Everyman by Philip Roth
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Book Reviews of Everyman
Book Review: Hardships in the Middle of Life's Events
Summary: 4 Stars
In Everyman, Philip Roth presents us with a man who is in the august phase of his life. He has had his share of triumphs and his share of failures, which has defined who he is as he looks at his surroundings and his future.
Our hero's life in the story seems to have problems when those around him and, more particularly, his life are in the middle. His sons are in the middle of childhood when he leaves and robs them of one of the things he has cherished most in his life, a cohesive family with a strong, dependable father figure. His second marriage is in the middle of developing into long term commitment when he ruins it by taking up with a model to fulfill his mid-life needs. In the middle of retirement, he drops his life-long goal of painting to move into the middle of nothingness. In the middle of a trip to visit his beloved daughter and his ailing second wife, he absconds on his intentions to spend a day visiting his parents' grave sites. The list can go on and on, even to the point of interrupting a girl in the middle of her jog to try and get her into bed. The final scene occurs during the middle of an event also.
I know we are always in the middle of something but our hero seems to be great at finding an exit when he senses it and decomposing those around him in the middle of wherever he sits.
Like so many others, I find Philip Roth a masterful writer. His simple way of making a point is remarkable. The shame of helplessness and dependency as our hero watches those around grow old and the randomness and incomprehensibility of why some of us maintain health while others don't threads through the story. Even the part I did not enjoy, pages running through the ailments and health issues of our hero, I realized was in truth the primary discussions I hear when I sit with a group of elderly people.
I found this a very nice book to read, especially as someone not at the stage in life as Roth's Everyman but as the next generation to move into that phase.
Book Review: Parable of Morality and Humanity
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first Philip Roth novel, and friends of mine have said that in past novels he is a master of stories, that he could seemingly sit down in an afternoon and deliver a novel of worth. His writing and plotting styles are interesting. Never once was I bored during this read, not was I excited. It seemed that, more than telling a story and involving the reader in the actions and characters as they unfolded, he was relaying a situation.
The reader meets the watch merchant of Everyman's Jewelers, a Jewish man whom Roth has done his darndest to have stand in the place of, you guessed it, every one of us. The novel begins with his funeral, which means I'm not giving anything away when I say that this man who lives his whole life afraid of sickness and predicting he will die at 70, in fact dies exactly when he said he would in the way he feared most, his sleep. His life of affairs and marital heartbreak, restlessness at work, trauma within the family, and a fear that bodily illness would take him like it did his other family members makes his situation at once unique and universal.
This brief parable of morality and humanity will annoy many readers, especially those looking for a traditional story, though the funny thing is that this novel of Roth's wants to belong to the Austenian era of style. Readers have said that in one way or another Roth's stories always center around Jewishness, Americanness, sex, aging, and family, and if this is the case, then EVERYMAN follows suit completely. There is some quality about this novel that from far away looks deceptively uneventful and shallow. However, a closer look uncovers a jeremiad of warning to us all -- "Your life is like everyone else's. Now what?"
-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
Book Review: A feel-bad novel
Summary: 4 Stars
It's a rather depressing thought, but in real life, there are no happy endings. We are all trained from our fiction reading and watching to believe that all can end well: the villain is defeated, the girl (or guy) is won over, the sports championship is taken. In real life, however, these events may occur, but they are really only happy moments in the middle of the life story. The only real conclusion is death, a point driven home in Philip Roth's Everyman.
It is no spoiler to say that the main character (left unnamed) will die during the story; his death is established on the first page. The brief novel begins with his funeral and then looks back at his life. The protagonist is more-or-less an everyman: although in its own way unique, it is also not all that uncommon: he was an advertising man who wound up being married three times and having three children. His life had neither great accomplishments or fantastic failures: his greatest victory is probably his loving daughter and his worst failing is his own nature that allowed him to cheat on his wives.
Roth is considered one of the great American writers, and certainly the writing in this story is good enough to merit four stars. On the other hand, thematically, I found the novel to be rather dark: it is nearly a two-hundred page reminder that even if we avoid accidents, the best we can hope for is a life that gets worse and worse as we get older: more and more illness and greater loneliness as our friends and family also go away. Everyman shows that good writing is not always enough; if a book is too grim, it may not be worth the effort. After all, if we only have a limited time, why should we spend it feeling unnecessarily depressed?
Book Review: Unremittingly Bleak,
Summary: 4 Stars
Philip Roth is a prolific and acclaimed author but I had never read anything by him before and regrettably I selected Everyman to be my first. The quote from the Sunday Times on the front cover "This book is alive with literary brilliance" masks its content as this book is very much about death. The book starts with the narrator looking down on his grave as his family and friends are gathered around his coffin. A bleak start but Roth then takes the reader back through the narrator's life which is an even more depressing journey. The events Roth chooses to relate are a catalogue of hospital operations starting from brief mention of having his tonsils out at 4, then a longer account of a hernia operation aged 9 and then skipping forward to countless heart operations from 50 to his death aged 71. Reading this mercifully short novel to me was like looking at a canvas where the artist had only used black paint. Very rarely was there any remission from the bleakness for even when the narrator was reminiscing with an ex work colleague about a successful ad campaign the colleague was dying of cancer. Authors usually love these sort of literary works and I often wonder is it because their own lives are bleak? Last year on The Book Show I was surprised how many authors chose McCormack's The Road as their favourite book of the 'Noughties', great writing yes and definitely worth reading but not a book I would read twice. Roth has talent in abundance judging by this work but it is not a book I would leave lying around in a hospital!Book Review: A Big Risk for Everyman, But Not His Fate
Summary: 4 Stars
Roth's novel focuses on death, as told through the story of a single life. A successful advertising executive, son of a New Jersey immigrant jeweler, finds that life is painful, meaningless, shaped by random events, ultimately leading to oblivion. At surface level the book is quite depressing, although the discussion with the gravedigger at the end has a special flavor.
Roth retells the familiar story of pursuit of earthly career, hedonistic and carnal pleasures as being ultimately unfulfilling. The story is told from the point of view of mourners at a funeral plus musings by the main character about events in his life. He lacks self-awareness, purpose and responsibility, justifying his poor decisions as being common and approved by his male peers. In addition to the basic existential challenge, Roth seems to be saying that character matters and that some of our decisions have lifelong impacts, even aside from their possible moral content.
Although the author paints a very negative picture, in a backhanded way he shows that relationships and family really do matter and that honest engagement with nature or your craft (gravedigging) is a worthwhile use of time. Ironically, many readers will walk away from this dark book with a greater belief in tradition, culture, community and religion as the heart of a well-lived life - items absent from this story.