This paper attempts to analyze the importance of `literary mentors' in Philip Roth's The Professor of Desire mainly by focusing on the presence of Anton Chekhov's `romantic disillusionment' and Franz Kafka's `spiritual imprisonment' in the protagonist, David Kepesh. As explained throughout this paper, David Kepesh resorts to Chekhov and Kafka and develops what this author calls a `literature-as-therapy philosophy' as the only way to put his unbalanced personal life in order.

In the novel, The Professor of Desire (1977), Philip Roth uses Syracuse University as the setting to depict the protagonist's initiation into life. This was not Roth's accidental choice, because by turning to the world of academics, he was evincing his lifelong preoccupation with the interrelation between literature and life. This recourse to literature in Roth's works—The Breast (1972), My Life As a Man (1974), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), Zuckerman Bound (1985), and more recently The Human Stain (2000), among others—helps his protagonists reflect on their own problems in order to solve them and come to terms with life. In other words, Roth's heroes develop literature-as-therapy philosophies which permit them to put their unbalanced personal lives in order.

In The Professor of Desire, the protagonist, David Kepesh, a professor of literature, turns to several works of major nineteenth and twentieth century Western writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Anton Chekhov, among others. These writers become for David what Roth calls `literary mentors' : it is through them and their works that David can ponder on his own life. For reasons of space, in this paper, I will concentrate only on two key mentors in Roth's novel—Chekhov and Kafka. Regarding the former, I will analyze his concept of `romantic disillusionment' as tackled in tales such as "The Gooseberries" and "A Lady with a Lapdog." This concept, which deals with the Chekhovian character's sense of anguish and boredom with life and his/her wish to attain a better life, has to do with David's disappointment with (marital) life and the inevitable `spiritual imprisonment' these feelings entail. With respect to the latter, in order to further explore the issue of `spiritual imprisonment,' David thinks about works like "A Hunger Artist," The Castle (1992), and "A Report to an Academy." After David has read them—especially,"A Hunger Artist" and The Castle, which, according to him, deal with Kafka's sexual blockage—and Kafka's biography, he realizes that his own `spiritual imprisonment,' which stems from what David calls `sexual despair,' will come to an end when he meets, like Kafka, a woman who can help him leave his promiscuous life aside, settle down, and have a child.

American Literature Journal, Literary Mentors, Spiritual Imprisonment, Romantic Disillusionment, Sexual Awakening, Chekhovian Disillusionment, Banal Romanticism, Spiritual Starvation, Self-Castigation, Sexual Intercourses, Human Development.