"For some 'Philip Roth is moving along the last frontier, to the extreme limit of any human adventure and questions the right behavior to keep the measure to respect, to understand the true meaning, the conclusion to be drawn. For some years Philip Roth has placed his typewriter at the confluence of the river of life and death of the great lakes. Is no longer just a writer, is the biblical patriarch himself, the eighth of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, the prophet who carves line by line to make his prophecy indelible, invulnerable to the passage of time. "
Antonio D'Orrico
The thirtieth novel, although in this case it is better to define novel, Philip Roth's "humble" is once again as the last of his previous novels, full of pessimism and impending sense of purpose; a tale of ruthless brutality to the end of a man, his arrival at the terminus. A story in three movements as a play in which stage actor Simon Axler sixty-five, "the prince of the world scene with the use of Shakespeare and Chekhov, peerless interpreter of the repertoire most noble," falls into a bottomless depression. Failure, misery, frustration are ills that afflict Axler, meanwhile also left his wife, that to escape the attraction of his fatal shotgun Remington 870 stored in the cellar, decides to shelter a psychiatric clinic: "one of those places where you spend your time and the time does not pass, still standing at that moment, the crack-up, crack you through silent. " Axler we remained for about one month in this hospital in luxury and have a way to get acquainted with a woman who has suffered the worst trauma that can happen to a mother. The two make each other company until you familiarize yourself on the most intimate things Axler and meanwhile gets a glimpse of the art of listening that was his secret. Once home, the old actor is joined by Pegeen Mike Stapleford, daughter of old friends who first saw Axler has just been born, and a lesbian on the run from a relationship of convenience. Beautiful, young, fascinating experiences with sexually shocking, Pegeen wake up in the passion of love extinct Axler delighted to the point that remains to be her partner in raids of extreme eroticism. In short, an old showman Axler stages in the oldest part of his private relationship between the sexes: that of the old man who capers around behind a young lady full of himself and unscrupulous. Pegeen takes the game to the extreme, dominating the old actor who is left deliberately dominate since it could not be otherwise given his physical condition and will proceed bad acting in the epilogue to mocking and cruel but glad to have attempted the transformation of a tomboy in a refined woman. A final twist, terrible, deadly close this book which critics praised the United States in a unanimous, considering the height of the best novels of Roth.
Roth gives an account of the vertical drop of his character with extraordinary lucidity, watching from a distance and without falling into sentimentality. "Write a story that has the strength of an allegorical morality play contemporary and delivery to the reader a character among the largest ever. Simon Axler is a memorable illustration of the fragility and ambivalence of talent, man he plays everything on the table of representation, and loses his gift when he meets his nemesis in the guise of a mediocre actress and woman disguised as a man. " There is a concept in the text that is repeated several times and then the title of the book: the humiliation. And 'the humiliation that the main character who lives for the whole story of a mature man, in work as in love life and every time he feels humiliated Axler we understand that is a further step towards the end. In him there is fatalism and resignation of those who put themselves in a position neutral to its own existence, watching and spend accepting it as if it were modified.
"A novel from a Roth Nordic, severe, without concessions of any kind, or self indulgence indulgences, arrived at Ground Zero of the narrative. "
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