The Humbling - 1st Edition/1st Printing

Roth, Philip

ISBN 10: 0547239696 / ISBN 13: 9780547239699

Published by Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2009

About this Item

First edition, first printing in unread Fine condition in alike dust jacket, SIGNED by author Philip Roth directly on the title page. With small stamp of NY bookstore of signing event in the back; Philip Roth's 30th book is the third in a quartet. Like the two preceding short novels, "Everyman," and "Indignation," "The Humbling" is deeply melancholy. The tale focuses on Simon Axler, renowned actor who has lost his gifts. His wife leaves him, he is briefly institutionalized, and after he is released, he falls into a spiritless routine when he meets a younger woman and is recharged, even hopeful; 8vo; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 18616

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Humbling - 1st Edition/1st Printing

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, New York

Publication Date: 2009

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Edition; First Printing.

About this title

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 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.