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Nov 14, 2011

Paul added it

John Crace over at The Guardian has written a beautiful parody of this and here's my favourite bit:

After his release, Axler had retreated to his farmhouse in upstate New York and it was there that Pegeen had visited him. Her parents were old friends and he had known her since she was a baby, suckling at her mother's breast. Now she was 40, a lesbian teaching at a progressive women's college in Vermont. "Have you ever slept with a man?" he asked.

"Not for mor More...

6 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jun 06, 2009

brian rated it:

about one simon axler, a world renowned stage actor who is humbled by the fact that he's lost his gift. he doesn't know how to play a scene, his timing is off, the words come out sounding false, he cannot get out of his mind and lose himself in the role. so he lays around his house in the woods and contemplates suicide. 'all the world's a stage'/identity/and-other-important-themes aside, what is interesting here (and what, i suspect, certain reviewers will write about upon the release of this b More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Alex rated it:

Cutting short of loud rumbling
I am not happy with "The Humbling"
I am afraid that Philip Roth
Went too far in this book's plot
(I'm so disturbed - that at this time
I've lost the urge for perfect rhyme )
Where health declined Hollywood's star ex
Acts as sex hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex,
Who's end of life obscurity
Is fought with .... well, promiscuity
(Please don't beat me with a wrench
For my Russian broken French )
Where "Cherchez la More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2011

Steve rated it:

"People go around killing people in movies all the time, but the reason they make all those movies is that for 99.9 percent of the audience, it's impossible to do. And if it's that hard to kill someone else, someone you have every reason to want to destroy, imagine how hard it is to succeed in killing yourself." (p. 42) Suicide is "the most unreal of all things." (139)

Roth's worst book. Eminently bad, but I actually enjoyed a pleasant evening reading it.

A More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2010

Karenina rated it:

Please, Mr. Roth, tell us what you're really working on. We refuse to believe you have lost YOUR talent.

Parto da questo accorato appello, rivolto da un lettore americano in rete, per fare alcune considerazioni su questo ultimo lavoro di uno scrittore del quale ho letto ed apprezzato quasi tutto: se mi rifiuto di pensare che abbia smarrito il suo talento devo credere che abbia ordito una specie di burla, narrando le vicende di un attore di fama improvvisamente decaduto, un sessantacinquenne che More...

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Feb 07, 2012

Ben rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Nov 28, 2011

Ernest rated it:

The kind of book that passes just like that. I never read Roth's work before. This should be a minor and probably because this work is so detached to his glowing reputation as one of the best writer of the generation, I don't find it discouraging to read his other work (I have Nemesis in the shelf).

The strange thing about this book is that it's so surprisingly predictable. Everything from the start to finish. And the sex scenes seems to be there just for the sake to be there (you mig More...

2 comments like

Oct 22, 2011

Ken rated it:

This is a slim novel by Roth, and a bit of a let down after his two 'factional' books (THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA and NEMESIS). In this novel a 65 year old star of stage and screen has lost his artistic edge, and he is holed up in a large country house contemplating suicide. He enters a psychiatric clinic for a month, and meets a woman who is there because she caught her second husband molesting her eight year old daughter. She blames herself instead of him (And, that's why she's in the nut house) More...

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Dec 03, 2010

Matthew rated it:

As anyone who follows my reviews will know, I am a HUGE Philip Roth fan. Since The Humbling just came out in paperback, I thought I'd treat myself after a long semester and start my first casual read of my winter break by reading Roth's 30th (!!!) book.

Yet, I have to say this—and I hope I don’t have to say it often: I was not overly impressed with Roth here. The Humbling is a novella, and in being a novella, I read it fairly quickly in about two sessions of voracious reading; these two More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2010

F.R. rated it:

This latest run of Phillip Roth novels – ‘The Humbling’, ‘Indignation’, ‘Exit Ghost’ and ‘Everyman’ (and one might even include ‘The Dying Animal’ on that list, even though it’s earlier) – all seem puny and insubstantial, both in terms of the slenderness of their length and the narrow subject matters they address. Maybe Roth has taken on Saul Bellow’s thinking that after a certain age there’s no point starting to write a big book in case you don’t live to finish it (although that reasoning, stra More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2010

Elliot rated it:

“People go around killing people in movies all the time, but the reason they make all those movies is that for 99.9 percent of the audience it’s impossible to do. And if it’s that hard to kill someone else, someone you have every reason to want to destroy, imagine how hard it is to succeed in killing yourself.” The reviews were not good for this latest Philip Roth novel(lla?); don’t compare it to his great works and it holds up as a worthwhile evening’s read. An actor in his 60s suffers a breakd More...

0 comments like

May 03, 2010

Naomi added it

Philip Roth’s latest novel, The Humbling is about an aging actor in his mid-sixties. Simon Axler is a refined, classically trained actor who has had a vivid and wildly successful career. However, as we meet the actor, he has suddenly and inexplicably lost his talent. He can no longer perform and is understandably depressed. Axler retreats to his country house to try and gather his thoughts and see what he can do to revive his career. While there, he seems especially focused on the notion of suic More...

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Feb 03, 2010

Jason rated it:

This is the first Philip Roth book I've ever read. I began it queuing at the DMV waiting to renew my driver's license; finished it the same day. Somebody tell me if The Humbling is the best introduction to Roth. Would you have recommended a different book to a newbie with a wild hair to overdose on his writing this month on a long work trip?

This may be a spoiler--don't know--it was only 140 pages, on 5x7, 13 font, with super wide margins, probably the same word count as my colleg More...

5 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2010

Chuck rated it:

When Simon Axler, a once-formidable actor, lost his thespian prowess at age 65, he also lost his ability to carry on his life off-stage. Abandoned by his wife, and recently released from a self-admitted stay in a psychiatric hospital, Axler is unexpectedly rescued by a woman twenty-five years his junior, a lesbian who has decided to try out a heterosexual relationship. Not surprisingly, Axler's new lover -- the daughter of life-long friends -- does not have the approval of either her parents o More...

0 comments like

Jan 09, 2010

Alecia rated it:

The Humbling was given to me as a gift and I read it practically in one sitting. I had read the very negative reviews and probably would have skipped it. An article (about sex in novels now vs. then )that I read included this book. Supposedly, one woman was so disgusted by the graphic sex that she threw the book in the garbage. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but point taken. The problem with the sex scenes was, dare I say it, they seemed gratuitous.

I love Philip Roth! He may be my fav More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2009

Izetta Autumn rated it:

What is Philip Roth drinking? Because this man always manages to draw me into his novels and characters, even though 1.) the characters are not always (and very rarely) likeable 2.) almost always involve a white middle aged man coming to grips with aging and the decline of his sexuality (which I think is part of why the U.S. literary establishment loves Roth so very much)but never ever examining, say white heterosexual male privilege and 3.) the plots are so simplistic - there's hardly any actio More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 12, 2009

Tara rated it:

Advanced age, doomed sex, and impending death: just the kind of topics you enjoy exploring on a cozy winter night, right? Roth's frequent laments about the dark underbelly of the golden years may alienate some readers, but his literary skill keeps me coming back for more. The Dying Animal, Exit Ghost, Everyman -- I just can't stop, as evidenced by my recent one-night immersion his thirtieth book, The Humbling.
Roth's aging characters share one outstanding characteristic: they can't bear th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2009

Mike rated it:

First off ... let me just say that for those of you who have read at least a couple of Philip Roth's novels before, there is nothing dramatically new here. However, if you've previously felt a connection with Roth's struggle with meaning of life issues, you will probably enjoy his latest.

Nobody writes as honestly as Philip Roth. Every bit of his dialogue is natural and appropriate for the characters (Ugh, if only Pat Conroy could do this with his novels!). The narration by the mai More...

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Nov 27, 2009

Stephen rated it:

This most recent Roth novel should be read alongside "Everyman" and "Exit Ghost" as a trilogy on old age and death. Simon Axler, a famous actor in his mid-sixties, suddenly loses his ability to act, at least so he is convinced. The discovery is devastating, and he contemplates suicide, an obsession that eventually lands him in a psychiatric hospital, where he begins a series of disturbing chance encounters that will eventually ensnare him in an ever more troubling series of More...

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Nov 05, 2009

Bart rated it:

This is not Roth’s best work, again, but it is conceivably his shortest. All his work in recent years has been short, but this short work of fiction for once feels way too short. This “novel” is not 35,000 words in length, and it comprises a story that could easily have reached full length.

In so many ways – as I’m sure I’m not the first to have noticed – Roth has recently set out to rewrite choice parts of his masterwork, Sabbath’s Theater. This began with Everyman, when Roth rewr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 03, 2009

Tony rated it:

Roth, Philip. THE HUMBLING. (2009). ****. This is Mr. Roth’s thirtieth book, though the theme of this one is familiar. I have been a Roth fan since “Goodbye, Columbus,” and have faithfully followed his writings throughout the years. His protagonists have, in the main, been men who have reached success in one form or another, but then have to face a radical change in their status. In this novel, we meet Simon Axler, a highly successful actor who suddenly realizes that he can’t act anymore. More...

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Oct 19, 2009

Jonathan rated it:

Roth's books are getting shorter and darker. Now that Roth has reached the age where the end of his life is looming, he seems only able to focus his stories on death. Where his last book Indignation told the story of a young man and a life's potential taken away, The Humbling is about a life nearing completion, and how even at the end there is still no immunity from humiliation and failure.

Roth seems to be abiding by the "never buy green bananas" theory of old age. His last two nove

More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2009

Krok Zero rated it:

I read the entirety of this short novel in a bookstore after coming out of a matinee of Where the Wild Things Are, which was kind of like eating a whole frosted vanilla cake and chasing it with a jigger of poison-spiked whiskey.

I'm still a relative novice when it comes to Philip Roth but even I can tell that this is basically a slight, minor effort from a master. It feels like it was tossed off quickly, which, given Roth's prolificacy in recent years, it probably was. But when you're More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2010

Joshua rated it:

One of the worst things I can think of for a novel is to be dull. Phony, unauthentic, unoriginal, poorly written are other things that get under my skin but dull is not something that will endear me to a story and that's just what this book by Roth is to me. Dull, listless, uninteresting are some other words to describe it.

The book is about a 65 year old actor who loses his craft, retreats into his private world alone and is seemingly given another chance when he begins an affair with More...

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Nov 27, 2009

Laura rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 20, 2011

Patrick rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 11, 2010

Stephen rated it:

I hadn't intended to overdose on Roth a second time, but after reading The Ghost Writer I could not resist picking up this volume and polishing it off almost in one sitting. Once again, there was the momentum of a very real and significant story that took off from page 1 with masterful assurance and devastating honesty.

The characters could not be more real if they were here in the room. Roth is a past master in creating crusty old men (E.I. Lonoff in The Ghost Writer, Simon Axler in More...

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May 15, 2011

Susan rated it:

This review is written in such a way so as to not give away too much.

The

The Humbling is a good short read whose main character, Simon Axler reminds me of the actor Sean Connery (except maybe Axler's burliness).

Roth keeps the pace moving. The book highlights indepth the problems with intimate relationships between people who are more than fifteen years apart and the possible costs of introducing third parties to a committed sexual relationship.

A few things More...

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Nov 18, 2011

Edgar rated it:

Yes, I gave this novella four stars. No, it doesn't really deserve it. I'll explain.
The Humbling was the first Phillip Roth book that I read. I liked it in the sense that I was 'destined' (ugh, I have a tendency to hate that word) to like Roth but I hadn't seen all his potential.

When I first read it, I was short on Contemporary American Lit (or American Lit to say the least) and, not so proudly I must confess I found it smooth and cool: I liked it (without loving it). Yeah, Rot More...

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Mar 05, 2010

Jessica rated it:

This novella disappointed me. Simon's character development was not fully realized. In fact, the entire novella reads like the skeleton for what could have been a great, longer novella/novel. The premise really compelled me: an acclaimed stage actor who suddenly falters in a short series of nightmare performances. But Roth hardly delves into this. I can't attribute this to the character's own psyche/personality because I learn hardly anything about his psyche. Instead, I get a brief and cliched More...

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