Mickey Sabbath, the hero in Sabbath's Theater, the winner of the 1995 National Book Award, makes a concerted effort to be bad. Like Alexander Portnoy, the famously self-abusing character in Roth's 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath has an appetite for "acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus." But while Portnoy's antics were usually comical and liberating, Sabbath often feels imprisoned by his own acts of self-indulgence. Though his frantic pursuit of sex is a desperate attempt to abate his anxieties about death, it only serves to obliterate any semblance of real life he could have had.


From Publishers Weekly
Roth's erotic black comedy of an aging puppeteer won the National Book Award. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Roth's National Book Award-winning novel is a hilarious, beautifully written spoof about an aging puppeteer who finds himself rudderless when the death of his mistress, Drenka, effectively removes the driving force of his life: sex. Mickey Sabbath, now resigned to preparing for his own death, toasts all of the formerly significant figures in his life, including his first wife, who walked out on him; his mother, who was consumed by the death of Mickey's older brother during the war; and the nubile Drenka, whose appeal for Mickey's sexual fealty shortly before her death falls upon deaf ears. David Dukes reads this rip-roaring tale with a sensitivity that complements Roth's well-wrought prose. Recommended for all serious fiction collections, but advise your patrons to listen with the car windows up and the volume down.?Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
This National Book Award winner is a superlative audio production but is difficult to listen to. A fascinating character study of one Nickey Sabbath, an aging reprobate with a keen mind and a hard-working libido, the novel is matched by a finely honed performance. Dukes's accents, from Jersey Jew to Croat innkeeper, are rich and accurate. However, it's precisely because of his blunt, uninhibited interpretation that the first few hours come across as raw and jolting. Roth sets the mood intentionally, but, still, Sabbath's crudeness grates on you when heard so brashly spoken by a narrator who (rightfully) never softens the tone. Stay with it--the innovative plot will eventually grab you with its wry irony and unsurpased originality. R.O.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
This is Roth's twenty-first novel and displays all the Rothian concerns and stylistic quirks his readers have grown accustomed to, only more exaggerated. It is a long, long book, but it grows on you. Morris "Mickey" Sabbath, once a lewd puppeteer who claims that he could have been inside Big Bird "instead of Caroll Spinney" if he had just been civil to Jim Henson, is a short, fat, white-bearded man with startling green eyes whose life is a series of lewd insults and wicked gestures, committed, undoubtedly, to mask his suffering. Still, Sabbath is a difficult character to empathize with, for Roth, it seems, has foisted on him every sexual fantasy and perverse dream that he (Roth) has ever had. And why? Because what we have here is a book about love and death. And Mickey is in extreme pain. He inherited his mother's inability to accept the death of a loved one. His descent into depravity began with the death of his brother, a pilot who was shot down in World War II, gathered even more force when his first wife, the beautiful Nikki, vanished, and culminated with the death of his lover, whose grave he pisses on to show his defiance. Alex Portnoy-oy-oy-oy-oy is approaching death, and whistling some Gershwin on the way. Bonnie Smothers


Review
"A great work . . . Roth's richest, most rewarding novel . . . funny and profound . . . as powerful as writing can be." —The New York Times Book Review

"This splendidly wicked book . . . is among the most remarkable novels in recent years. . . . The energy of the book is amazing.... Roth is hilariously serious about life and death." —Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

"Roth's extraordinary new novel is an astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read. . . . It is very exquisite." —James Wood, New Republic


Review
"A great work . . . Roth's richest, most rewarding novel . . . funny and profound . . . as powerful as writing can be." ?The New York Times Book Review

"This splendidly wicked book . . . is among the most remarkable novels in recent years. . . . The energy of the book is amazing.... Roth is hilariously serious about life and death." ?Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

"Roth's extraordinary new novel is an astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read. . . . It is very exquisite." ?James Wood, New Republic


Book Description
Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.


From the Inside Flap
Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.


From the Back Cover
"A great work . . . Roth's richest, most rewarding novel . . . funny and profound . . . as powerful as writing can be." —The New York Times Book Review

"This splendidly wicked book . . . is among the most remarkable novels in recent years. . . . The energy of the book is amazing.... Roth is hilariously serious about life and death." —Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books

"Roth's extraordinary new novel is an astonishment and a scourge, and one of the strangest achievements of fictional prose that I have ever read. . . . It is very exquisite." —James Wood, New Republic


About the Author
In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As much as he wants to be the Marquis de Sade, he is not. As much as he wants to be seventeen, he is not. As much as he wants to be dead, he is not. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's new novel. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress - an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own - Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly