Thought for the day
3 a.m. on a sleepless Friday morning. I finally finished Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth. Like Newark, New Jersey, it was terrible through and through, but I finally got to the end of it. Picking up the next book now — Love Will Make You Drink & Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night by my friend Shelly Lowenkopf — as a way of rinsing off my brain after too much time in the maze of muck with Mickey Sabbath.
September 20th, 2014 at 2:35 am
So why did you finish it? Was it in some way compelling? Did you lose a bet? are you a secret masochist?
Youth wants to know….
September 25th, 2014 at 1:33 pm
I do my best to be someone who finishes things, and had recently abandoned another book (“The Everything Store,” about the creation of Amazon.com) as so uninvolving and ploddingly written that I just couldn’t continue. So, I continued with “Sabbath’s Theater.” In retrospect, I should’ve stayed with the book about Amazon and ditched this one.
Two additional reasons I stuck with it:
1. It was unbelievably bad, yet it was by Philip Roth. I just couldn’t reconcile that dichotomy. I kept thinking, “It must be me….” But — it wasn’t.
2. Some of the reviews I read online, including one by Harold Bloom, talked about an epic 70-page visit to Sabbath’s old stomping grounds in New Jersey. Well, the character goes back there, but there’s nothing epic or remotely exciting about any of it.
Do I regret having stuck with the book? Well — many years ago, I fasted for two weeks. At the end I felt worse for it, but somehow accomplished. Finishing this book was like that. And hey — I never have to do it again!