The Humbling - Hardcover

Roth, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547239696 ISBN 13: 9780547239699

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009

Synopsis

Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When he goes onstage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. "Something fundamental has vanished." His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can’t persuade him to make a comeback.

Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for a bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day’s journey into night, told with Roth’s inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life’s performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off.

The Humbling is Roth’s thirtieth book.

About this title

About the Author

In 1997, Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize. Recently Roth received PEN’s two most prestigious prizes: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for achievement in American Fiction. Roth is the only living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. The last of eight volumes is scheduled for publication in 2013.

Reviews

What happens when a man loses the one thing that defines him as a human being? With nods to Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Shaw, Roth's grim new novel explores this question—with varying success. While the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post praised Roth's elegant writing and caustic wit, other reviewers found the novel superficial and oddly lifeless, citing flat characters, undeveloped plot contrivances, a lack of humor, and a hostile portrayal of homosexuality. Even the graphic sex is "coarse" and "dull," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Though not his best work, The Humbling may appeal to faithful Roth fans; others should pick up one of his earlier novels.

Starred Review. A deteriorating and increasingly irrelevant actor finds the possibility of renewal in a younger woman in Roth's tight Chekhovian tragedy. At 65, Simon Axler, a formerly celebrated stage actor, is undergoing a crisis: he can no longer act, his wife leaves him and, suicidal, he checks himself into a psych ward. Then he retires to his upstate New York farm to wait for... something, which arrives in the form of Pegeen, daughter of some old theater friends who is now a lithe, full-breasted woman of forty, though with something of a child still in her smile. A Rothian affair ensues, despite (or perhaps because of) their age difference and Pegeen's lesbian past. Axler overlooks all the signs that should warn him not to trust too much in the affair and instead tries out more and more sexual turns with Pegeen (spanking, strap-ons, role play), until one night they pick up a drunk local for a three-way that might prove to be soul-crushing. Roth observes much (about age, success and the sexual credit lovers hold one with another) in little space, and the svelte narrative amounts to an unsparing confrontation of self. (Nov.)
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*Starred Review* The great Roth has always written both short novels and long novels, choosing a length perfectly suited to what he has to say. Thus, his thirtieth book is brief and perfectly so. Soon into its pages, the reader will recall the title of a famous play about Henry II of England, The Lion in Winter. The lion here, increasingly toothless, is sixtysomething Simon Axler, a famous stage and screen actor. Yes, he’s famous, but now he is so stultified by uncertainty about his talent and how to execute his craft that he can no long perform. His wife flees, and Simon retires to his upstate New York farm, even checking himself into a psychiatric ward for a short stay. Roth does not labor over the man’s distress. Using spare prose, he makes the situation only as poignant as it deserves to be. When Simon takes up with a woman young enough to be his daughter, who is the daughter of old acting friends, Roth again uses concise language to best convey the sadness of what is only a short rehabilitation for Simon, and which ultimately forces his hand in determining how his life will proceed—or not. Roth’s voice, long heard and long appreciated, remains profound. --Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547239696
• ISBN 13: 9780547239699
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140