Sabbath's Theater

A Novel

Philip Roth, Roth, Philip

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780547345734
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

He is relentlessly defiant. He is exceedingly libidinous. His appetite for the outrageous is insatiable. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's astonishing new novel. Sabbath's Theater tells Mickey's story in the wake of the death of his mistress, an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey is now in his mid-sixties and besieged by ghosts - of his mother, his beloved brother, his vanished first wife, his mistress of thirteen years. Bereft and grieving, he embarks on a turbulent journey back into his past, one that brings him to the brink of madness and extinction. But no matter how ardently he courts death, he is too exuberantly alive to succeed at dying. Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. This book, which presents Philip Roth at the peak of his powers, is sur

SABBATH HIT the street with the intention of spending the hours before Linc’s funeral playing Rip Van Winkle. The idea revived him. He looked the part and had been out of it longer even than Rip. RVW merely missed the Revolution—from what Sabbath had been hearing over the years, he had missed the transformation of New York into a place utterly antagonistic to sanity and civil life, a city that by the 1990s had brought to perfection the art of killing the soul. If you had a living soul (and Sabbath no longer made such a claim for himself), it could die here in a thousand different ways at any hour of the day or night. And that was not to speak of unmetaphorical death, of citizens as prey, of everyone from the helpless elderly to the littlest of schoolchildren infected with fear, nothing in the whole city, not even the turbines of Con Ed, as mighty and galvanic as fear. New York was a city completely gone wrong, where nothing but the subway was subterranean anymore. It was the city where you could obtain, sometimes with no trouble at all, sometimes at considerable expense, the worst of everything. In New York the good old days, the old way of life, was thought to have existed no further than three years back, the intensification of corruption and violence and the turnover in crazy behavior being that rapid. A showcase for degradation, overflowing with the overflow of the slums, prisons, and mental hospitals of at least two hemispheres, tyrannized by criminals, maniacs, and bands of kids who’d overturn the world for a pair of sneakers. A city where the few who bothered to consider life seriously knew themselves to be surviving in the teeth of everything inhuman—or all too human: one shuddered to think that all that was abhorrent in the city disclosed the lineaments of mass mankind as it truly longed to be.

Now, Sabbath did not swallow these stories he continually heard characterizing New York as Hell, first, because every great city is Hell; second, because if you weren’t interested in the gaudier abominations of mankind, what were you doing there in the first place?; and third, because the people he heard telling these stories—the wealthy of Madamaska Falls, the tiny professional elite and the elderly who’d retired to their summer homes there—were the last people on earth you’d believe about anything.

Unlike his neighbors (if Sabbath could be said to consider anyone anywhere a neighbor), he did not naturally shrink from the worst in people, beginning with himself. Despite his having been preserved in a northern icebox for the bulk of his life, during recent years he had been thinking that he, for one, could perhaps be something other than repelled by the city’s daily terrors. He might even have left Madamaska Falls (and Rosie) to return to New York long ago if it had not been for his sidekicker. . . . and for the feelings still springing from Nikki’s disappearance . . . and for the silly destiny that had been chosen for him instead by his tiresome superiority and threadbare paranoia.

Though his paranoia, he observed, shouldn’t be exaggerated. It was never the poisoned spearhead of his thinking, never on the truly grand scale, needing absolutely nothing to unleash it. Certainly by now it was no more than a sort of everyman’s paranoia, quarrelsome enough to rise to the bait but by and large frazzled and sick of itself.

Meanwhile he was trembling again, and without the comfort of Rosa’s pungency and its nostalgic meaning. It seemed that once the thing had taken hold, as it had again earlier in Deborah’s ransacked room, he was hard put to extinguish, by an act of will, the desire not to be alive any longer. It was walking along with him, his companion, as he headed toward the subway station. Though he hadn’t walked them for decades, he saw nothing at all of those streets, so busy was he in staying abreast of his wish to die. He marched in unison with it step-by-step, keeping time to an infantry chant he’d had drummed into his head by the black cadre at Fort Dix when he was there training to be a killer of Communists after coming back from sea.

You had a good home but you left—
You’re right!
You had a good home but you left—
You’re right!
Sound off, one-two,
Sound off, three-four,
Sound off, one-two-three-four—
Three-four!

The-desire-not-to-be-alive-any-longer accompanied Sabbath right on down the station stairway and, after Sabbath purchased a token, continued through the turnstile clinging to his back; and when he boarded the train, it sat in his lap, facing him, and began to tick off on Sabbath’s crooked fingers the many ways it could be sated. This little piggy slit his wrists, this little piggy used a dry-cleaning bag, this little piggy took sleeping pills, and this little piggy, born by the ocean, ran all the way out in the waves and drowned.

It took Sabbath and the-desire-not-to-be-alive-any-longer just the length of the ride downtown to together compose an obituary.

MORRIS SABBATH, PUPPETEER, 64, DIES

Morris “Mickey” Sabbath, a puppeteer and sometime theatrical director who made his little mark and then vanished from the Off Off Broadway scene to hide like a hunted criminal in New England, died Tuesday on the sidewalk outside 115 Central Park West. He fell from a window on the eighteenth floor.

The cause of death was suicide, said Rosa Complicata, whom Mr. Sabbath sodomized moments before taking his life. Ms. Complicata is the spokesperson for the family.

According to Ms. Complicata, he had given her two fifty-dollar bills to perform perverse acts before his jumping out the window. “But he no have hard prick,” said the heavyset spokesperson, in tears.

Suspended Sentence

Mr. Sabbath began his career as a street performer in 1953. Observers of the entertainment world identify Sabbath as the “missing link” between the respectable fifties and the rambunctious sixties. A small cult developed around his Indecent Theater, where Mr. Sabbath used fingers in place of puppets to represent his ribald characters. He was prosecuted on charges of obscenity in 1956, and though he was found guilty and fined, his sentence of thirty days was suspended. Had he served the time it might have straightened him out.

Under the auspices of Norman Cowan and Lincoln Gelman (for Gelman obituary see B7, column 3), Mr. Sabbath directed a notably insipid King Lear in 1959. Nikki Kantarakis was praised by our critic for her Cordelia, but Mr. Sabbath’s performance as Lear was labeled “megalomaniacal suicide.” Ripe tomatoes had been handed to all ticket holders as they entered the theater, and by the end of the evening Mr. Sabbath seemed to relish his besmirchment.

Pig or Perfectionist?

The RADA-trained Miss Kantarakis, star of the Bowery Basement Players and the director’s wife, mysteriously disappeared from their home in November 1964. Her fate remains unknown, though murder has never been ruled out.

“The pig Flaubert murdered Louise Colet,” said Countess du Plissitas, the aristocrat’s feminist, in a telephone interview today. Countess du Plissitas is best known for fictionalizing biography. She is currently fictionalizing the biography of Miss Kantarakis. “The pig Fitzgerald murdered Zelda,” the countess continued, “the pig Hughes murdered Sylvia Plath, and the pig Sabbath murdered Nikki. It’s all there, all the different ways he murdered her, in Nikki: The Destruction of an Actress by a Pig.”

Members of the original Bowery Basement Players contacted today agreed that Mr. Sabbath was merciless in his direction of his wife. They were all hoping that she would kill him and were disappointed when she disappeared without even having tried.

Mr. Sabbath’s friend and coproducer, Norman Cowan—whose daughter, Deborah, a student in underclothing at Brown, played a starring role in the extravaganza Farewell to a Half Century of Masturbation, elaborately staged by Mr. Sabbath in the hours just before he leaped to his death—tells another story. “Mickey was a genuinely nice person,” Mr. Cowan commented. “Never gave anybody any trouble. A bit of a loner, but always with a kind word for everyone.”

First Whore Mean

Mr. Sabbath trained in the whorehouses of Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, before establishing himself as a puppeteer in Manhattan. He never used a rubber and miraculously never contracted VD. Mr. Sabbath often recounted the story of his first whore.

“The one I chose was very interesting,” he once told a person sitting next to him on the subway. “I’ll never forget her as long as I live. You wouldn’t forget your first one anyway. I chose her because she looked like Yvonne de Carlo, the actress, the movie actress. Anyway, here I am shaking like a leaf. This is in Old Havana. I remember how marvelous and romantic that was, decaying streets with balconies. Very first time. Never been laid in my life. So there I was with Yvonne. We both started getting undressed. I remember sitting in a chair by the door. The first thing and the most lasting thing of all is that she had red underwear, a red brassiere and underpants. And that was fantastic. The next thing I remember is being on top of her. And the next thing I remember is that it was all over and she said, ‘Get off of me!’ Slightly mean. ‘Get off!’ Now this doesn’t happen every time, but since it was my first time, I thought it did and got off. ‘You finished? Get off!’ There are some nasty types even among whores. I’ll never forget it. I thought, ‘Okay, what do I care?’ but it did strike me as unfriendly and even mean. How did I know, a kid from the boondocks, that one out of ten would be mean and tough like that, however pretty?”

Did Nothing for Israel

Not long after the alleged murder of his first wife, Mr. Sabbath made his way to the remote mountain village where he was supported until his death by a second wife, who dreamed for years of cutting off his cock and then taking sanctuary in her abused-women’s group. During his three decades in hiding, aside from virtually making a prostitute of Mrs. Drenka Balich, a Croatian American neighbor; he seems to have worked on little else but a five-minute puppet adaptation of the hopelessly insane Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. In his fifties he developed erosive osteoarthritis in both hands, involving the distal interphalangeal joints and the proximal interphalangeal joints, with relative sparing of the metacarpo-phalangeal joints. The result was radical instability and function loss from persistent pain and stiffness, and progressive deformity. Owing to his prolonged consideration of the advantages of arthrodesis against the advantages of implant arthroplasty, his wife became an expert in chardonnay. The osteoarthritis provided a wonderful pretext for being even more bitter about everything and devoting his entire day to thinking up ways to degrade Mrs. Balich.

He is survived by the ghost of his mother; Yetta, of Beth Something-or-other Cemetery, Neptune, New Jersey, who haunted him unceasingly during the last year of his life. His brother, Lieutenant Morton Sabbath, was shot down over the Philippines during the Second World War. Yetta Sabbath never got over it. It is from his mother that Mr. Sabbath inherited his own ability never to get over anything.

Also surviving is his wife, Roseanna, of Madamaska Falls, with whom he was shacked up on the night that Miss Kantarakis disappeared or was murdered by him and her body disposed of. Mr. Sabbath is believed by Countess du Plissitas to have coerced Mrs. Sabbath, the former Roseanna Cavanaugh, into being an accomplice to the crime, thus initiating her plunge into alcoholism.

Mr. Sabbath did nothing for Israel.

…

a blur whizzing blur why now most unpleasant invention nobody think ticker tape like this I don’t head coming down here stupid find what I lost idiocy Greek Village gyro sandwich souvlaki sandwich baklava you know Nikki gypsy clothes spangles beads angelically on Victorian boots never a fuck without a rape tossed in no no not there but only way she came was there god forgive those dont fuck in the ass hey gyro you know Nikki souvlaki you know Nikki St. Marks hotel $25.60 and up room rent you know Nikki tattooed tubby you know Nikki garbage still from when we left leather shops tie wrists ankles blindfold proceed want to know a secret I want to know only secrets when you use me like a boy Im your boy you are my girl my boy your puppet hand puppet make me a hand puppet Ethnic Jewelry more leather old people Im one Religious Sex Clothing Shop incense Nikki always Nikki burning gift shops T-shirts incense never out of incense fire escapes still need paint long hairs last outpost movers movers movers red-faced brick broad women Polish-American home cooking and what will I say other than why so why bother theres less chance of her being here than my being her cant stand this there is god can those be ours in the window Nikki stained them hung them disappeared I left 120 bucks of Salvation Army shit the wooden blinds she loved there they are the red tapes faded slats missing thirty years later Nikkis blinds

“Smoke? Wanna smoke?”

“Not today, honey.”

“Man, I’m starvin’. I got great smokes. The real McCoy. I ain’t had no breakfast, ain’t had no lunch. Been out here two hours. Ain’t sold shit.”

“Patience, patience. ‘Nothing illegal is achieved without patience.’ Benjamin Franklin.”

“Ain’t had fuck to eat, man.”

“How much?”

“Five.”

“Two.”

“Shit. This is the real McCoy.”

“But as you are the one starving, the leverage is mine.”

“Fuck you, old man, old Jew man.”

“Tut tut. That’s beneath you. ‘Neither a philo- nor an anti-Semite be; / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.’”

“Someday ain’t gonna be out here beggin’ and sellin’ shit. Gonna be Jews out here beggin’. Wait’ll all the beggars is Jews. You gonna like that.”

“All the Jews will be begging when there is a black Mount Rushmore, my dear; and not a day sooner—when there is a black Mount Rushmore with Michael Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Bo Jackson, and Ray Charles carved upon its face.”

“Two for five. I’m starvin’, man.”

“The price is right—a deal. But you must learn to think more kindly of Jews. You people were here long before we were. We did not have your advantages.”

Nina Cordelia Desdemona Estroff Pharmacy still here my god Freie Bibliothek u. Lesehalle Deutsches Dispensary all basements Indian boutiques Indian restaurants Tibetan trinkets Japanese restaurants Ray’s Pizza Kiev 2.4 hours 7 days a week introduction to Hinduism always she was reading dharma artha kama and moksha release from rebirth supreme goal death certainly a worthy subject maybe the greatest certainly a solution for low self-esteem The Racing Form the Warsaw papers the bums the bums the Bowery bums still in the stairwells head in hands piss gushing out from their pockets

“I’m on a real guilt trip, man.”

“Say that again, please?”

“Guilt trip. I need somethin’ to eat. I ain’t had breakfast or lunch yet.”

“Wouldn’t worry. Nobody has.”

“I’m innocent, man. I was framed. Somebody help me.”

“I’ll take your case, son. I believe in your innocence no less than my own.”

“Thanks, man. You a lawyer?”

“No, a Hindu. And you?”

“I’m Jewish. But I studied Buddhism.”

“Yes, overachiever is written all over your jeans.”

“What’s it all like to a wise old Hindu?”

“Oh, not for everyone, but I happen to love hardship. Live on plant foods from the forest. Seek constantly to achieve purity and self-control. Practice restraint of the senses. Perform austerities.”

“I gotta eat somethin’, man.”

“Animal food is to be avoided.”

“Shit, I don’t eat animal food.”

“Avoid actresses.”

“How about shiksas?”

“For a Jew who studies Buddhism the shiksa is not forbidden to eat. Ben Franklin: ‘God forgive those who don’t fuck in the ass.’”

“You’re nuts, baby. You’re a great Hindu man.”

“I have passed through life in the world and performed my duties to society. Now I am reinitiated into the celibate state and become like a child. I concentrate on internal sacrifices to the sacred fires in my own self.”

“Far out.”

“I am seeking final release from rebirth.”

lamppost sex sale naked girl silhouette phone number whats that say I speak Hindi Urdu and Bangla well that leaves me out shiksa Mount Rushmore Ava Gardner Sonja Henie Ann-Margret Yvonne de Carlo strike Ann-Margret Grace Kelly she is the Abraham Lincoln of shiksas

So Sabbath passeth the time, pretending to think without...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• There’s Nothing That Keeps Its Promise
• To Be or Not To Be
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes