The Humbling by Philip Roth

Philip Roth has always surrounded his protagonists with exaggerated levels of arousal—Alex Portnoy’s exploration with liver, Mickey Sabbath’s underwear theft, David Kepesh’s Kafka-esque transformation into a breast. Roth’s 30th novel, The Humbling, is short enough to be considered a novella, but the themes remain the same.

In The Humbling, Simon Axler, 64, is a world-renowned actor who suffers a colossal breakdown, only to be brought back to life by an affair with a woman 25 years his junior. To complicate matters, Pegeen, the target of his desire, is a lesbian whose parents are close friends of Simon. All of Simon’s time is now spent doting on Pegeen, transforming her from a butch lesbian into a heterosexual female retooled with a two-hundred dollar haircut and Manhattan wardrobe.

 Naturally, the affair turns into a full-fledged romance. And Simon’s emotions are put to the test in the most stirring scene in the book, when Pegeen’s ex-girlfriend warns him that his heart will be broken just like hers. Simon blindly continues his relationship with Pegeen, anyway, only to become devastated when a raunchy threesome with a younger girl re-triggers Pegeen’s attraction to women.

This does not come as any major surprise. It is foolish of Simon to take his relationship with Pegeen beyond lust, since it is the ability of the older man to restrain himself that makes him so desirable to the younger woman. For all the great tragedies of time that Simon has lived through on the stage, he should have known to take this relationship at face value: older men are always forced to give up their lovers. Usually it is a matter of power, regardless of gender, but it is the elder’s duty to realize that this too shall pass.

And if it is at all disturbing that a 76-year-old author would have it in him to write scenes involving strap-ons and role play, then rest assured that Roth encompasses it all with relevant questions of aging, sexual boundaries, and Socrates’ old projection of the beloved versus the lover. The writing in The Humbling seems pared down and more urgent than ever, but one things is for certain: the old man still has moves.