Sabbath's Theater

“[W]hat had him grasping at the broadening buttocks as though the tattooist Time had ornamented neither of them with its comical festoonery was his knowing inescapably that the game was just about over.”

From an early point in the novel, Sabbath is very cognizant of how his aging impacts him and his decision-making. In this instance, he recognizes that he engages with Drenka with a fervor not typical of their old bodies because he knows he can only do it for so much longer.

“Life was as unthinkable for Sabbath without the successful innkeeper’s promiscuous wife as it was for her without the remorseless puppeteer. No one to conspire with, no one on earth with whom to give free rein to his most vital need!”

Sabbath and Drenka work so well together because they enjoy a true partnership. They are on an adventure together, and through each other, they are able to reach new heights in their exploration of the body.

“[A]nd now it made him jealous, maddeningly jealous—now that she was dead he wanted to shake her and shout at her and tell her to stop. ‘Only me! Fuck your husband when you have to, but otherwise, no one but me!’”

After Drenka’s death, Sabbath suffers from intense jealousy as he mourns. Even though he was comfortable with Drenka being with other men before, her absence makes him miss her and wish that all her time with other men was spent with him.

“Sabbath went to sea only weeks after graduating high school, he was motivated as much by his need to escape his mother’s tyrannical gloom—and his father’s pathetic brokenness—as by an unsatisfied longing that had been gathering force in him since masturbation had all but taken charge of his life.”

The death of his brother and the subsequent collapse of his mother are formative events in young Sabbath’s life. They drive him away from home to sea, where he can explore his sexual fantasies at the world’s many ports. Sexuality is a way for him to solidify his identity at a critical juncture in his life.

“Standard Sabbath perversity. You can’t believe that. Nikki was doomed. Tremendously gifted, extremely pretty, but so frail, so needy, so neurotic and fucked-up. No way that girl would ever hold together, none.”

While for much of the novel Sabbath holds on to the notion that Nikki is still alive somewhere, others are not so optimistic. In this instance, Norman expresses the belief that Nikki was “doomed” by her anxieties and her inability to function off the stage, which made her easy to control and attractive to Sabbath.

“Homeless, wifeless, mistressless, penniless […] jump in the cold river and drown. Climb up into the woods and go to sleep, and tomorrow morning, should you even awaken, keep climbing until you are lost.”

Throughout the novel, Sabbath struggles with suicidal ideation, and in this instance, as he drives, he begins to think of the many ways he could disappear. Whether it is through death or becoming lost in the woods, Sabbath’s need to escape is severe in the aftermath of Drenka’s death and his split from Roseanna.

“In the fingers uncovered, or even suggestively clad, there is always a reference to the penis, and there were skits Sabbath developed in his first years on the street where the reference wasn’t that veiled.”

Sabbath depends on shock value and sexuality in his performances, both on stage and in real life. As a young artist performing with finger puppets on the street, he uses allusions to male genitalia for both comedic and dramatic effect.

“Only Linc, when they were alone, had the courage to say to him, ‘Mick, don’t you really know she’s dead?’ No, the wound never closes, the wound remains fresh, as it had till the very end for his mother. She had been stopped when Morty was killed, stopped from going forward, and all the logic went out of her life.”

When Sabbath loses Nikki, he remembers how his mother lost his brother Morty and begins to understand why she acted as she did. He, like her, finds himself frozen in a moment, unable to move on and act as if anything changes, holding on to the hope that Nikki is alive, unchanged, and soon to return.

“If he was not coming apart but only simulating, then this was the greatest performance of his life. Even as his teeth chattered, even as he could feel his jowls tremble beneath his ridiculous beard Sabbath thought, So, something new. And more to come.”

Sabbath believes that he may be performing his dissolution rather than actually experiencing it and struggles to determine whether he acts or lives. He struggles throughout the novel trying to understand what happens to him, always harkening back to the notion that he merely performs.

“The law of living: fluctuation. For every thought a counterthought, for every urge a counterurge. No wonder you either go crazy or die or decide to disappear. Too many urges, and that’s not even one tenth of the story.”

Sabbath lives by the law of living, always fluctuating to match every thought or urge he has. He and Drenka’s entire relationship is based on fluctuation, as they seek out in each other what they cannot find in their spouses.

“The-desire-to-not-be-alive-any-longer accompanied Sabbath right on down the station stairway and, after Sabbath purchased a token, continued through the turnstile clinging to his back; and when he boarded the train, it sat in his lap, facing him, and began to tick off on Sabbath’s crooked fingers the many ways it could be sated.”

This excerpt features a manifestation of Sabbath’s suicidal ideation as a lurking, haunting, creature that follows only him. The force is malevolent and uses Sabbath to imagine his many possible ends.

“Now, if what Sabbath felt pushing into him was indeed the tip of a knife milliseconds from impaling his liver, if Sabbath truly had the-desire-not-to-be-alive-any-longer, why did he bring the heel of his big boot so forcefully down on that beloved American’s foot?”

Just as Sabbath struggles to determine whether his dissolution is based on reality or performance, so too does he struggle to determine whether he truly wants to die or not. He convinces himself that he does, but when an opportunity to die presents itself, he protects himself, making him wonder what he truly wants.

“But then, Sabbath had been taping his workshop girls for years now and planned to leave the collection to the Library of Congress. Seeing to the collection’s preservation was one of the best reasons he had—the only reason he had—to one day get a lawyer to draw up a will.”

Sabbath is very attached to his sexual activities, even going so far as to record his phone calls with the girls he teaches and pursues. It is more than personal pleasure, however, as he seemingly hopes that these recordings will be shared and made public after his death, further demonstrating his tendency to break societal norms.

“This local scandal, remember, was taking place in the fall of 1989, two years before the death of his senile mother and four before her reappearance jolted him into understanding that not everything alive is a living substance.”

The scandal with Kathy Goolsbee, though severe, is not the most traumatizing event in Sabbath’s life over these few years. When his mother’s ghost appears to him, he realizes that he can be haunted by the past and that just because people he knows are dead, does not mean that their influence on him completely wanes.

“But if you’re not expected to pick up chemistry on your own, if you’re not expected to pick up physics on your own, then why are you supposed to pick up the erotic mysteries on your own? Some need seduction and don’t need initiation. Some don’t need initiation but still need seduction. Kathy, you needed both.”

In this conversation with Kathy Goolsbee, Sabbath explains his position on his role in her life, saying that he sees himself as a teacher and his sexual pursuit of her as one of educational means. He believes that he is educating her, just as she would be educated in any academic study.

“This fucking thing broke my father! After the shiva he went back to work again, after the year of official mourning he stopped crying, but there was always that personal, private misery that you could see a mile away. And I didn’t feel so terrific myself.”

When Sabbath loses Morty, he is devastated and broken, but his grief and pain are only made worse by witnessing the impact Morty’s death has on his parents. His mother breaks completely, and even his father—though he stops openly grieving—is changed. These all combine to make the loss even more devastating for Sabbath.

“In her laugh was the admission of her captivity: to Norman, to menopause, to work, to aging, to everything that could only deteriorate further. Nothing unforeseen that happens is likely ever again to be going to be good.”

When Sabbath turns his desire toward Michelle, he does so because he believes he recognizes an awareness of aging in her. He believes that Michelle, like him, is aware of how aging is slowly stealing the pleasures of life away and feels the need to indulge in them as much as possible before they are completely gone.

“He had a reason to live until Saturday. A new collaborator to replace the old one. The vanishing collaborator, indispensable to Sabbath’s life otherwise: Nikki disappearing, Drenka dying, Roseanna drinking, Kathy indicting him…his mother…his brother…If only he could stop replacing them. Miscasting them.”

Sabbath’s life is defined by relationships in which the other person disappears. From his family to his lovers, everyone leaves him one way or another, and he begins perceiving his life as one long string of finding replacements.

“The cup had betrayed their secret hallway pact, igniting in her a panicked fury that made her physically ill. She pictured in the cup all the lowly evils leading to destruction, the unleashed force that could wreck everything.”

Though Sabbath is initially shocked that Michelle turns on him and changes her mind, he finds the space to forgive her when he realizes she found his beggar’s cup. He understands that the cup likely frightened her, more than the thought of aging does, and therefore begins to see Sabbath as a means of losing everything rather than gaining anything.

“‘Cause death, death is a terrible thing. You know. Death, it’s no good. So I wish I was never born.’ Angrily he states this. I want to die because I don’t have to, he doesn’t want to die because he does have to, ‘That’s my philosophy,’ he says.”

When Sabbath spends time with his cousin Fish, he is shocked to find a man with such diametrically opposed opinions on death to his own. Sabbath wants to die because he must live, while Fish does not want to die because he cannot keep living. This contrast gives Sabbath some pause and, after he discovers Morty’s belongings, helps lead him away from thoughts of death.

“A miniature Bible. Jewish Holy Scriptures…‘As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve…’ Franklin Delano Roosevelt commends ‘the reading of the Bible’ to my brother. The way they got these kids to die. Commends.”

As he looks through Morty’s belongings, particularly those from World War II, Sabbath is disgusted to find all of the patriotic and religious propaganda that helped convince young men to enlist and die for their country. In this case, he finds a Bible with commendations from Roosevelt, which he believes would make a young man eager to fight, though he now sees it as a manipulative ploy.

“He took the flag down with him onto the beach. There he unfurled it, a flag with forty-eight stars, wrapped himself in it, and, in the mist there, wept and wept. The fun I had just watching them just fool around, kid, laugh, tell jokes. That he included me in the address. That he always included me!”

Despite decades passing between Morty’s death and Sabbath’s discovery of his belongings, Sabbath’s grief is still profound. As Sabbath stands, wrapped in the flag, he remembers his brother’s kindness and how much he looked up to him. His grief transports him back to a time when Morty was alive.

“How could he kill himself now that he had Morty’s things? Something always came along to make you keep living, god-damnit! He was driving north because he didn’t know what else to do but take the carton home, put it in his studio, and lock it up there for safekeeping.”

Sabbath laments the inconvenience of finding Morty’s belongings, as it now gives him a reason to keep on living. He wants to protect his brother’s things, to keep guard over them. This brings him to the realization that while he lives, he will keep finding reasons to go on.