Sabbath's Theater

"Sabbath's Theater" (1995, ISBN 0-679-77259-6) is a novel by Philip Roth about the exploits of 64-year-old Mickey Sabbath. It received the National Book Award for fiction in 1995.

ummary and themes

Sabbath is an unproductive, out-of-work, former puppeteer with a strong affinity for whores, adultery, and the casual sexual encounter. Sabbath takes great pleasure in his status as the (prototypical) "dirty old man." He takes an equal pleasure in manipulating the people around him, primarily women—in a sense, they play the same role as his puppets. The loss of a decades-long sexual sidekick—the equally adulterous Drenka—precipitates a crisis in a life he has long considered an utter failure. Sabbath wonders whether he should simply take his own life, thereby heeding the advice of the ghost of his departed mother, a frequent visitor who urges suicide as the fitting end for his failed life.

Models

Roth modeled his protagonist on the American Jewish painter R.B. Kitaj. [cite news|first=Matt |last=Nesvisky |url=http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1192380767901 |title=In-Your-Face Outsider |work=Jerusalem Post |date=November 8, 2007]

Reception

Literary critic Harold Bloom has declared "Sabbath's Theater" Roth's "masterwork." [cite book |last=Bloom |first=Harold |title=Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds |publisher=Warner Books |location=New York |year=2003 |pages=p. 207] It received the 1995 National Book Award for fiction. "New York Times" critic Michiko Kakutani called it hard to finish and "distasteful and disingenuous". [cite news| title=Mickey Sabbath, You're No Portnoy |first=Michiko |last=Kakutani |authorlink=Michiko Kakutani |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5DF1E3DF931A1575BC0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all |date=August 22, 1995 |work=New York Times]

References