Sabbath's Theatre

I think most people really enjoyed The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman sequel. I certainly did. One of the things that made it so great was the mystery surrounding the Joker - you never knew what he had planned, or what he was going to do next. The reason for this is that his origins were not explained. If you knew what motivated him, then the mystery, and so the fear, was gone. Of course, for someone who spent so long talking about how he let chaos rule and never planned anything, he had quite a lot of elaborate set-ups that I suspect actually required quite a lot of meticulous planning, but I digress. I’m here to talk about Sabbath’s Theatre.

This was my first novel by Philip Roth. He’s got a reputation for being one of the best authors around (although that is being challenged by a lot of critics at the moment). The story concerns Micky Sabbath - a former puppeteer. He used to be wildly inventive, using finger puppets for his show’s in New York. Now he’s just an old man, and when his mistress dies he goes a bit crazy. He is also supposed to be purposefully bad. He likes trying to sleep with women, and isn’t too choosy on that front…

In case you haven’t guessed, the title is not as clever as it thinks it is. He’s a puppeteer, who manipulates puppets in his theatre. He’s a pervert, who manipulates people in the theatre of life. It’s signposted like a smack in the face with a kipper. But that’s ok, you can have an obvious set up, provided the book is worth reading. I’m, not sure this is. It’s so dull! Whenever Sabbath meets someone missing a Y chromosome you know what’s coming. What’s worse, you know why he is doing it.

You see, in this book Roth doesn’t understand what makes a good villain. You know he chases after woman so inappropriately because it’s explained to you where he got into this habit. You have recounted conversations with his mentor, who proudly boasts of his sexual prowess. You have accounts of his family life, of his despair at losing his older brother. Once you have this, the rest of the book is inevitable. Micky Sabbath isn’t evil, he’s a pathetic old man. As a result, he fails to live up to his own billing, just like the book.