The Humbling |
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Author:
| Roth, Philip |
Read by:
| Hill, Dick |
ISBN: | 978-1-4418-0104-3 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2009 |
Publisher: | Brilliance Publishing, Inc.
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Book Format: | Downloadable audio file |
List Price: | USD $39.97 |
Book Description:
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Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roths startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, are melted into air, into thin air. When he goes onstage 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...
More DescriptionEverything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roths startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, are melted into air, into thin air. When he goes onstage 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. Something fundamental has vanished. His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent cant 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 days journey into night, told with Roths inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our lifes performances talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation are stripped off. Following the dark meditations on mortality and endings in Everyman and Exit Ghost, and the bitterly ironic retrospect on youth and chance in Indignation, Roth has written another in his haunting group of late fictions.