Zuckerman’s Sartrian preoccupation with the “look” of the Other. See also Morris-Reich
(117–20) for the implications of the Other, as that concerns surfaces in Sartre’s Anti-Semite
and Jew and, possibly, in The Human Stain. Rubin-Dorsky (90–93) likewise relates Sartrian
concern with the Other, in Anti-Semite and Jew, to authentic Jewish identity in The Coun-
terlife.
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 95

“the look,” this existential phenomenon characterizes Kepesh’s interac-

tion with Consuela in The Dying Animal (Duban, 2017: 381–82) as well
as Novotny’s love of photography in Roth’s existential short story “No-
votny’s Pain” (Duban 2014: 31n8).9 It is also felt in Kepesh’s heightened
outcry against television technicians who may have arranged for his pub-
lic viewing. The exclamation “voyeurs! heartless voyeurs!” (1972: 51)
becomes “Voyeurs! I cried, heartless, ogling, sadistic voyeurs!” (1980:
468). Key to this rhetorical and font-driven change, “the look” is now en-
hanced by ogling “sadistic voyeurs.” We here recall Sartre’s reflections
about “the Other-as-look,” causing one’s consciousness to be “a con-
sciousness, swooning in the flesh beneath the Other’s look” (Sartre 1956:
398). Sartre then references the “obscene” (400) theft of the For-Itself
perpetrated by the sadist — via “a free appropriating power confronting
a freedom captured by flesh” (399).
Sartre emphasizes how the object of the look can recapture his For-
Itself by looking at the looker, as does (says Sartre) Faulkner’s character,
Christmas, in Light in August, who deeply surveys and thus indicts those
who are lynching him (406). Such affirmation of one’s For-Itself, via a
reciprocal, retaliatory look, pertains, mutatis mutandis, to Kepesh’s re-
capturing his For-Itself via the look — specifically of Claire — that he
can still generate through memory; this gains prominence through Roth’s
revisions. Indeed, Kepesh recaptures cognitive dominance of the For-
Itself via Roth’s amending of the following memory: “Claire, a green-
eyed blonde, is lean and very long-legged but full in the breast. ‘Imagine
how they’ll hang at fifty,’ she says, ‘if they hang like this at twenty-five’”
(1972: 33). The revision includes new sentences, prior to Claire’s state-
ment, that allow a recollective Kepesh to reclaim cognitive supremacy
via “the look.” He does so by fanaticizing that he is once again objec-
tifying Claire’s breasts, rather (by implication) than merely being one,
surveyed by sadistic oglers. To that end, Kepesh recalls — with present-
tense verbs underscoring current consciousness — his thought that Claire
“is something to look at on the beach, a green-eyed blonde, tall and lean
and full-breasted. Even with desire on the wane, I still like nothing bet-
ter than to lie in bed and watch her dress in the morning and undress at
night. Down in the hollow of the dunes, I unclip the top of her bikini and
watch it drop away” (1980: 460; italics added). Through revision of “the
look,” Roth here enhances his narrator’s prospects of evading entrap-
ment within the In-Itself of “a big brainless bag of dumb desirable tissue,
acted upon instead of acting, unguarded, immobile, hanging, there, as
9 
Albeit without reference to Sartre, Shostak (2004: 62–65) illuminates Consuela’s coop-
tion of Kepesh’s gaze. On existential outlook in “Novotny’s Pain,” see Duban 2019.
96 James Duban

a breast simply hangs and is there” (1980: 473). As concerns cognitive

appropriation, Roth yet again intrudes on his narrator’s recollections to
graft further Sartrian — and ever-evolving Rothian — resonance onto
Kepesh’s outlook.
The related wish to evade being “a lump of flesh and no more” (1972:
39) — or (as revised) “craving flesh and nothing more” exists in Kepesh’s
eventual realization that he must overcome the obsession of sexual “fren-
zy,” lest he “pass over into a state of being that no longer had anything to
do with who or what I once had been” (1980: 463). Kepesh, in Sartrian
parlance, fears that excessive sexual craving might align him with the
non-reflective Being standing apart from either consciousness or what
Sartre — when referencing man’s coherent sense of identify — calls the
“Facticity” of the For-Itself (Sartre 1956: 118). In this regard, we recall
Sartre’s explanation in Anti-Semite and Jew (Réflexions sur la question
juive, 1946), that unmitigated passion — whether sexual or bigoted —
stands in polar opposition to reasoned judgment, or ratiocination (Sartre
1948: 18–19). For Sartre, passion usurps thought — that is, attainment of
the For-Itself — anti-Semitic passion being an incarnation of Being In-
Itself.10 With regard to sexuality, Kepesh’s concern that constant sexual
passion for Claire “will drive her away finally” (1972: 31) ends up as
follows: “But I’ll drive her away, I will, I know, if I don’t stop” (1980:
459). The added “I know” resonates, once again, with the cogito’s dif-
ferentiating humans from the In-Itself of mere Being — or the likeness
of such Being in non-reflective passion.
We have, then, observed how Roth’s revisions to The Breast align
with Sartre’s explanations of the origins of consciousness and the in-
cessant flight of the For-Itself away from the slimy allure of the mere
Being of the In-Itself. Equally noteworthy — in an existential world of
possible possibilities — is Roth’s intrusion into an earlier published text,
calling attention to diverse expressions of “the look,” as it pertains —
on Kepesh’s and arguably Roth’s own part — to existential flight. We
further recall that Sartre regarded writing as a form of flight, relative
to the way fiction evokes the upsurge of consciousness, since the mere
writing of a sentence is “a project which can be interpreted only in terms
of the nihilation of a given” (Sartre 1956: 516). For Sartre, then, the

10 
See, for this emphasis, Duban 2015: 45. Morris-Reich (104–105) succinctly aligns the
concerns of Anti-Semite and Jew with those of Being and Nothingness and, with regard to
The Human Stain, relates Coleman Silk’s effort to combat negative identity (as assigned by
others) to Sartrian outlook (117–20).
 Existential Revision in Philip Roth’s The Breast 97

link between fiction and existential possibility resides in shared nihila-

tion because, relative to “the imaginary,” where “I am what I am not,”
the For-Itself, “emerges on the ground of the nihilation of the world,
apart from the world of being (127). Fiction therefore comprises an ever-
creative extension of the transcendent nothingness at the heart of many
givens, awaiting the upsurge of transformative flight. I therefore suggest
that one’s revision of an already-published narrative comprises a form of
reflection, in which “the for-itself, which has lost itself outside itself, at-
tempts to put itself inside its own being” (153) — and thereby “to domi-
nate within itself its own flight” (154) and “recover itself as a totality in
perpetual incompletion” (157).
Thus, an author’s revision of an already-published novel goes beyond
first-instance nihilation, transcending, as well, what Sartre, in varied con-
texts and discussions, calls “a double nihilation” (Sartre 1956:10). The
Breast (1980) comprises a triple nihilation, signaling a consciousness
which not only exemplifies the apprehension of a first-instance For-Itself
(Roth’s) but which, in creating the earlier consciousness of Kepesh, ex-
emplifies a double nihilation, and then finally, through Roth’s reflective
appropriation of that same consciousness, achieves yet heightened stat-
ure. The possibility urges reconsideration of Kepesh’s query, “who is the
greater artist, he who imagines the marvelous or he who transforms him-
self?” (1980: 480). Roth’s self-transcendence of artistic creativity and
his later cooption of his narrator’s consciousness may well ratify both of
these existential possibilities.

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