The thing that strikes me the most about Philip Roth’s “The Humbling” is how totally inappropriate the title is. Simon Axler, the lead character, isn’t humbled – he’s crushed. ‘Humbling’ suggests someone merely cut down to size, made to see the reality of their situation (but gently perhaps); it even hits at the possibility of redemption.
None of that fits Axler’s experience. Roth’s portrayal is incisive, perceptive, brutal and cruel; he gives us a man undone by himself, and then seduced by false hope.
There is, I suspect, something of the Everyman in Axler – in the sense that being of ‘a certain age’ makes ones vulnerable, aware of mortality. If Axler clutches at straws hoping for salvation, isn’t that an entirely human thing to do?
Ian Gouge - Writer 