Everyman

Author - Philip Roth ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Vintage was reviewed on 4-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. This book opens, aptly, with the funeral of a nameless protagonist. It then follows on with a series of flashbacks on his life, raising probing questions concerning his (or really, everyman´s) existence - on the tedium of day-to-day living, the pain of regret and loss, the debilitating nature of illness, and above all, "the inevitable onslaught that is the end of life". Most of the book focusses on his later years, when these existential struggles converge with painful and livid intensity. Such is the power of the narrative, despite its economy of words, that it manages to convey the full extent of the protagonist´s conflicted self with an almost terrifying rawness. In a particularly memorable scene in the closing pages, our protagonist walks through the graveyard he would eventually be buried in, and has the gravedigger explain to him the finer points of grave-digging in methodical detail. Resigned to death, he draws comfort from it - that final leveller which alone is predictable in an otherwise uncertain and brutish existence.¤

2) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. A realistic - at times candid - look at mortality from a thrice married man, who, at the tail-end of his increasingly frail life, assesses his failures.

Roth presents his protagonist in a sympathetic light, which at times arouses the reader´s annoyance with his self-pity and attempts to explain away his philandering ways...

However, the writing is tight and sustains the reader´s interest throughout.
¤

3) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. Contrary to reviews I read in a recent NYT book review this is not one of the greaat works of American literature. It is fairly banal.¤

4) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. Roth recently argued in an interview that writers tend to loose their skills as they age; Everyman is a fantastic example of the exception that proves the rule. Indeed, this text approaches Roth´s most courageous and ambitious of efforts. Here we have Roth dealing with death in the most authentic and fearless fashion possible. How many authors have the courage to admit to their greatest fear--in this case, that an artist´s work will not stand up to the test of time and that he will therefore be relegated to the status of an average-everyday Everyman. Perhaps the greatest human desire is immortality. For the artist, immortality is ideally achieved by becoming a permanent member of the cannon. In Roth´s case, there can be no doubt.

But Roth shows why he will go down as one of the very best American writers EVER in dealing with what may be the one thing more scary than the extinction of our physical existence: its continuation as something unrecognizable as one´s own. In this sense, Everyman represents the apotheosis of what Kierkegaard meant by the term "despair", namely, the fact that death will not come, not on your terms, not in time to spare us. I would argue that the greatest accomplishment of the text is to so vividly convey the psychological ravishes inflicted by having to live in a body, which is no longer recognizably one´s own. The greatest cruelty of the death that approaches ever slower as one ages are the very signs of its approach: physical deterioration possesses the face that death lacks. Roth makes it painfully clear in Everyman just how much more foreign that face becomes with each day that the Reeper fails to draw your lot. A beautiful, heart wrenching work.¤

5) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. It´s a testament to Roth´s mastery of storytelling that he can cover an entire lifetime in 182 sparse pages and leave readers feeling like they´ve just finished a much longer novel. The book begins with the man´s funeral, then flashes back to his youth as the obedient son of a jeweler and watch-seller. After a stint in the Navy, the man finds success as an art director and then creative director at a large New York ad agency. He philanders his way through three marriages, fathering two estranged sons and one adoring daughter. But most of the novel is spent on the latter part of his life, as his failing health causes him to worry much and envy his healthier brother. The unnamed protagonist ponders the human condition, the deterioration of the body and death. As he faces his own mortality, he does so without religion, without purpose and without companionship. I don´t know how much of this novel is autobiographical, but the protagonist´s thoughts and fears and remorse seems very real. And although I´m not at the same stage of my life, I found much of this imperfect character´s life likable and relatable. I feel like I haven´t articulated very well why I like this book so much, but beyond what I´ve said, I´m not sure I know.¤

6) Paperback Book Everyman by Vintage. Philip Roth´s new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from "one family´s harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man´s lifelong skirmish with mortality.

The fate of Roth´s everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.

The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 2-Dec-2008, 03072777129780307277718, 120-910-950-270-490-780-971-781-LQB-8

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