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Journalism of Courage
Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged where they will find you and how they will find you . But one performance only. So says Simon Axler,the protagonist of Philip Roths latest novel a novella actually,the last of the best of the classical American stage actors,a mid-60s genius who has played them all Falstaff,Macbeth,Peer Gynt,Vanya and has now lost his magic. He is talking to his fellow patients at a psychiatric hospital where he checks himself in after his dramatic fall at the Kennedy Center,where he fails as Prospero and Macbeth,triggering a depression that finally drives away his wife a tragic failure herself,with a drug-addicted son from a previous marriage and makes him sit with the barrel of a gun in his mouth.
After Everyman and Exit Ghost,The Humbling extends Roths prolonged meditation on decay,destruction and death of becoming insubstantial and vanishing into thin air. The revels are ended because Axler whose every performance had been strong and successful learns that his talent was dead. No amount of prodding from his agent to take lessons in recovery relearning his craft,so to say and a role as James Tyrone in a production of Eugene ONeills Long Days Journey into Night can make Axler return: Tyrone is a lot of lines that you have to say,and I cant say them. James Tyrone is a character that you have to be,and I cant be him. Theres no way I can play James Tyrone. I cant play anyone.
The Humbling is very un-Roth,perhaps why its being dismissed summarily round the world. It doesnt have the expanse of Roth. It is not quite on the Roth scale,and gives the impression of looser composition. But whatever does stand out puts the books uncharacteristic qualities in perspective Roth structures the narrative and reduces the pointedness of the narratorial voice to reflect Axlers gradual and increasing unreality. Axler and his story melt into air,into thin air.
