In its recent article on Ariel Levy and John Turturro’s stage adaptation of Philip Roth’s “Sabbath’s Theater,” the New York Times called it the novelist’s “raunchiest book.” Why stop there? Let’s also call Mickey Sabbath the novelist’s most repellent character.
The Old Gray Lady’s opinion of Roth’s novel seems to have mellowed over the years. Upon its publication, the book critic there called it “distasteful and disingenuous.”
Published in 1995, Roth’s novel catalogues the number of ways in which one character can offend: Mickey Sabbath and his mistress, Drenka, indulge in golden-shower sex, he masturbates over and urinates on her grave, he is fired from his teaching job for having phone sex with a student and he sexually molests a young woman while performing his hand-puppet theater routine, which involves all sorts of ways of making his finger synonymous with his penis, which he never stops talking about.