Everyman by Philip Roth
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Book Reviews of Everyman
Book Review: Contingency, Irony, and Authenticity
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Very well written and very interesting
Summary: 5 Stars
On December 12, 1969, the great writer Saul Bellow wrote to Philip Roth and described him as "one of our best and most interesting writers.... I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel." Whether Philip Roth is writing about sexual experiences, as he does in virtually every book, or about illness and dying, as he does in this volume, readers find the book fascinating even if they abhor descriptions of sex, illness, and dying, because Roth portrays the events so unusually well. His language stands out like a beautiful young girl in a red dress strolling on a dreary dark street.
The title Everyman is drawn from the classic fifth century allegorical play, which discusses the ultimate end, death, of everyman. This short drama is a modern version of the ancient play. We are introduced to our everyman at his funeral, a pathetic affair because it lacked any real love of the deceased, except by his brother, who he only saw when he came to help him, and his daughter, whom he barely knew. Roth describes him as a man who wandered through life with no apparent purpose, like most other people, with failure after failure and no understanding how to stop them. He had three wives and countless mistresses, but each marriage was unsuccessful and the mistresses did not last long. His two sons of his first marriage hated him.
The story, in short, like the ancient play, is an allegory of the pathetic way that most men go through life not really enjoying it, yet fearful that it will end.
Book Review: EVERY Man?
Summary: 5 Stars
Every novel by Philip Roth of course deserves a very high rating for the compelling vigour of his writing, and this book is no exception. I have little to add to the excellent reviews that other people have already posted on this website about a dying man whose reflections about the past concern themselves with the times he has been in hospital, with his body which has increasingly let him down, with the ailments of his parents and of his contemporaries, and with the mess he has made of most of his personal relationships. All this is most graphically described, and some if it is not for the squeamish.
My only criticism - but it is a strong one - is of the title. Whilst of course every man will be confronted at the end with his mortality and while most will give that subject some, or indeed much thought, not every man reaches death after many years of ill health (after all, the character's elder brother Howie had enjoyed robust good health all his life); not every man mourns in his old age the passing of his zest for life, loses his curiosity and is bored by the company of his contemporaries; not every man messes up his life, is quite such a slave to his sexual drives, goes through three divorces and has sons who hate him (again Howie has a strong marriage and loving sons), and has to battle with the guilt for it. So this powerfully sad and moving book is excellent about a typically Rothian character, and there are many of them about; but you cannot extrapolate from them to Everyman.
Book Review: Caveat emptor.
Summary: 5 Stars
First the caveats. This is not a play; it is a novel. This is not an allegory; it is a realistic narrative. This is not about everyman; it is about a specific individual. Everyman is not a secularized Jewish New Yorker with a brother worth $50,000,000, three wives, and the opportunity to have hot sex with a Danish model. The life of the unnamed protagonist does, however, link with common aspects of human experience in striking and sometimes profound ways.
There are three major themes. The first is the exploration of the Scottish proverb that (put more decorously) an aroused male member has no conscience. When it follows its impulses the results are often ultimately unpleasant. The second, more important theme, is the illustration of Yeats's notion that as we age we increasingly feel as if our hearts--sick with desire--are "fastened to a dying animal." The book is a meditation on death, but more particularly a meditation upon the ways in which our bodies (some of our bodies; the protagonist's brother is healthy as well as rich) fail and betray us. The third is the importance of family and friends, but particularly family--a nexus of relationships that we see as important when we stop being selfish and begin to be wise.
The story is beautifully written, beautifully plotted, beautifully realized. It is grim but neither hollow nor depressing, erotic but not lurid. Most of all it is rich in details and descriptions. Highly recommended.
Book Review: Awfully good book!
Summary: 5 Stars
What a book!
When I finished reading it, I needed to take a lot of deep breaths to be able to release the sadness created by it!
The book is about the human condition. The main character is a successful executive at an ad agency with a very active sexual life who fails in all of his 3 marriages. He fails in being a good parent of his 2 sons but succeeds with his only daughter.
Probably, like most of us...
His main concern though is his health and we see how it goes away little by little, his life becoming a struggle to survive.
Probably, like most of us...
What fascinated me most about this book was the contrast between sex standing for the most intense feelings of an exuberant human being and the fear of death.
In our culture, talking about death is totally discouraged. Because of that, we are totally not prepared for what is a very natural act in our life. So books like these remind us that we can't dodge the subject forever and sooner or later we will have stents in our arteries, we will barely be able to move and-if we are lucky-will go to lots of funerals of our friends. Sad but true.