"But now, preposterously, the morning hard-on was gone. The things one has to put up with in life. The morning hard-on - like a crowbar in your hand, like something growing out of an ogre. . .There eagerly waiting while you brush your teeth - "What are we going to do today?" Nothing more faithful in all of life than the lurid cravings of the morning hard-on. No deceit in it. No simulation. No insincerity. All hail to that driving force! Human living with a capital L! It takes a lifetime to determine what matters, and by then it's not there anymore. Well, one must learn to adapt. How is the only problem."
Actually, in Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theatre, it didn't take Mickey a lifetime to determine what mattered, he knew right away. Then, after the death of his brother in WW2 and the retreat of his mother into the tortured recesses of her own mind, Mickey went in for debauchery instead. He spent years from the age of 17 on the "Romance Run" as a merchant sailor, the route that included cities with the highest number of brothels per capita in the world. His first wife, damaged by her father, mysteriously disappeared. His second, equally damaged by her father, disappeared into alcoholism. His lover, a woman as licentious as he, dies. Finally, at the end of his life, alone, "wifeless, penniless, mistressless", without so much as a morning hard-on, Mickey wants nothing more than death himself.
Or does he? Because he's a puppeteer, our friend Mickey. He's been performing so long, even he can't tell the difference between the real tears and the crocodile. When he tells people about murdering his first wife, the reader starts to wonder what really happened. In fact, the only way you know he's telling the truth is when he doubts himself. He wants to die, but around every corner he is confronted by another reason to live. It is the masochist's nightmare, no matter how empty and dire his life is, it keeps failing to hit rock bottom.
Or does he? Because he's a puppeteer, our friend Mickey. He's been performing so long, even he can't tell the difference between the real tears and the crocodile. When he tells people about murdering his first wife, the reader starts to wonder what really happened. In fact, the only way you know he's telling the truth is when he doubts himself. He wants to die, but around every corner he is confronted by another reason to live. It is the masochist's nightmare, no matter how empty and dire his life is, it keeps failing to hit rock bottom.
"Fuck the laudable ideologies. Shallow, shallow, shallow! Enough reading and rereading of A Room of One's Own - get yourself The Collected Works of Ava Gardner. A tweaking and fingering, lesbian virgin, V. Woolf, erotic life one part prurience, nine parts fear - an overbred English parody of a borzoi, effortlessly superior, as only the English can be, to all her inferiors, who never took her clothes off in her life. But a suicide remember. The list grows more inspiring by the year. I'd be the first pupeteer.
The law of living: fluctuation. For every thought a counter thought, for every urge a counterurge. No wonder you either go crazy and die or decide to disappear. Too many urges, and that's not even a tenth of the story. Mistressless, wifeless, vocationless, homelesss, penniless, he steals the bikini panties of a nineteen-year-old nothing and, riding a swell of adrenaline, stuffs them for safekeeping in his pocket - these panties are just what he needs. Does no one else's brain work in quite this way? I don't believe that. This is ageing, pure and simple, the self-destroying hilarity of the last roller coaster. Sabbath meets his match: life. The puppet is you. The grotesque buffoon is you. You're Punch, schmuck, the puppet who toys with taboos!"
The law of living: fluctuation. For every thought a counter thought, for every urge a counterurge. No wonder you either go crazy and die or decide to disappear. Too many urges, and that's not even a tenth of the story. Mistressless, wifeless, vocationless, homelesss, penniless, he steals the bikini panties of a nineteen-year-old nothing and, riding a swell of adrenaline, stuffs them for safekeeping in his pocket - these panties are just what he needs. Does no one else's brain work in quite this way? I don't believe that. This is ageing, pure and simple, the self-destroying hilarity of the last roller coaster. Sabbath meets his match: life. The puppet is you. The grotesque buffoon is you. You're Punch, schmuck, the puppet who toys with taboos!"
Everything I read about Roth as I started this book was along the lines of "not for the faint-hearted". Oh, yeah, ain't that the truth. Roth wants to toy with you, he wants to shock you. But then somehow he comes out with something brilliant and all is forgiven. Sabbath is totally unlikeable - but he's often honest, which makes up for a lot. Did that just contradict what I said earlier about him always performing? Well, best get used to that, Roth likes his contradictions. He chooses to flit between first person and third person, present tense and past tense, hopeful comedy and dire tragedy.
You're not supposed to like Sabbath but you empathise with him to an extent. You consider mortality through him, because a painful death couldn't happen to a more deserving person. Then, just as his complete moral and mental annihilation is complete, precisely when he's offended as much as he can possibly offend - death shies away. But the joke's on us, because somehow by the end of the novel, when he tells a son that pissing on his mother's grave while dressed in an American flag and a yarmulke was a "religious act", you just can't find it in yourself to hate him as much as you should. Sabbath's Indecent Theatre indeed.
You're not supposed to like Sabbath but you empathise with him to an extent. You consider mortality through him, because a painful death couldn't happen to a more deserving person. Then, just as his complete moral and mental annihilation is complete, precisely when he's offended as much as he can possibly offend - death shies away. But the joke's on us, because somehow by the end of the novel, when he tells a son that pissing on his mother's grave while dressed in an American flag and a yarmulke was a "religious act", you just can't find it in yourself to hate him as much as you should. Sabbath's Indecent Theatre indeed.
