I... I wrote Sabbath's Theater... I believe I did the writing in 1994 and 1995, probably, so I was in my early 60s. It began, I think, because I was looking for a place to be buried. It never had dawned on me to look for such a place earlier, but I guess now that I was in my early 60s I thought I'd better take care of that. And, partly I... I guess this came to mind because I... I'd just buried a friend of mine, a woman of 42... 42 or 43 – who I was very fond of – and I found a spot for her to be buried in a nearby cemetery to me, to my house, and got a stone for her cemetery... for her plot, so I was involved with the cemetery for really the first time in my life. And it dawned on me... and then I used to go out and visit her grave in the early months after she was dead. I would go out once or twice a month and just stand there. And so it dawned on me that I better take care of this.
And I thought, well, what about this cemetery right here? And I... I found it wanting. It's a beautiful, old cemetery – probably 19th century, early 19th century cemetery – set in a little hillside and... but I just... now comes the comical part – I just thought I wouldn't be comfortable there. And aside from my friend, I thought – more comedy – who will I talk to? Now these are real, silly thoughts. So I began to go around looking for a cemetery, and every one was lacking. Why was it lacking? Because I would have to be dead there. That was what was wrong with the cemetery. And so eventually I stopped looking in nearby towns, to where I live, and came down to New Jersey one day and went to visit my parents' cemetery – which of course I'd visited in the past, but never with an idea to finding a grave there. There was no grave adjacent to them. But the... the guy who runs the cemetery, the poor guy who runs the cemetery – now dead himself – we walked around together. And he... he was inadvertently, highly comical. For instance, I pointed to a plot that was near my parents' plots and it was just where there was a gate, but it was within... you could look up and you could see my parents' grave from there. And he said, 'Mr Roth, I don't like that for you, there's not enough leg room', he said. So I stayed with this comedian for half an hour or so and gave him a tip and so on.
And then I... it began to dawn on me that a book about someone who's looking for a grave to be buried in might be interesting. In addition, especially if the guy was going to commit suicide and was shopping around for a grave – which is what happens to Mickey Sabbath in my book. That's one... one strand.
