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, an 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 scenario bears striking resemblances to the recent Booker Prize-winning novel by J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace. Kepesh himself is, in conventional terms, a disgrace. He is over 60 and white-haired, a TV culture critic and university lecturer who conducts sexual affairs with his young female students. He is disgusted with the contemporary world - 'the triumph of trivialisation over tragedy', 'The Triumph of the Surface, with Barbara Walters'.

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