The Humbling: A Novel [9780063499386]

Overview

“Elegant and brutal…. Direct and urgent, a taut and controlled fever-dream that demands to be experienced at a single sitting…. [He] is a master.” —The Los Angeles Times

“A vitally important addition to Philip Roth’s already amazing body of work.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Told with Philip Roth's inimitable urgency and bravura, The Humbling is the story of what happens when one of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance.

Everything is over for Simon Axler. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When he goes on stage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can’t persuade him to make a comeback.

Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for a bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day’s journey into night, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life’s performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off.