Sabbath's Theater (1995)

I finally finished reading Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater a few days ago, and I've been trying to figure out what to say about it. So I'll start with the obvious, which is that it is one of the most viscerally obscene books I've ever read. Roth takes on Aristophanes, the Marquis de Sade, and even the younger Philip Roth (of Portnoy's Complaint) in a game of "dirtier-than-thou" one-upsmanship. If that's not your cup of tea, you can probably stop reading this post now.

However, ST is also an often hilarious exploration of American culture, one that foreshadows much of Roth's brilliant work over the last decade, including The Plot Against America, discussed by #3 here. Even before the Clinton impeachment spectacle (the backdrop for The Human Stain (2000), possibly Roth's best novel), Roth divined the essence of the 1990s--a vast crisis of moral/sexual identity played out with self-righteous indignation on the public stage ("Sabbath's theater" would be a great name for the decade itself)--and then situates it within the larger current of American culture, post-WWII. Roth's ultimate suggestion, I think, is that the hypocrisies, sexual obsessions, and dramatic narcissisms of the late 20th century are, in part, a result of heroism hangover. The "greatest generation" is dead (if not the individuals, the era itself and its retrospective clarity of purpose), so now what do we do?

The "hero" of ST is Mickey Sabbath, an aging, disgraced, diminutive, master puppeteer who passed on his shot at greatness decades ago: he could have been "Big Bird." Instead, he's retreated into the isolation of a porno-Walden, the sexed-up woods of inland New England. Part of what makes ST rough going much of the time is that Mickey is an insufferable ass for 451 pages. Imagine a George Costanza who thinks he's Jack Nickolson. To crib from Arendt, Mickey is a study in the banality of vice (if not outright "evil"). He never asks if he ought to do something, only if he can get away with it, a practical matter on which he is frequently wrong. And, fueled by "the hormone preposterone," the only thing he's really interested in is his own dick. Seduce the maid? Fondle a co-ed during a puppet show? Write a nasty mind-fuck letter in his wife's journal while she's recovering in a mental hospital? Okey dokey. At one point, Mickey claims that his Kantian categorical imperative is "Please me" (333). It's a pick-up line to the wife of his only friend.

When his long-time mistress, the middle aged Croatian sex-bomb, Drenka, dies of cancer, Mickey plunges into an identity fugue that sends him on both a literal and psychological road trip into his own past. Fear and Loathing in New Jersey. When the story ends, Drenka's angry, state trooper son, Matthew, has caught Mickey pissing on Drenka's grave (an act of love, respect, and remembrance, of course) while wrapped in an American flag and wearing a "V-for-Victory, God Bless America" yarmulke left by his dead brother "Mort" (ha!), a casuality of WWII.

As a novelist, Roth often aims to be both Moses and Talmudist: hero, writer, and interpreter. In The Plot, he's openly all three; here, he's the latter two, although we suspect that Mickey is also his darkest alter-ego. So, not surprisingly, there's a lot of commentary in his pages. Much of it involves death, decay, and the "agrarian dream" (294). James Madison, in defending that Jeffersonian vision of America, once argued that, while the farmer was the model of "virtue," the sailor was the epitome of "vice." In "Republican Distribution of Citizens," from March 1792, Madison wrote: "if his ultimate prospects do not embitter the present moment, it is because he does not look beyond it. How unfortunate that in the intercourse by which nations are enlightened and refined, and their means of safety extended, the immediate agents should be distinguished by the hardest condition of humanity."

Mickey to a tee: an "Evangelist of Fornication," stuck in the eternal present of his sick pleasures, seeking enlightenment through perversity (60). After the death of his brother, Mickey "went to sea," literally and figuratively (421). He became a merchant seaman obsessed with "whores." But he also became a bridge between America and the world. Hence Drenka, who tells Mickey on her death bed, "I was dancing with America." Mickey responds, "Sweetheart, you were dancing with an unemployed adulterer. A guy with time on his hands." Drenka then completes the compliment: "You are America. Yes, you are, my wicked boy" (419). The "intercourse" of nations. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and we'll corrupt them and piss on their graves! Roth suggests that, much like Mickey and Drenka, who maintain the outward fiction of virtuous marriages and yet are bound together in "transgression," America appeals to the world, not through our proclaimed virtues, but instead via our dramatic vices.

For Roth, the American psycho-sexual drama is really just an extended suicide attempt. Having lost any sense of purpose we might once have had, we're now begging for someone to put us out of our obnoxious misery. Maybe, since everyone enjoys the play, no one will. But it won't be because we didn't ask.