The narrator of  _Saul’s Book_ (1983) is Stephen, an introspective Puerto Rican writer,
who is still under the influence of his mentor, Saul, a trickster with voracious appetite for Western
philosophy and young male hustlers. When they met, the narrator was a teenage 42nd street kid.
Saul re-named him Sinbad, became his lover, father-figure, and betrayer, and sent Stephen on an
initiatory journey of identity. Saul is now dead, and Sinbad’s native spontaneity, beauty, pride,
feistiness, and street-toughened survival instinct have been destroyed by his absorption, body,
mind, and soul, in Saul, and by internalizing Saul’s dubious gift to him: introspection. Now a
twilight figure and a stranger to himself, Stephen is no Sinbad. He lives alone and impotent. The
book is Stephen’s revenge on Saul, served icy cold. 

                                                
 
  Saul was a first-rate teacher. He himself was taught by a mobster while in Attica. He
explains to Sinbad that word of mouth and shrewdness will tell him whetehr or not a pusher is on
the street because the feds gave him the choice of informing on his contacts or spending the rest
of his life in prison. He explains how to determine if a racketeer is a loan shark or a fence.
Moreover, he tells Sinbad how to channel his rage at being poor, fatherless, and having to sell his
body. The key is not to let the rage become self hatred and self destruction. Once that is avoided,
the world can be negotiated on the hustler’s own terms. To begin the process, Saul pays for
Sinbad’s de-toxification program. Now he can avoid hustling Johns and copping tokes in the Port
Authority men’s rooms and 42nd Street’s porn theaters, live peep emporiums, S-M clubs, and
bathhouse.

    The problem is that for Saul, acquiring money and bed partners are all there is. He has
grown fat and satiated. The only thing left is the existential struggle or adventure, which
necessitates a merry-go-round of betrayal. There is a gold ring, pleasure in power, and a brass
one, despair. For Saul this is the ultimate reality, which he does not hide from any of his tricks.
When his loan sharking scheme is uncovered by the mob, he hides, knowing that Sinbad will try to
find him and that the hit men will shadow Sinbad.   

    When they do meet again, Rogers gives us a vivid, and also many-leveled portrait of the
wildest after hours transvestite house party the raunchiest sex spa on the Deuce could possibly
host. There’s seductive artifice, sensual abandon, every possible human utterance that resonates
with feral gratification. Finally, there are only cigarette buts, broken glass, and floors and walls
stained with semen and blood. That’s the reality check Stephen faces when Saul disappears for
good. He’s told to stop feeling feeling sorry for himself. But he has detached himself from the
web of beliefs, affections, and family support that make up his own culture. So Saul has become
his whole life. Ironically, the only use he makes of the Puerto Rican culture is to visit a Bruja, or
fortune teller, hoping she can find Saul for him.

    Ironically, Saul has left Stephen as he found him: self-hating and self-destructive. As he
approaches middle age, he has lost his looks, sexual energy, and family. All he has is books,
introspection, and writing skill.  He lives in self-imposed isolation from his son Salvador, who is
the same age as he was when he met Saul, and in equal need of a father. But it is not quite
curtains. Salvador (the name has an obvious spiritual allusion) wants to move in with him. He tells
his father that before Saul’s death he went to see him. He says he needed to find out Stephen’s
address. Stephen doubts that was the only motive. Predictably, Saul forces Sal to “get down” with
him, threatening to tell Stephen he did so if he refuses. Sal complies, and becomes intoxicated by
Saul just as his father had been. If this confession unfreezes Stephen’s heart, he does not let on.
But he does allow Sal “to crash with him for a while.”. He is so emotionally paralyzed that he tells
himself he is doing so because he needs the money. However, some feral human need surfaces.
Perhaps it’s the instinct to rescue oneself, one’s children, and one’s kind from a death-dealing
exploitive force. That Saul-like force works through an isolation, acquisition, and perverse
appetite for life that freezes pity for one’s victims at the same moment that it hardens the cock for
their bodies. Since Saul is an American  Jewish intellectual, and Stephen and Sal impoverished
Puerto Ricans, it’s anyone’s guess where Rogers is going with his symbolism.