THE HUMBLING
Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fiction
ISBN: 9780547239699
For the past several years, Philip Roth’s novels have become increasingly spare and minimal. No one else writes with such urgency about growing old or the frailty of human intimacy quite like him, and none in such short spaces. THE HUMBLING is barely 140 pages, more a long story than a novel, but Roth makes every scene count. From thoughts of suicide to an affair with a lesbian, to sex with a green rubber dildo and an emotional breakdown, Roth takes his readers on a devastating journey through the twilight months of a man who “lost his magic.”
The man is Simon Axler, a beloved stage and film actor in his late 60s who has suddenly lost the ability to act. His lines, which formerly leapt from his mouth like birds, now hang like dead weights. Driven to despair, he contemplates suicide before checking into a mental hospital. During this purgatory, we learn more about Axler’s relationship to acting and briefly meet characters who act as foils for his depression. The second part of the novel (the book is organized into three acts) reintroduces Axler to Pegeen, a lesbian college professor 25 years his junior whose parents were former colleagues of his. Despite having known Pegeen from when she was in diapers, and despite her having no prior interest in men, they embark on an affair fitting of the chapter’s title: “The Transformation.” Their bizarre metamorphoses raise the question of possible new beginnings for both of them, but let’s face it: this is a late-Roth novel. It’s not spoiling anything to say that things go awry in the third act. And you thought Nathan Zuckerman (of EXIT GHOST) or Coleman Silk (of THE HUMAN STAIN) had bad ends.
Roth’s unforgiving minimalism approaches the level of Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett this time around while tackling the recurring themes often present in Roth’s later works. Aspects of EXIT GHOST, EVERYMAN and INDIGNATION abound, but even harsher than before. THE HUMBLING would feel almost derivative if it didn’t bring new vigor to these tropes. Axler, in his late age, is very reminiscent of the aforementioned Zuckerman: the respected man of the arts brought to his knees by his impending mortality. But Axler’s ailments are spiritual as well as physical, and at a younger age than Zuckerman, his life looks about to fall apart at the seams rather than wither away by aging. His sexual and emotional relationship with Pegeen in many ways mirrors Marcus Messner’s entanglement with the equally enigmatic (and capricious) Olivia. But the stakes here are higher and the sex more dangerous. Like Roth’s recent works, the dialogue sounds less like what people would normally say and more like what their displaced, awkward souls want to say. This technique is at its strongest in THE HUMBLING.
But the book’s best feature is its careful distance. Roth denies any attempts to bond with his characters. Their dialogue repels us, their actions unnerve us, and their stories upset us. They are more distant from each other than in other recent books. Human connection --- that so-often-touted trope --- does nothing for them. They each must bear their burdens alone, and Roth affords no opportunities to find nobility in struggle. By keeping the characters and narrative apart from themselves and from us, Roth amplifies the urgency of their flawed positions and crafts a beautifully restrained novel.
Yet fans of Roth, especially of his recent work, may be disappointed this time around. Compared to those more ambitious works, THE HUMBLING doesn’t take much on. Most missed is Roth’s incomparable ability to tie his characters in to an historical American moment (and since he’s been writing a book a year, they’re fairly current in that regard). THE HUMBLING is entirely character-driven; the outside world never really impinges on the stage. And even the spare but curiously effective INDIGNATION (a bit over 200 pages) has a greater scope than this slim work.
For the Roth aficionado (myself included), Axler may feel too much like his other characters. His physical, spiritual and sexual predicaments are far too reminiscent of EXIT GHOST and EVERYMAN for any comparisons to be ignored and, more importantly, for us to wonder why Roth chose to write such a similar book again. Relative to those works, THE HUMBLING just doesn’t stack up. Its dialogue is too bizarre, its exposition weighty and overwrought. But if able to resist the temptation of comparison, the reader most likely won’t be disappointed. Roth has demonstrated his mastery of the short-form novel once again, and while THE HUMBLING is not his best effort, it is worthy of attention.
--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz
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