Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
I finally got tired of being angry at Roth for his self-indulgent excesses and weak dialogue and thin female characters, and decided to open myself to his genius for invention and his heroic lack of shame. Whole chunks of Sabbath's Theater can be safely skipped, but the great stuff is truly great: the scene in which Mickey Sabbath panhandles on the New York subway with a paper coffee cup, for example, or the scene in which Sabbath's best friend catches him relaxing in the bathtub and fondling his (the friend's) young daughter's underpants.