Philip Roth's new novel "The Humbling" contains the potential to both shock and entertain, deftly discussing many darker topics that oftentimes escape the hackneyed plots of modern literature.
Roth, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes the story of once-great actor Simon Axler, who, at 65, has lost the ability to act. He also has lost his anxious wife, he spurns his charismatic agent and he putters around pondering mostly his uselessness and the gun up in the attic.
By chance, he discovers Pegeen, the daughter of his former friend who is a lesbian -- at least, until the two begin an unconventional affair that in Axler's eyes will either cure him or break his heart beyond repair.
Two conventions of "The Humbling" -- namely, dialogue and the interaction between book length and character development -- are equivocal in terms of quality. While some facets of each convention contain an interesting originality, others reveal maladies that Roth might have circumvented.
In his employment of dialogue, he transcends the mundanity of "he said, she said, he said" interactions by deliberately limiting their use, and at times collecting conversations into a single paragraph without providing an inkling of who said what. But the dialogue seems at times too planned out and unnatural. Twice, for example, Pegeen recounts meetings with her parents that span several pages and start to read more like an appendage of lackluster prose than conversation.
Elevated words such as "cataclysmic," regardless of whether readers are or are not knowledgeable of its definition, stand out awkwardly amid the characters' casual manners of speaking.
Although the 140-page book's brevity works well for light weekend reading, it presents both benefits and flaws in Roth's character development. On one hand, he gets right to the pith of each personality, providing the essence of each and therein proceeding to embellish it. For example, he elucidates Axler's depressing situation right from the outset.
On the other hand, the brevity and celerity with which the plot moves almost leaves the reader desiring more information about the lives upon the pages. Yet, one should not misconstrue that Roth under develops his characters, for he indeed finalizes the journey of each. Rather, one ought to question whether Roth should have travailed further by delineating these same characters to a more detailed extent.
Grade: B
