The Humbling

Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s 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 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, told with Roth’s inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, all the ways that we convince ourselves of our solidity, all our life’s performances—talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation—are stripped off. The Humbling is Roth’s thirtieth book.

“Convincing and powerful….[Roth] is still a literary colossus whose ability to inspire, astonish and enrage his readers is undiminished.” —Washington Post

“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.” —Los Angeles Times

“Philip the great, Philip the audacious, the voracious, writes of bottomless hunger—emotional, sexual, existential. When you hear about a new Philip Roth novel, you have to read it…. Roth still has his chops.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

“Blooms brightly in the extraordinarily fecund garden of his late work…. A swift but piercing, uncluttered but nuanced morality tale.” —NPR, Books We Like

“The Humbling unfolds in three acts of pristine economy, dramatic lucidity and unstoppable narrative momentum…. The dispassion that has always marked Roth’s narrative voice sometimes achieves the depth and simplicity of the best music or poetry…. The laughter keeps getting quieter and more knowing.” —Plain Dealer

“Masterly…. Powerfully dramatic…. We should be grateful that Roth continues to maintain his concentration on the terrible facts…. [The Humbling] is the most to-the-point, the most necessary work its author has published since The Dying Animal.” —London Review of Books

“Gripping…. The intense realism of some of the scenes is shocking and unforgettable…. Worthy of a David Lynch film…. [Roth] is the most courageous writer alive, and this is another brave move.” —The Guardian

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

“The novel … finds traction in familiar Rothian interrogations—of the self’s deviousness, the impossible murkiness of motive, and the performative nature of identity.” —New Yorker

“Roth is a master of pacing…. [He is] a great writer, a great anatomist of passion. His admirers will find much to admire in The Humbling.” —Oregonian

“The Humbling should be read as a kind of Mortality Trilogy with The Dying Animal and Everyman, two other autumnal works from this great writer. Short, bitter and bracing, they lend the courage to see and endure what is.” —Dallas Morning News

“Roth at his rawest…. Slim, bleak and sexy…. Roth’s writing flows gracefully.” —USA Today

“Compelling…. It takes an artist as gravely ludicrous as Roth to create a body of work in which intertextuality comes to be a brute condition of existence itself." —Times Literary Supplement (London)