The strengths and flaws of Sabbath's Theater and the great final section

My memory serves me well in re Philip Roth's Sabbbath's Theater, which I recalled from when I read it 20 years ago as having a really rough start and concluding an absolutely beautiful account of the protagonist's journey back to his home town on the Jersey Shore. Same experience reading the novel this time - although I think, first, that I'm even more conscious and aware of the protagonist's horrible treatment of women, in particularly young and vulnerable women, and, to counterbalance, I'd forgotten how many terrific passages of high comedy and schtick Roth includes throughout the novel, particularly Sabbath's rants against the society and culture that, he thinks, has failed to recognize his genius and has marginalized him. An example of the highs and lows: Sabbath's defense of the his obsession with the underpants of the 19-year-old daughter of his friend (who's providing him w/ food, clothing, and shelter when Sabbath is on the brink of suicide) and his attempt to seduce his friend's wife, Michelle - hilarious when you read some of the passages of Sabbath's outbursts, repulsive if you think about his lack of feeling for others and his perverse attraction to young girls. He believes his sexual impulses are without consequences - oblivious to his affect on others, breaking up marriages and families. And why is he so attractive/successful? I wonder why Roth made him such a physically ungamely character - makes it hard to credit his success with women, unless Roth's goal is simply to debase women, which I doubt. In any event, leaving Manhattan and leaving behind his attempt to seduce his friend's wife, he heads to the Jersey shore, initially to select his gravesite in the cemetery where his parents are interred; this is a terrific and an odd scene, setting us up for the last moments of the novel, a return to childhood - an ever-present Roth theme, of course.

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