Sabbath's Theater: If I were to choose one book from Roth's oeuvre to read again immediately, this one might be it, despite its comparatively massive length and the pallor of decay and gloom hanging over it. Make no mistake, this is an absolutely perfect novel that distills all the best aspects of Roth: comical scatology; spot-on dialogue; a feel for even the most minor of characters; an ability to pace; and a predilection to do new, interesting and novel things with the form. He squeezes every last drop of narrative potential from what could have been a very ordinary story about an aging, disgraced puppeteer near the end of his life, mourning the loss by cancer of a very special mistress and yearning to redo the whole thing again. Mickey Sabbath is an incredibly disgusting and vile, yet he is a lovable character, and his relationship with the doomed mistress, Drenka, is as touching as it is vomit-inducing (I swear, I don't know how he does this stuff so well). There are a good dozen or so brilliant moments that I feel like rereading immediately, including a transcript of a phone sex conversation (can't think of any better one off the top of my head), a Ulysses-esque digression imagined by Sabbath on a subway, Sabbath trying in vain to buy some vodka so that a woman he met at a rehab facility--where he was supposed to be visiting his wife--would sleep with him, Sabbath revisiting his home, the description of various depraved sexual practices that Sabbath and Drenka engage in without abandon, and several others. This is a very special book that packs an emotional wallop right to the very end, and has probably the best opening and closing lines of any Roth book I can think of. This book is about as depraved as Roth got, and it isn't for the faint of heart, but it's as moving a character study as I believe Roth is capable of constructing.
Shop Talk: Not much to say about this book: like Reading Myself and Others, this is straight non-fiction (a rarity for the author), although this time Roth is smart enough to take himself out of the equation, mostly, and presents a series of mostly interviews and appreciations of authors he admires. I found this book only intermittently interesting as I had yet to read many of the authors he interviews in this book, but it's always nice to hear Roth talk about how enamored he became with the artistic scene in Czechoslovakia (the book contains interviews with both Milan Kundera and Ivan Klima, both of ramble on intelligently about the positives and negatives in choosing to represent a society that is so hostile to open ideas and art) and also how he views himself in the pantheon of 20th century Jewish writers, via his appreciations of Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud (there's also a quick interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer--having read Singer, I really don't see how they would have much in common, but they are respectful). It should also be noted that his interview with Aharon Applefeld showed up almost verbatim in Operation Shylock. This is not necessary reading by any means unless you happen to be interested in the authors Roth is talking about, which in most cases I was.
Everyman: This book was quite a doozy to end on, and I'm sort of sorry I chose to end it this way. This is a very short and powerful read, although it doesn't offer much beyond this very novel notion that it is a biography (the protagonist of which is nameless) that consists entirely of Everyman's illnesses: Roth will mention in fleeting how his character lived 25 years with no health problems and move on to the next operation or hospital visit. The intent is obvious, to convey the horror and depression of someone who knows he is inching ever closer to the end of his life, and cursing the failings of his body and mind. As one can imagine, this does not make for happy reading. There is virtually nothing in the way of humor in this book, a rarity among Roth's works, and the descriptions of Everyman's few infidelities aren't terrible interesting compared with what we know Roth is capable of. There are many powerful sequences, but I suspect Roth intends them to be secondary to the overall mood of the piece, which is to convey his own anxiety about growing old and seeing his body fail (I'm told that Roth, unlike his older characters, is more or less in excellent health). This would have made a fitting epitaph had Roth chosen to end it this way, particularly the scene where he goes to the graveyard to visit the grave of his mother and father. I felt this passage to be absolutely heartbreaking:
Aloud, he said to them: "I'm 71. Your boy is 71." "Good, you lived," his mother replied. And his father said, "Look back and atone for what you can atone for, and make the best of what you have left."
I don't think that this is a sentiment that can only be understood by 71-year olds. If there's anyone in any of Roth's book that says anything worth taking to heart, it's Everyman's father.
No comments:
Post a Comment