The Year in Fiction (Vol. 91) | The Year in Fictionby Bruce Allen
The Year in Fiction by Bruce Allen
The best American novel of 1995 was, beyond question, Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, which was lavishly praised throughout the review media, won the National Book Award, and in an oversight so stunning it amounts to a snub, was not even nominated for the Fiction Award presented annually by the—er, well—prestigious National Book Critics Circle (of which I am a member: peccavi).
It is arguable that Roth has already garnered more than his share of awards. What seems to me indisputable is that he has never written better—even in the comparably salacious and high-spirited Portnoy's Complaint—than in this compellingly funny and fierce portrayal of incipient old age in thunderous eruption.
Its protagonist is sixty-four-year-old Morris "Mickey" Sabbath, a former puppeteer and an unregenerate sexual gamesman whose appetitive energy and refusal to age gracefully, or even slow down...
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