" David Lurie is so appalled by his degraded state—no longer sexually attractive but still squirming with lust—that he finds himself musing about actual castration, the possibility that one might get a doctor to do it, or even, with the help of a textbook, do it oneself. For would that really be any more disgusting than the antics of a dirty old man? Instead, he forces himself on one of his students, a cannonball dive into disgrace that will be his undoing. "

― Sigrid Nunez , The Friend