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Drama. Fiction. HTML: AS MUCH AS HE WANTS TO BE THE MARQUIS DE SADE, HE IS NOT. AS MUCH AS HE WANTS TO BE SEVENTEEN, HE IS NOT. AS MUCH AS HE WANTS TO BE DEAD, HE IS NOT. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging power house whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's bold and hilarious new novel. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But, after the death of his long-time mistress-an exotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own-Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disastrous that take him to the brink of madness and extinction..… (more)
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The sexuality is not the part of Sabbath that I had difficulty with; I had much more trouble with his treatment of his wife. Even when it felt like he was doing something good by her - like visiting her in rehab - he does something horrible - like writing what he wrote in her diary. I do however share his disdain for insipid 12 step programs.
Beyond the story, this book was also interesting in that in a few sections the writing style is quite a bit different from the other Roth books that I've read.
The main character dominates the book so completely that not even the all seeing third person narration feels safe. It's wonderful to look into the writing and pinpoint how and where this undermining is done—I won't ruin it here.
Highly recommended book if you're willing to ride it out.
Some people are provocative and antagonistic simply because they want to be that way (or at least that's how it seems from the outside). But Sabbath is provocative and antagonistic as a kind of "by-product" to a fundamentally benign nature. He's not malicious; he doesn't have any real "hates" (his hatred of the Japanese is somewhat manufactured); he knows right from wrong. But he does have strong feelings about how the world ought to be, and in particular about how people ought to behave and treat one another and him especially. And most important, he has his own appetites to satisfy. For him, this is a very unfortunate blend of circumstances: he just doesn't get along. Scene after scene describes his failure to get along. He seems to have only two successes at getting along: among the beggars in NY, and with his lover.
There's a lot for the reader to take from these two successes. Most important: it isn't "selfishness" that makes Sabbath what he is. In the right places, with the right people, he is a well-adjusted, happy human being who gets along, compromises, and gives generously.
But most of the book is a succession of failures, brought on by a bad mix of Sabbath's nature and the world. How did Sabbath become this sort of person? Why the overwhelming vision about how the world ought to treat him and his appetites? It would spoil the plot to discuss this. Also, there are strong biographical cues — Sabbath's childhood in New Jersey for instance — that I don't feel I appreciate on one reading.
I've read a lot of Roth, most of it I think. This one is magic.
The worst and best part of the book is that you constantly want the main character to be dealt a world of pain because of his complete lack of morals. The
I guess this strange psychological experience is what won "Sabbath's Theater" the National Book Award, though.
What a disappointment! Roth always writes about sex, always a little shockingly, but what makes him great is what it says about the human condition. While I can't really relate to the
Sabbath's Theater, however, is all about sex and nothing else. I guess maybe it says something about the meaning of sexual obsession, but it doesn't give much of anything else.
...at least that's what I found in the first 60 pages or so, at which point I gave up. Too many great books out there to waste time on this.
The protagonist is vile. I like a anti-hero or villain as much as the next reader of literary fiction, but jeez, this character is something wholly different, a new
That book was Sabbath’s Theater, and when he gave me it and I replied, ‘I have been meaning to read a Roth book for years.’ We were both happy. I set about the marathon read immediately.
When I write a book I always keep it as short as possible to tell the story, some of the masters/masteresses don’t seem to bother. Men are the worst because they have the confidence/indulgence/self-importance to go off on tangents, and this book has lots of those, which I love, but I know all don’t. This obviously makes the book longer than it need be, and if you, or more likely someone else, a friend, an editor, a writing group are being critical they will tell you to cut it out as it slows the narrative down. I still don’t know why authors plunge for a book that is far longer than it need be as it puts so many people off actually picking it up. The relationship is obvious between the length and finishing it, all the top 5 started and not read novels are for this reason alone, with probably the exception of Ulysses. The edition I read was 450 pages in length and point 10 writing, I summarise to try and fool a few more readers into reading it.
When I start a book I invariably finish it quite quickly, even though I read slowly and sometimes make notes. This book took me three months. Was it worth it? You bet, as I have stated earlier Roth is a master that has won every major prize in literature and for that reason alone you may wish to indulge. While I read this I could hear the echoes in other authors after and before; A M Holmes latter and Proust before.
This is a cracking read and it leaves you wanting to shake the main character (Mickey Sabbath), in the same way J M Coetzee does with David Lurie in Disgrace.
I would recommend this book as a great place to start with Roth, (or Portnoy’s Complaint.) I know a book is great when I don’t want anything in the world to interrupt the reading of the last 50-80 pages, this is such a book, for this reason I recommend it you… Oh, and thanks for the present Jock, 35 hours of enjoyment for £2.49, the whole world is a winner!