Everyman
by Philip Roth
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philip RothEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-10
ISBN: 0307277712
Number of pages: 182
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Everyman
Book Review: Everyman
Summary: 5 Stars
A novel on death and growing old, Philip Roth's novel "Everyman" (2006) can be understood as celebrating life. The novel takes its title from a 15th century play with the theme that everyone who lives must die. "Everyman" is also the name of the small jewelry store that the father of the nameless protagonist of the book operates in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for over 40 years beginning in 1933. The store was so named to give it an appeal to all prospective customers in the town regardess of their nationality, religion, or race. Roth's protagonist faces the inevitable human condition, but Roth renders his character with great particularity.
The story begins at the end at the funeral of the main character at the age of 71. The funeral takes place in an old, poorly maintained Jewish cemetery. Only a small number of mourners are in attendance: the deceased's middle-aged daughter Nancy, the second of his three ex-wives, Phoebe, his two estranged sons from his first marriage, his older, highly successful brother Howie, a former nurse and mistress, Maureen, and friends. The funeral becomes the basis for reflection on the life of the deceased, on mortality, and on human fallibility.
The deceased and his brother Howie were the two sons of a small jewelry store owner and his wife. Both sons learned the value of hard work and of what the father termed "reliability." Outgoing and gifted and with a healthy physical constitution, Howie became an investment banker with a stable marriage. His younger brother was much more sickly and introverted. With dreams of becoming an artist, he became the obedient son and pursued a successful career in advertising.
The "Everyman" hero had three wives and as many divorces. He prided himself on his reliability and on his mundaneness, but he could not resist his sexual appetites. Of the three ex-wives, the second, Phoebe, was a woman he should have treasured. When the narrator loses her due to philandering, he condemns himself to a lonely and bitter old age. The protagonist suffers from severe heart conditions which require repeated and painful surgeries that Roth describes in detail.
After the opening scene, the book moves back and forth in time from the protagonist's childhood through his marriages, career, and retirement, and the deaths of his mother and father. The story is not told chronologically but rather in a way which captures the protagonist's inner life. Roth provides a great deal of the protagonist's thoughts and reflections. Although the book is short, many of its scenes are extended dialogues between the protagonist and another person which heighten the intensity of the book by the development of detail. For example, Roth portrays the long scene after the death of the progatonist's mother when his marriage to Phoebe comes to an end as a result of his cheating and lying. Near the end of the book, there is a long discussion about gravedigging and death in the old Jewish cemetry between the protagonist and the elderly gravedigger who had buried the hero's parents and will shortly bury him. There is a Hamlet-like quality to the scene.
In reading this book, I thought of Buddhism and its Four Noble Truths beginning with the truth of suffering and working to the path of ending suffering. But that is not Roth's way in the book. Showing the end of a flawed life, Roth's novel is dark but suggests that life is to be lived and treasured. The protagonist's understanding of life is given in a small motto that he repeats frequently to his faithful daughter, Nancy: "There's no remaking reality. Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes."
Late in the book, meditating at his parents' graves, the protagonist finds some other advice. Telling his deceased mother that he is 71, he imagines her voice: "Good. You lived." And he imagines his father saying: "Look back and atone for what you can atone for, and make the best of what you have left." (p. 171) Both these internalized comments qualify substantially the protagonist's earlier stated outlook towards life.
"Everyman" is a serious, thoughtful work of Roth's own old age. As an individual in his 60s just beginning retirement, I could take this book personally. The book encouraged me to think about the anguish and inevitablilty of death in the process of cherishing life.
Robin Friedman
Summary of Everyman
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.
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