Philip Roth: Everyman

[unKeMPt]

I know it isn't officially out till next month, but I've already seen Philip Roth's new hardcover Everyman in stores. I just got out of class where we read eleven of his books, and I'm now a fan. Just wonderin' if anybody's picked it up yet and, if they have, what their impressions are.

 

[SFG75]

Time had a review of it in their latest magazine. It looks to be a good one as the underlying topic-that death is the great equalizer, is discussed and how we humans like to put off the inevitable, or even classify ourselves according to our respective conditions. I will definitely be buying this one via Amazon.

 

[-Carlos-]

I just placed this novel on my book list. It looks good.

 

[Concetta]

Just Finished

I just finished Everyman - it was my first Roth. I loved his writing and am looking forward to reading another of his (any suggestions as to which one I should pick up next).

My issue with this book is that it left me feeling so depressed / hopeless. What a writer, though, I was full of emotion.

 

[beer good]

I just finished "Everyman". Overall, I liked it, though it's not a very agreeable book; it follows the idea of "The Life And Death Of A Male Body" a little too closely for comfort, and really creeps me out at times. The idea that our entire physical existence - which, according to Roth and myself, is all the existence there is - is basically wormfood waiting to happen and that our bodies, marvels of physical ability when we're young, inevitably decay and fail us long before we die, unless we die violently or from disease. That's something we know, but don't necessarily want to dwell on.

The start of the book is a bit on the clinical side, as Scheherazade noted above; it gets better, and the last third features quite a few really moving passages. But this is the third Roth book I've read after "American Pastoral" and "The Plot Against America", and I actually think it's the least phenomenal. I like it, but... I dislike what it does to me. Also, it seems a bit on the sketchy side sometimes. But it's a good and very thoughtworthy book; I'd rate it 4/5.

It's because life's most disturbing intensity is death. It's because death is so unjust. It's because once one has tasted life, death does not even seem natural. I had thought - secretly I was certain - that life goes on and on.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

 

[SFG75]

I'm one who likes to do some homework on a given book before starting the book. I bought this book upon receiving a gift certificate from a family member good at Barnes & Noble. In looking for reviews, I found that metacritic is an awesome source for reviews. The reviews for this one were quite abundant with only two negative reviews, while the rest were positive. The two extremes to check out I've included here:

The overly glowing:


U.K. Independent review

For most other authors this kind of material would sink under a freight of self-pity, recycled platitude or clumsy sentimentalism. But Roth has been a lifetime in the apprenticeship of form, and form is the stern consolation he allows himself here. Every sentence and every paragraph works with the coiled precision of the watch mechanisms that the narrator's father repairs, and glitters with the lapidary perfection of the diamonds he sells.

It is the restraint Roth exercises over his astonishing command of language that hits hardest in Everyman. Drawn into old age, the narrator comes to populate a world of stents and infarcts, where "conversation invariably turned to matters of sickness and health, [people's] personal biographies having by this time become identical to their medical biographies". The apparatus and the machinery of surgery encroach steadily on the "dying animal" that gave the title to Roth's last novel of disease and disintegration, and what emerges, for what it's worth, is an unselfpitying respect for human interconnection in all its fragility and pointlessness.

Washington Post review

Philip Roth's 27th novel is a marvel of brevity, admirable for its elegant style and composition (no surprise), but remarkable above all for its audacity and ambition. It seizes unflinchingly on one of the least agreeable subjects in the domain of the novel -- the natural deterioration of the body. But beyond that, Everyman can be seen as a bid to engage conclusively with the core anxieties that the literary novel exists to confront: How, absent the shadow of God, in new and confusing brightness, shall we decide what we are, how we human animals should judge ourselves and whether we can love our species despite everything?

The Overly critical:

New York Times review

This book often reads like a laundry list of complaints about the human condition: an existential litany of grievances, regrets and disappointments, many of them expertly described but all peculiarly abstract, given the hero's oddly sketchy life.

With the exception of his childhood memories of his father's jewelry shop, which possess a touching emotional specificity, this man's story is depicted in spindly, cartoonlike terms: one impossible wife, one saintly wife, one ditsy airhead of a wife; two resentful, sourpuss sons, one doting daughter; several decades in the advertising game, followed by a stint in retirement as an amateur artist. All are delineated in a brusque, summary manner, as if Mr. Roth couldn't be bothered with filling in the details, or wanted to leave those details deliberately vague in a misguided effort to make his hero more of a representative man.

Entertainment Weekly

Everyman can be summed up in one of its sentences: ''He'd married three times, had mistresses and children and an interesting job where he'd been a success, but now eluding death seemed to have become the central business of his life and bodily decay his entire story.'' There are some great turns of phrase — the Everyman's pervasive contempt cannot be reprinted here — but the vanity and cruelty of this man render him and his self-pitying tale inert.

I'll be definitely looking to see if I find it to be either overly sentimental tripe, or original in prose and well......not a cliche. Amazing how the strengths of the book to one person can be found to be the weakness of the same book by another. More to come.

 

[Heteronym]

Concetta, you should give American Pastoral a try, if you are interested in Philip Roth. The Plot Against America has equally beautiful prose that transmits genuine emotions, but the ending collapses in a silly deus ex machina, which is disappointing as most of the book is brilliant.

I received I Married A Communist for Christmas, can't wait to read it!

 

[Smila]

I just finished I Married a Communist - its wonderful! Philip Roth is truly one of my favorite writers but I always find myself both dreading and anticipating his new releases. I try to limit myself to 1 Roth per year. There is something so depressing and gripping about his self-hating male characters. Its also tied up in the self-hating Jew stuff - its a cultural phenomenon that happened after WWII - I know it because my family has its very own self-hating Jew!! The theme is fascinating but too familiar for me in some ways. Nevertheless, he is just brilliant and grotesque at the same time! My favorites are the Human Stain and Goodbye Columbus. I think they are the most sentimental of his works. Well, maybe not sentimental but he comes close to actually liking some of his own creations!

 

[SFG75]

Allow me to say that the negative reviews are in no way, based on fact. I have a penchant for liking some negative and dreary works, as well as those that assault one's sensibilities. Kafka, Nabokov to some degree, Dostoyevsky, not to mention writers who are Russian or who have a strong Russian background along with VN. This was one book that was somewhat unsettling for me to read. Perhaps an underlying fear of mortality? Call it what you will, but it took me a bit longer to get through this one. Yes, the holidays had a big role in it as I've only recently resumed a less than hectic schedule. I believe that being creeped out by the book had a large part in why it took me so long to finish this one.

The personal failures of this man are not light matters that can be swept away with the reviewers pen. His irresponsible actions come back to haunt him in the end and it's all a part of how one assesses their life when they arein the twilight of their years. The book also reads more than just a medical diary, though the hospital stays are a prominent part of the book. How else are physical aging and decline to be shown?? If Roth had included other parts of the character's life and went over 1,000 page with the fluff, he would be accused of padding it.....with fluff. Damned if you do, damned if you don't according to the critics.