He is relentlessly defiant. He is exceedingly libidinous. His appetite for the outrageous is insatiable. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's astonishing new novel.
Sabbath's Theater tells Mickey's story in the wake of the death of his mistress, an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey is now in his mid-sixties and besieged by ghosts - of his mother, his beloved brother, his vanished first wife, his mistress of thirteen years.
Bereft and grieving, he embarks on a turbulent journey back into his past, one that brings him to the brink of madness and extinction. But no matter how ardently he courts death, he is too exuberantly alive to succeed at dying. Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. This book, which presents Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, is sur-------
ByC. Collinson September 25, 2011
Be warned that this is a nasty literary accomplishment. The energy of the book is outstanding, the writing masterful, the insights are unnerving, and the sex is outrageous. Philip Roth has created a character with the wild abandon of the god Pan, as if Freud's Id turned into a 62 year old scandal plagued unemployed over weight Jewish man. Mickey Sabbath is one of the most amazing characters in 20th century literature, a wild version of the forces of Eros, enjoying all forms of sexual adventures while fighting against the final curtain. Mickey Sabbath is not a lovable character by any stretch of the imagination. He is rude, ungrateful, predatory, manipulative, confrontive, and pleasure driven. As I read the book I never could shake the perception that Mickey Sabbath is not a character study so much as Phillip Roth's exploration of these life forces raging against the absurdity of death using his own perceptions of human nature. He is a personality so large that he almost ceases to be a personality and becomes more of a force of nature. However unlike the sociopath forces of nature characters that populate Cormac McCarthy's novels, Mickey is full of sarcasm and hysteria. The energy never lets up in this book, which made me feel as if I had read 450 pages of recent disasters as I finished the book. Mickey Sabbath's life is a disaster and he has made mistake upon mistake in his dealings with other humans. Some of the sex acts will be shocking to some readers but I thought Roth included them because he did want to shock the reader to some extent, shock the reader into seeing the extremely wide range of sexual desires and acts that encompass the human condition. Further, Roth repeatedly shows characters overcoming resistance to some taboo behavior that liberates the character is some manner while also extolling a price for the new knowledge.
Mickey Sabbath, a 62 year old abject failure, lives on his wife's tiny teacher's salary because he was fired from a college position after an extremely filthy tape of his conversations with one of his students is found and given to the college President. This crisis sends his secretive alcohol wife, Roseanne, into a tailspin which lands her in detox. The story is told in a number of flash-back recollections of the many failures of this fellow, who keeps on failing, one mistake after another, as if life is a constant recovery process from the mistakes we bring upon ourselves due to the human condition and the desires and emotions and obsessions which we can not control. It is Roth's strength that he contrasts Roseanne's recovery through a 12-step program with Mickey's continued hysterical self-destruction binge. Peace and sanity are not for Mickey and he deviously tries to undermine Roseanne. I found this aspect of the book far more disturbing than the sexuality. I finally came to the conclusion that Mickey views serenity as based on false premises, and that the most honest position is one of outright rage and predatory lust. Few can maintain that level of intensity but Roth gives us 450 pages of action that can only be described as hysterical (in both meanings of the word).
It is the death of his long time lover, Drenka that unhinges Mickey, a man who was already unhinged. He begins a journey of destruction while evoking destructive memories from his wild past. The switching from past to present is superbly written and even if the actions are wild and destructive, the writing is perfect and keeps the reader on target at all times. The novel is masterful, exploring the human spirit running and raging against the coming of the night.
Mickey Sabbath, a 62 year old abject failure, lives on his wife's tiny teacher's salary because he was fired from a college position after an extremely filthy tape of his conversations with one of his students is found and given to the college President. This crisis sends his secretive alcohol wife, Roseanne, into a tailspin which lands her in detox. The story is told in a number of flash-back recollections of the many failures of this fellow, who keeps on failing, one mistake after another, as if life is a constant recovery process from the mistakes we bring upon ourselves due to the human condition and the desires and emotions and obsessions which we can not control. It is Roth's strength that he contrasts Roseanne's recovery through a 12-step program with Mickey's continued hysterical self-destruction binge. Peace and sanity are not for Mickey and he deviously tries to undermine Roseanne. I found this aspect of the book far more disturbing than the sexuality. I finally came to the conclusion that Mickey views serenity as based on false premises, and that the most honest position is one of outright rage and predatory lust. Few can maintain that level of intensity but Roth gives us 450 pages of action that can only be described as hysterical (in both meanings of the word).
It is the death of his long time lover, Drenka that unhinges Mickey, a man who was already unhinged. He begins a journey of destruction while evoking destructive memories from his wild past. The switching from past to present is superbly written and even if the actions are wild and destructive, the writing is perfect and keeps the reader on target at all times. The novel is masterful, exploring the human spirit running and raging against the coming of the night.
ByTMacPhailon August 23, 2014
I was 50 pages into this book, hating the protagonist and thinking about discontinuing my read, when it hit me how fantastic a writer Roth has to be to make me intensely loathe his protagonist. And by the end, while I still don't *love* Sabbath, I understand him. It's a great work that examines the effects of the past on someone's life. And if you've ever lost a sibling young (like I have), then you'll be happily surprised at just how accurate Roth's depiction of that event is. I will never forget his description of the hollow horseshoe crab on the beach as symbolic of what exposure to early death does to someone.
3.0 out of 5 starsWill you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four? (The Beatles)
ByTom Woodon May 10, 2013
Mickey Sabbath’s sixty-four and his need and feed is sexual gratification with death lurking close by. Sabbath was a professional puppeteer until arthritis of his hands stopped him. He did not use strings, but pulled plenty of them in real life, his theater. He was a finger puppet and did miraculous things while puppeteering, like exposing a woman’s breasts in public unbeknownst to her.
In this novel, Philip Roth has laid down what a lot of men (American ones at least) fantasize about frequently and act out (probably) much less often. It is disturbing that we are so preoccupied with sex. It doesn’t seem to disturb Roth. Not content to masturbate with his dead lover in mind on his bed, Sabbath must do it at her grave—others of her lovers do the same thing—which eventually leads to Mickey’s undoing.
Sabbath—a name with triple meaning—assumes that any woman (pre-menopausal at least) can be seduced and yields to the games Sabbath wants to play. Sabbath-woman conversations (except with his dead mother) seem almost always (but not quite) to be explicitly sexual; the purpose being to arouse and satisfy the male partner. He is sexist and misogynistic. If men have redeeming features, they don’t come through in Sabbath's character. He is not likable.
Where does Sabbath’s preoccupation come from? When he was twelve his older brother was killed in action in WWII and from that point on his mother does nothing but grieve for Mickey’s brother, who Mickey adored, the rest of her life. He didn’t get his sex drive from his brother. By default it seems to be innate.
There’s no argument that Roth is a superb writer. His character portrayals and observations (e.g., his second wife’s sojourn in a mental hospital for alcoholism) are insightful, sometimes hilarious and sometimes very sad. He skips around masterfully, never confusing the reader, and lapses into Joycean language now and then.
But what’s it all for?
In this novel, Philip Roth has laid down what a lot of men (American ones at least) fantasize about frequently and act out (probably) much less often. It is disturbing that we are so preoccupied with sex. It doesn’t seem to disturb Roth. Not content to masturbate with his dead lover in mind on his bed, Sabbath must do it at her grave—others of her lovers do the same thing—which eventually leads to Mickey’s undoing.
Sabbath—a name with triple meaning—assumes that any woman (pre-menopausal at least) can be seduced and yields to the games Sabbath wants to play. Sabbath-woman conversations (except with his dead mother) seem almost always (but not quite) to be explicitly sexual; the purpose being to arouse and satisfy the male partner. He is sexist and misogynistic. If men have redeeming features, they don’t come through in Sabbath's character. He is not likable.
Where does Sabbath’s preoccupation come from? When he was twelve his older brother was killed in action in WWII and from that point on his mother does nothing but grieve for Mickey’s brother, who Mickey adored, the rest of her life. He didn’t get his sex drive from his brother. By default it seems to be innate.
There’s no argument that Roth is a superb writer. His character portrayals and observations (e.g., his second wife’s sojourn in a mental hospital for alcoholism) are insightful, sometimes hilarious and sometimes very sad. He skips around masterfully, never confusing the reader, and lapses into Joycean language now and then.
But what’s it all for?
ByAnn S. Epsteinon September 20, 2017
Philip Roth is one of my favorite authors, yet I’d never read this winner of the 1995 National Book Award. Alas, I shouldn’t have done so now. Even Roth cannot make the sex-drenched misanthropic puppeteer Mickey Sabbath come to life. He means his title character to be transgressive; he is merely unimaginatively obsessive. Save the brilliant section where Sabbath visits the Jersey shore of his childhood, and the family memories scattered throughout, there is little to redeem the novel’s self-indulgent writing. Was I shocked? No, merely bored.
ByMinnie the Moocheron December 31, 2013
"Sabbath's Theater" is a complex, disturbing novel. It centers around 64-year old Mickey Sabbath, a former puppeteer retired due to arthritis. The novel consists of a series of meandering remembrances of his life - a young seaman obsessed by whores, a man deserted by his first wife, conductor of a 12-year affair with a local innkeeper's wife, besieged by a sexless marriage to his current wife. The strength of the novel is found in Roth's powerful portraits of his characters and their lives, crafted by a dynamic pen unafraid to describe the bizarre in no uncertain terms. The rambling, meandering style, sometimes lapsing into stream of consciousness, is sometimes distracting. And Mickey's many shortcomings are often annoying. But Roth proves once again that he is a giant of American literature, which makes "Sabbath's Theater" well worth reading.
ByC. H. Bartleon October 1, 2010
This book contains one of the best portrayals of addiction there is. On a par with Under the Volcano. Just as Under the Volcano gave nearly as much time to the Consul's release as to his pain in his last day, this book revels in the pleasure that Mickey got in his last days remembered and otherwise - and it's not trivial, but awe-inspiringly transgressive fun. Of course, "addiction" is only one of the paradigms that one might use to analyze the book, but I believe the ferocity of Sabbath's pursuit of his path is unmistakeable. His wife's recovery, portrayed as a shallow - or worse, uninteresting - quest in Mickey's eyes, is a sly commentary on this issue, perhaps. And more often than not, use of the word "addiction" is neither analytical or descriptive. It's a terribly determinative word for a novel, comic or tragic. Nevertheless, it's clear that addiction/allergy is a progressive condition - ultimately fatal to all relationships, including the one between the addict and himself. By never taking the issue on directly or dealing in pat diagnoses, bromidic solutions, easy generalizations and the like, Roth makes the "predictable" downward spiral so much more powerful and inescapably human.
ByDavid McAllisteron November 8, 2012
I listened to an interview with Roth (I think on the BBC) and he said this was the novel of his own that he thought was his best. Any experienced reader of this writer will know that they are all worth reading. I can't think of any other important writer who can be read so fast, and this is because the narration depicts thinking as it feels to us, and speech as we hear it and interpret it.
This acclaimed novel by Roth is at times brilliant, provocative, entertaining, insightful, and certainly erotic, but it can also be tedious, repetitious, morose, and self-indulgent. Sixty-four-year-old Mickey Sabbath, a Jewish, unemployed arthritic puppeteer, has come to a point where he realizes that his life has been pretty much pointless and wasted. The death of his older brother Mort in WWII some fifty years prior seemed to unmoor him, leading to a life of drifting and marginal enterprises. The one constant in his life is his obsession with women, where his verbal abilities and aggressiveness have served him well. His Indecent Theater act on the streets of NYC with his finger puppeteering was especially effective in attracting intrigued females.
The sudden end of his long standing, highly gratifying relationship with a married Croatian innkeeper and a fellow sexual adventurer Drenka has precipitated a crisis in his life. In the past, he has rebounded from failures with women. He drove his current wife to drink and into rehab and his first wife simply disappeared. But now as Mickey reflects on all of this history, he begins to really struggle with what the future holds for him.
It may not be easy to journey with Mickey on his path of self-analysis; he is not even especially likeable. But for those who can get past the self-indulgent behavior, there is a lot of depth waiting to be plumbed. It might well take a reread to fully appreciate this book.
The sudden end of his long standing, highly gratifying relationship with a married Croatian innkeeper and a fellow sexual adventurer Drenka has precipitated a crisis in his life. In the past, he has rebounded from failures with women. He drove his current wife to drink and into rehab and his first wife simply disappeared. But now as Mickey reflects on all of this history, he begins to really struggle with what the future holds for him.
It may not be easy to journey with Mickey on his path of self-analysis; he is not even especially likeable. But for those who can get past the self-indulgent behavior, there is a lot of depth waiting to be plumbed. It might well take a reread to fully appreciate this book.
ByJ.M.Son November 6, 2017
After reading American Pastoral and Portnoy's Complaint I assumed that Roth had peaked and any further reads would be a disappointment...Sabbath's Theater is by far my favorite Philip Roth novel..Plot wise, characters and storytelling are superb and the prose is gorgeous as usual.
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