The Humbling [Hardcover]

Philip Roth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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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From Bookmarks Magazine

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade; First Edition edition (October 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547239696
• ISBN-13: 978-0547239699
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #504,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient." In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians Award for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003--2004." In 2007 Roth received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman.

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#85 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 84 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars The Humbug November 8, 2009

By Mary Murrey

Format:Hardcover

Don't get me wrong. Philip Roth's work deservedly belongs in the category of "Great American Literature", if we insist on such a category. I've always eagerly bought almost all his work--willing to pay for the hardback, I couldn't wait to get my hands on his latest book, and his world. I think his best novel is AMERICAN PASTORAL. This is great literature. But lately.... I don't know. Maybe we should call it the Woody Allen Effect. Old writer/auteur who has written classics, great work, has run out of steam and obsessed with himself and sex with younger women--his major driving force--can only write this theme over and over, which may be fascinating to him, but is borish and repetitive to most others. It's amazing that I haven't seen one negative review of Roth's new novel, THE HUMBLING in any major newspaper or magazine.Maybe the fact that the reviews, such as in the NTY's, are so short say something. I think critics are afraid of him.

The novel starts out well enough, interesting in fact... I believe,for some brief period that I'm with the master Roth, but alas, I'm not. My husband put the novel down on page 9 when we learn summarily that the protagonist's wife of twenty-some years, Victoria, has left without any believable reason other that Roth writes that it is so--i.e. her son's drug problem and her inability to put of his demanding, apparently never-ending negativity. "After the Kennedy Center debacle and his unexpected collapse, Victoria fell apart and fled to California to be close to her son." The entire marriage is summarized in about two pages.

The book is an OUTLINE. I would love to read about the protagonist, Simon Axler--an aging man losing his powers,in this case, his ability to get on the stage and pretend, that is to act. My God, what an existential situation! Wouldn't you love to know the gritty details, the unpleasant physical and psychological and quotitian details of his descent into mortality, and the accompanying lack of meaning that fame ultimately offers? But no, we get only a hint of this--a outline of a story that if any unknown writer dared submit would result in a rejection letter, with a possible encourgaging word. But we do get hot sex with a lesbian! I started to feel as if I was in the world of steamy romance novels. And of course this lesbian is no ordinary lesbian, no ordinary woman. Her name is Pegeen, she's a professor, and guess what? Simon knew her as a baby (Shades of Woody Allen again),being friends with her parents. Pageen is now a "lithe, full-breasted woman of forty, although with something of the child still in her..." The very end of the novel is clever, and again we see glimpes of that trickster, the master Roth. But overall the novel is disappointing, and I can only recommend it to Roth fans, who like me, enjoy seeing where he's at.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Goes Down Easy November 1, 2009

By Cary B. Barad

Format:Hardcover

You can still feel the Rothian magic in this modern tale of one man's agony and struggle to regain his reknowned reputation as a master of stagecraft. Debilitated by physical and emotional pain, the protagonist reveals his innermost torments as he comes across some unforgettable characters who will play decisive roles in his personal drama. Somewhere between a novella and a longish short story, this book is easily digested in one reading and leaves one with much to think about. Can't really ask for more than that.

39 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Roth's best --- and most disturbing -- novel in years October 8, 2009

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

I read the new Philip Roth novel the other day --- it's just 140 pages, with fewer words than usual per page, so you can knock it off in a few hours --- and I'm still disturbed.

This in an improvement over my reaction when I finished it.

I was shaky. Almost shaking.

I hope you will read 'The Humbling' --- I found it to be Roth's best work in years; sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, he's still the most readable serious writer we've got --- but I have a problem saying much about it.

I didn't see the third and last section ("The Final Act") coming. I didn't want the ending to be what it was. Even afterward, I couldn't accept that this was how the story had to end. And I don't want to spoil it for you by describing it in any way.

I feel the same unease in discussing the second section ("The Transformation"), which also came as a surprise to me. In the interest of having it come as a surprise to you, I will speak no more of it here.

Which leaves me to convince you to read this masterful --- and, as I say, very disturbing --- book by discussing only the 43 pages of the first section ("Into Thin Air").

Well, okay. Simon Axler is one of the great stage actors of his generation. But now he's in his mid-60s, and he's adrift. This is how the book starts:

"He'd lost it. The impulse was spent. He'd never failed in the theater, everything he had done had been strong and successful, and then the terrible thing happened: he couldn't act. Going onstage became agony. Instead of the certainty that he was going to be wonderful, he knew he was going to fail. It happened three times in a row. And by the last time nobody was interested, nobody came. He couldn't get over to the audience. His talent was dead."

There's nothing more subjective than "talent". Maybe Axler's just tired. Maybe he just needs a rest.

He retreats to his house in the country, bringing a gloom thick as the poisonous cloud of a crop-duster. His wife flees. Now he's completely alone. And feeling suicidal. So he checks himself into a mental hospital for a month.

After, his harsh assessment is unchanged: "You're either free or you aren't...I'm not free anymore." Worse, he feels that his talent was a fluke, that all artistic spark is random: "This life's a fluke from start to finish."

He accepts that. Don't think of his as a career cut short, he says. Think how long it lasted.

Axler may be frozen, but Roth isn't --- he can pack a trilogy into a hundred pages. Things happen to Axler, and Axler makes things happen. He's not dead yet. Which means --- this is a Philip Roth book --- there will be a woman.

Alas, I cannot say more without spoiling the book's pleasure --- because it is pleasant to read a book this tight, this efficiently constructed; it's the exact opposite of Ian McEwan's disappointing 200-page shaggy marriage novel, 'On Chesil Beach'. But I can offer some clues.

One is Roth's interest in aging, which is not at all novelistic. In interviews, he's said that he's not looking to create either charmers or complainers; he's seeking reality.

Another hint. This is a book set in the country. In three sections --- three acts, if you will. It is, someone has suggested, a Chekhovian tragedy. Well, recall what Chekhov said about a gun that appears in the first act....

This is a long way from the summer romance of 'Goodbye, Columbus'. But Philip Roth was 26 when he published that. He's 76 now. He's outlived all of his rivals. He's our most prominent novelist. And over 30 books, he's learned how to disturb us --- and keep us reading. "The Humbling" is haunting proof.