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Sabbath's Theater
Sabbath's Theater is a novel by
Sabbaths theater.JPG
Philip Roth about the exploits of
Front cover of the first edition
64-year-old Mickey Sabbath. It won
the 1995 U.S. National Book Award Author Philip Roth
for Fiction.[1] Country United States
Language English
Summary and Publisher Houghton Mifflin

themes Publication 1995

date
Mickey Sabbath (modeled after Pages 451
American Jewish painter R.B.
ISBN 0-395-73982-9
Kitaj[2]) is an unproductive, out-of-
work, former puppeteer with a OCLC 31970961 (https://ww
strong affinity for whores, adultery, w.worldcat.org/oclc/31
and the casual sexual encounter. 970961)
Sabbath takes great pleasure in his
status as the (prototypical) "dirty old man." He takes an equal pleasure in
manipulating the people around him, primarily women—in a sense, they play
the same role as his puppets. The loss of a decades-long sexual sidekick—the
equally depraved Drenka—precipitates a crisis in a life he has long considered
an utter failure. Sabbath wonders whether he should simply take his own life,
thereby heeding the advice of the ghost of his departed mother, a frequent
visitor who urges suicide as the fitting end for his failed life.

Reception
Literary critic Harold Bloom has declared Sabbath's  Theater Roth's
"masterwork."[3] Prominent literary critic James Wood told Morning News, "I
am a great fan of Sabbath’s  Theater, it was an extraordinary book."[4] New

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York Times critic Michiko Kakutani found it hard to finish and "distasteful and
disingenuous".[5]

It won the National Book Award for fiction.[1] — thirty-five years after Roth's
debut novel Goodbye  Columbus won the same award (1960). It was also a
finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize.[6]

References
1. "National Book Awards – 1995" (http://www.nationalbook.org/nba1995.htm
l) National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
(With essay by Ed Porter from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
2. Nesvisky, Matt (November 8, 2007). "In-Your-Face Outsider" (http://fr.jpos
t.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1192380
767901). Jerusalem Post.
3. Bloom, Harold (2003). Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary
Creative Minds. New York: Warner Books. p. 207.
4. Birnbaum, Robert (July 13, 2004). "James Wood by Robert Birnbaum" (htt
p://www.themorningnews.org/article/birnbaum-v.-james-wood=all).
Morning News.
5. Kakutani, Michiko (August 22, 1995). "Mickey Sabbath, You're No
Portnoy" (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE5DF1E3
DF931A1575BC0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all). New York
Times.
6. "Fiction" (http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction). The Pulitzer Prize.
Retrieved 14 January 2014.

Awards
Preceded by Succeeded by
National Book Award
A Frolic of His Ship Fever and
for Fiction
Own Other stories
1995
William Gaddis Andrea Barrett

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