Roth, Philip - “Sabbath's Theater”

"Sabbath's Theater" by Philip Roth

"Sabbath's Theater" is a novel written by Philip Roth and published in 1995.
The protagonist of the novel is Mickey Sabbath, a "whorehouse, seducer, sodomizer and exploiter of women, destroyer of morality, corruptor of youth". From the outset, Sabbath presents itself to the reader as a repulsive, libertine, scandalous, immoral being who is dedicated "to accumulating the antipathy of anyone as if it were a battle to defend their rights".

Sabbath could be compared to a sort of Don Giovanni, completely absorbed as he is in the compulsive search for every possible opportunity for sensual enjoyment, with any woman he comes across. He is impatient with laces and laces imposed by bourgeois good taste and social conventions.
To his lover Drenka, who begs him to be faithful to her, Sabbath replies that fidelity is nothing more than "repressive puritanism [...] that tries to impose its own rules on others by moralistically repressing the satanic side of sex" and that "it does not exist too harsh punishment for the criminal madman who came up with the idea of fidelity ”. Yet, this obscene and provocative man, obsessed with sex, is portrayed by Philip Roth as a very human character, titanic, exuberant, immeasurable, at the same time tragic and buffoonish, histrionic and pathetic, like a new Falstaff.
Sabbath is a Rabelaisian, Rodomontesque character. Carried away by his unbridled vitalism, he recklessly throws himself against all that is opportune, decent, convenient and advantageous. Sabbath, who is constantly besieged by death but has always rejected any kind of self-pity, wonders at a certain point: "Is there something religious in me?". In this "living panegyric of obscenity", in this inverted saint who dedicates himself "to fuck in the same way that a monk dedicates himself to God", perhaps looking for a substitute for eternity in sex, there is indeed an unexpected sense of the sacred. The scenes in which he honors Drenka's memory by masturbating to his grave are revolting and outrageous, but they are also in their own way heartbreaking expressions of a pure and primitively innocent sentiment, which one would never expect in a cynical and obstinately rebellious man against all rules bourgeois: love.