Synopses & Reviews
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roths 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 cant 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 days journey into night, told with Roths inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our lifes performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off.
The Humbling is Roths thirtieth book.
Review
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roths 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 cant 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 days journey into night, told with Roths inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our lifes performancestalent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputationare stripped off.
The Humblingis Roths thirtieth book.
"A deteriorating and increasingly irrelevant actor finds the possibility of renewal in a younger woman in Roth's tight Chekhovian tragedy...Roth observes much (about age, success nad the sexual credit lovers hold one with another) in little space, and the svelte narrative amounts to an unsparing confrontation of self." ---Publishers Weekly, starred review "Bare-bones brilliant, Philip Roths novella The Humbling (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) brings us face-to-faceand groin to groinwith the long acclaimed, lately retired theater actor Simon Axler and all the sexy, sickly, slippery goings-on that make up his shockingly funny (when not funereal) offstage suburban-Connecticut highs, lows, and in-betweens.” -- Lisa Shea,Elle magazine "I hope you will read The Humbling, I found it to be Roths best work in years; sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, hes still the most readable serious writer weve got." -- Jesse Kornbluth,The Huffington Post "One of Roths most eloquent, painful and memorable books." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Philip the great, Philip the audacious, the voracious...When you hear about a new Philip Roth novel, you have to read it."
--O, The Oprah Magazine "The Humbling is the story of arrogance deflated. Yet from its opening sentence, 'Hed lost his magic,' until its stunning, resonant final line, the result is oddly exhilarating. Unlike Axler, Roth has lost none of his power to conjure up teacups from which a willing reader gladly sips."
--The Forward "[Philip Roth has] been on an audacious hot streak for a dozen years...[The Humbling is] an entertaining inquiry into the relationship between sex and creativity, sex and age, and sex and the ego." --Entertainment Weekly "elegant and brutal
direct and urgent, a taut and controlled fever-dream that demands to be experienced at a single sitting."
--Los Angeles Times A deteriorating and increasingly irrelevant actor finds the possibility of renewal in a younger woman in Roths 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 Pegeens 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.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Review
"A deteriorating and increasingly irrelevant actor finds the possibility of renewal in a younger woman in Roth's tight Chekhovian tragedy...Roth observes much (about age, success nad the sexual credit lovers hold one with another) in little space, and the svelte narrative amounts to an unsparing confrontation of self." --- Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Bare-bones brilliant, Philip Roth’s novella The Humbling (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) brings us face-to-face—and groin to groin—with the long acclaimed, lately retired theater actor Simon Axler and all the sexy, sickly, slippery goings-on that make up his shockingly funny (when not funereal) offstage suburban-Connecticut highs, lows, and in-betweens.”
-- Lisa Shea, Elle magazine
"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."
-- Jesse Kornbluth, The Huffington Post
"One of Roth’s most eloquent, painful and memorable books."
-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Philip the great, Philip the audacious, the voracious...When you hear about a new Philip Roth novel, you have to read it."
-- O, The Oprah Magazine
"The Humbling is the story of arrogance deflated. Yet from its opening sentence, 'He’d lost his magic,' until its stunning, resonant final line, the result is oddly exhilarating. Unlike Axler, Roth has lost none of his power to conjure up teacups from which a willing reader gladly sips."
-- The Forward
"[Philip Roth has] been on an audacious hot streak for a dozen years...[The Humbling is] an entertaining inquiry into the relationship between sex and creativity, sex and age, and sex and the ego."
-- Entertainment Weekly
"elegant and brutal…direct and urgent, a taut and controlled fever-dream that demands to be experienced at a single sitting."
-- Los Angeles Times
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.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Review
"There are a handful of writers I read not because of the stories they tell, or for their memorable characters, or for their ability to evoke a time or place, but because I really enjoy being inside their heads. Alice Munro is one of these writers....Philip Roth is another...there is something absolutely irresistible about his prose. I eat it up. Usually a few pages into one of his books, I find myself saying to myself, or to the person on the couch next to me: Why can't all writers be this good?" Rhian Ellis, Rain Taxi (read the entire )
Synopsis
A haunting, incisive and honest new work of fiction from a legendary writer, told with Roth's inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, that strips off all the ways in which we persuade ourselves of our solidity.
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, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005
The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians prize for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004" and the W.H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year, making Roth the first writer in the forty-six-year history of the prize to win it twice.
In 2005 Roth became the third living American writer to have his works published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2012 he won Spains highest honor, the Prince of Asturias Award, and in 2013 he received Frances highest honor, Commander of the Legion of Honor.