Okay, now I get it. Now I get the whole Philip Roth thing—book prize judges quitting in protest over him, the sheer volume of those praising and condemning him, even what I’ve called elsewhere “absurd”—the suggestion that Roth is a self-hating Jew. (I still think this labeling applied to anyone is absurd.) I get what all the fuss is about.Or how about that recent incident where Roth told a young writer to quit, because the writing life is hell? A bunch of us, including Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love (oy vey), called him on this ridiculous claim because, hey, our life rocks! We write books! Roth should stop the silly moaning and groaning about his privileges.I get all the fuss about this too.But guess what: if you’re Philip Roth, the writing life is hell. You will die doing it. It will kill you. Even if you “retire” and stop the fiction, it’s terminal. You will die an ugly death. Philip Roth, I will mourn you. I will mourn your death.Now, I feel like I get it. I read Sabbath’s Theater, which is only my second Roth, and my head is spinning. This book is, in short, an outrage!Let me just tell you some of my wild, unrehearsed thoughts.The book is—have no illusions—pornographic. I’m not a fan of writing graphically about sex. First, I think it’s silly. Second, I think it’s silly. Third, I think it’s silly. Fourth, I think it’s often—but not always—unnecessary. Sometimes it works. I’m not much of a writerly prude. This book grossed me out, though. In fact, when I told my perv husband that the book was a bit much for me and he asked me to show it to him—more like this: he made a grab for it—I snatched it away. I needed to protect his delicate perv ears, and I’ll be damned if he gets any weird ideas. I don’t care how much we’re getting along, we are not peeing on each other. And—I hate to break it to you, my beloved—we’re not even bringing home some young girl. Nope. Not gonna happen. Don’t call me Drenka. Not now. Not ever. The book is gross.That said, it’s brilliant.So how should you read it? Or should you read it at all?I’m going to have to be elitist here, and say something snooty. It’s not for everyone. It’s not for my mom. It’s not for many of my friends. It’s not for my kids, for sure.I don’t know if it’s for you; you’ll have to make that call. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts on this amazing book.The book is called “comedic” in a million places. I’m wondering who these freaks are who think it’s funny. This book is tragic. It’s tragic is an epic way. It’s probably one of the best portraits of humanity truly abandoned by God. Existentialist man, alone. What does a man without a god really look like? I’m not sure what to make of this comedic thing. This is a deeply sad picture of a human without any meaning in his life whatsoever. It’s painful to watch Mickey Sabbath, puppeteer for the Indecent Theater (get all those ironies?), try for suicide, try to get murdered. Dear God.Sexual depravity really isn’t my thing—I’m depraved in other ways—but I think Roth reveals depravity with the kind of truth that, well, I’ve never encountered before. I have to be honest: this is why I will highly recommend this book. Roth writes better about the heart of man than any other author I’ve ever read. Let me tell you this, and you can take it or leave it: I started drooling when my Love Slave was called “wincingly candid.” Oh, I love wincing candor! I blushed! I flushed! Okay, I beamed with you-know-what!But Roth? That man takes wincing candor to new heights. I’ve got nothing on him.In short, Roth exposes the heart of human darkness in breathtaking candor, and you might want to read it. Though I think you should start with American Pastoral, which I did like better—and it’s not sexually explicit at all. I’ve got other thoughts:It struck me, after I finished, that I used to be one of those stupid girls who liked “bad boys”—but those girls are full of s#&%. Those girls have no clue what real bad boys are like. Roth has written about the real bad boy and, trust me, none of us silly girls would want anything to do with him. We’re just talking. Roth is smarter than us. You want to see what a real bad boy is like? Go here. It’s not fun. Real bad boys are gross.There is this part of me that thinks that anyone capable of writing this is probably a vile human being. Of course, I thought that when I first read Nabokov too. I don’t anymore. What I do think, however, is that it’s valid for Roth to suggest that the writing life is brutal. For anyone to delve so deeply into this kind of depravity, suffering is not so far off. I do not doubt Roth’s genuine sorrow. A privileged life of sorrow?You know, this book—interestingly enough—is similar to my all-time favorite book in the world, The Catcher in the Rye. Both books are about protagonists with dead brothers. These deaths were woven into their beings—intrinsic to their experiences in the world, coloring everything. What a fascinating contrast to make: Holden Caulfield and Mickey Sabbath!Mostly—make no bones about it—this book is about man without God.On his life as artist: “The main thing is to do what you want. His cockiness, his self-exalted egoism, the menacing charm of a potentially villainous artist were insufferable to a lot of people and he made enemies easily, including a number of theater professionals who believed that his was an unseemly, brilliantly disgusting talent that had yet to discover a suitably seemly means of ‘disciplined’ expression.”Doing what you want. Where does it lead, after all? Like American Pastoral, this book ends perfectly. I won’t give it away, but it’s true. It’s right. How can one read Philip Roth without being infected? One can’t. So there are other questions. How will you be infected? Is it worth it? For what end?For myself, the answer is in the wincing candor. I’d like to be a student in the wincingly candid. He gets so close to the soul, so close indeed.
Le stelline che ho dato a questo romanzo sono una media tra la parte iniziale del libro e quella finale. All’inizio il romanzo è pornografia, sempre Philip Roth ha trattato nelle sue opere, a partire dal Lamento di Portnoy, il tema del sesso come antidoto al pensiero ossessivo della morte, ma in quest’opera egli eccede in un erotismo depravato e volgare (mi riferisco, ad esempio, per chi l’ha letto, nella trascrizione per esteso della telefonata fatta da Sabbath alla studentessa e da lei registrata, che costò al professor Sabbath il posto a scuola: è del tutto inutile ai fini del romanzo ed è soltanto espressione di una volgarità gratuita da filmino pornografico). La parte finale, soprattutto le ultime 100 pagine, sono bellissime, da 5 stelle. La stele funeraria che Mickey Sabbath vuole che sia scritta per lui recita così: Morris Sabbath “Mickey” Amato Puttaniere, Seduttore, Sodomizzatore e Sfruttatore di Donne, Distruttore della morale, Corruttore della Gioventù, Uxoricida Suicida. Mickey Sabbath è un personaggio rothiano difficile da dimenticare: un ex burattinaio sessantaquattrenne, fallito professionalmente e umanamente, un uomo che porta sofferenza a tutti coloro che vivono vicino a lui -alle sue mogli, ai pochi amici che ancora gli restano- a causa della perversione e amoralità irrimediabili del suo pensiero, tradotto in pratica di vita, incentrato sul “bisogna dedicarsi a fottere nello stesso modo in cui un monaco si dedica a Dio…”. Ecco dunque il Sabbath “amato puttaniere, seduttore, sodomizzatore e sfruttatore di donne, distruttore della morale, corruttore della gioventù…” L’unica cosa che il cinico manipolatore Mickey Sabbath non riesce a superare è la morte del fratello maggiore Morty, abbattuto in un combattimento aereo durante il secondo conflitto mondiale, Morty il primogenito, il figlio tanto amato dai suoi genitori che ebbero la vita distrutta dal momento della notizia della sua morte, Morty il compagno di giochi, il difensore del fratellino dai soprusi dei grandi, l’esempio di moralità e di educazione, morto come un eroe. Come difendersi dal dolore? Scappando, imbarcandosi, girando il mondo, frequentando in ogni porto un bordello diverso, e poi creare una compagnia di teatro di burattini, che non sono come le persone che camminano o corrono, essi "volano, roteano e levitano". Il teatro dei burattini come rappresentazione del teatro tragicomico della vita. Una vita segnata da tante perdite: la scomparsa della prima moglie, l’abuso di alcool della seconda moglie, la cacciata dalla scuola, la morte di Drenka, l’amante croata con la quale metteva in pratica la massima sopra riportata…. Fin da piccolo Mickey Sabbath ha accumulato disgrazie, delusioni, sofferenze, sconfitte che spiegano l’estrema decisione, l’ultimo dei termini usati per la sua stele funeraria: “Suicida”. Ma Mickey Sabbath non è lineare: la sua è stata “una vita veramente umana”, fatta di “Ancora sconfitte! Ancora delusioni! Ancora inganni! Ancora solitudine! Ancora artrite! Ancora missionari! Se Dio vuole, ancora figa! Ancora disastrosi impegolamenti in qualsiasi cosa. Per la pura sensazione di essere tumultuosamente vivi…”. La sua è la nostra “merdosissima” vita, niente altro.
What do You think about Sabbath's Theater (1996)?
Oh, christ, what a hulking, craven, infernal, tragi-comic cyclops is 'Sabbaths Theater.' I have not laughed out loud as much and as often and as darkly since 'Molloy' a few thousand years ago. Not for the faint of heart? Absolutely. Roth has fully unleashed himself here and seems to have written the thing in a state of unashamed hypo-mania. And, like the author of 'Molloy' [ a counter-shape in so many ways] he produces moments of exquisite tenderness inside in a landscape mad with crushing inevitability.
—Bryan Kelly
Sabbath’s Theater is a work which is difficult to write about. Words like “moving”, “imaginative” or “deep” are not sufficient to describe it. At the end of the book you feel you’ve been reading four or five books and not just one. It’s a truly breathtaking read. It is Roth’s prose at its most dense. It’s one of those works which makes you put down the book every five pages, put your forehead on the table, and think and imagine for half an hour. The power and force is brutal. First and foremost the work seems to be a well-articulated attack on commitment and fidelity; marriage and marital life. But the philosophy never hurts the strong sense of wonder and curiosity that the reader experiences while discovering the past of Mickey Sabbath. The appeal and suspense never let go. The obscenity and outright immorality of the protagonist is always discovered by other characters in the most shockingly inappropriate ways and thus brings about feelings more varied than just alienation. There is thus a vile, almost vicious effrontery that might disgust many readers. The narcissistic Sabbath is a middle finger by nature. He is the very same middle finger who got him into trouble. He is in his young days a premature example of a 60s sexual revolutionary. And his sexual rebelliousness outlives the societal changes of the century. Sex seems to be the only thing with which Sabbath manages to cling to his life. And he comes to the understanding that the puppeteer had been life itself all along, and not him. Life is incoherent, and meaningless. There are two ways to escape this cruel incoherence. Death, and sex. And once again death and carnality merge in one single image in a Roth book. And this time it is even more obscene, and more extreme. An old man jerking off on the grave of his late beloved. An old man urinating on the grave of his late beloved. And when Sabbath is found by the son of the lover, a trooper, he explains to him the religious seriousness of what he has to do on the grave of his lover. Though Sabbath is desperate to give his lover’s son reason enough for killing him because he prefers being murdered to suicide, the seriousness of his actions on his lover’s grave are sufficiently serious. For sex endows life with coherence, just like religion. But unlike in religion, the coherence is not fake.The comedy, the type of thrifty but powerful comedy which is always there in Roth’s works to make everything just a little bit more tragic, can be seen in Sabbath’s Theater too. The final scene in which Sabbath is left in the middle of nowhere with no means to kill himself and no one to murder him successfully sums up the absurdity that the whole novel is about.
—Amin
I am recusing myself from this review.It would not be fair to the book, to myself, or to anyone reading this as a review.When I brought up the dilemma of reviewing the book at club, there was some interesting debate on the issue. Another member came up with this to help me out:If Odysseus had to rate the Sirens' song - and he was limited to the goodreads 5 star rating scale, what would he give them? Obviously, the songs were pretty good. Does he give them 5 stars? Would that have upset the other sailors who had to plug their ears? Would that encourage others (who might not have been as cautious as him) to sail the waters in search of the Sirens?Should he have given them 1 star? Would that have been honest? The songs were sung well, but they were also evil - or at least sung with evil intent.And splitting the difference and giving a 3 doesn't seem honest either. In fact, I would argue that it just makes the reviewer look like a coward; indecisive.Yet here we are.Here is the question: Did Philip Roth have to write Mickey Sabbath as depraved as he was? Or could he have made the points he was trying to make some other way?It must have been very freeing for Roth to write Sabbath. True, Sabbath was a slave to his depravity - and once he started, Roth was forced to write him that way if he was to have any integrity. But I maintain that it must have been freeing nonetheless: to say - without apology - what the character really would say.Of course, we'll never know the answer to that question - and it wouldn't be the same book - so maybe that's your answer right there.I can't recommend the book. In our society, if someone recommends Lolita, they become the perverted Humbert Humbert. And if someone recommends Sabbath's Theater, they risk becoming Mickey Sabbath (at least in the eyes of those who would read the book.)Maybe Mickey Sabbath would recommend the book. But even in my total depravity, I'm not Mickey Sabbath.This isn't a review or a recommendation. It's a warning.
—Philip
