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The Humbling
By Philip Roth
Jonathan Cape £12 99
140 pages
Dateline: 31st January, 2010
For his 30th book, one of the greatest living novelists, Philip Roth,
takes as his protagonist Simon Axler, a renowned stage actor who, like
Prospero, has "lost his magic".
The first third of what is more a novella in length than a full-scale
novel explores the angst that this causes. For Axler, his God-given
talent represents far more than just a means of earning a crust. It
is also tied up with his personal pride and masculinity.
The consequence of his loss is not only unemployment but the depths
of despair that lead him to enter a psychiatric clinic on a voluntarily
basis. There, he meets a fellow inmate with far more serious problems,
which get played out later in the book. Within a month, he is restored
to sanity if not full confidence, despite the efforts of his devoted
agent.
The middle section shows us a man still in retirement but for the most
part restored. This comes about thanks to an affair with a woman 25
years his junior, the daughter of friends but in the teeth of active
opposition from both of her parents, not to mention a crazed former
lover.
The heretofore lesbian Pegeen Mike, inevitably named after the character
from JM Synge's Playboy of the Western World, seems the solution
to almost all of his problems. Axler recreates the 40-year-old as an
affluent woman about town and in return, she ensures that the graphically
described sex is great, perhaps too great.
In some ways, the latter stages of the book are the most moving as
the (relatively) old man is forced to reflect on his life and consider
the most appropriate future if he is never again to risk the joys of
the limelight. One hopes that it would not be giving too much away to
suggest that his solution is more Chekhovian than Shakespearean.
The Humbling provides a remarkable impression of what it must
be like for an actor whose natural gift deserts him. As such, there
must be a real danger that someone who is already aware of the seeds
of self-destruction gnawing away at their confidence could tip over
the edge after reading this book.
For anyone else, it should prove a short but rewarding read that might
well both shock and amuse, which has been this author's defining talent
for five or more decades now.
Philip Fisher
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