Everyman
Publishing House: Houghton Mifflin
WorkNameSort: Everyman
‘Old age is not a battle,â?� Philip Roth writes. ‘Old age is a massacre.â?� Everyman is classic Roth: full of passion, anger, vivid details of lives well-lived and those profoundly screwed up by the book’s unnamed protagonist, a 70-something career adman married three times and now facing his decline with a daughter who loves him and two sons (and as many wives) who curse his name. For Roth, dying isn’t something that happens in one’s later years, though that’s when it becomes a lot more real. The narrator spends his days alone, grieving the loss of his sexual prowess (but not his libidinal yearning) and the fact that his sons have been poisoned by rage, resenting his multimillionaire brother who has known only perfect health. Some of the details Roth paints are far creepier than the prospect of our protagonist’s body actually going underground: One grave-digging scene in a largely forgotten cemetery beneath the New Jersey Turnpike is indescribably sad in all its vivid reportorial detail. The protagonist is not a man who inspires excessive sympathy. His life was not less ordinary; neither is his death. That Roth makes both so excruciatingly poignant speaks to his brilliance.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.