a coworker saw me looking mightily bored at a recent corporate event, and out of pity she handed me one of the books in her bag: philip roth's "everyman". i'm not sure if there was some embedded commentary in the selection of that novel -- i would like to think that i am no willy lomax-esque cog to die an emblem of unaccomplished cultural loathing -- but at 190 or so pages, it was easily read and digested in the span of four hours.
first, i like philip roth. like saul bellow, he has made jewry into a literary gimmick, and as a result, i know more about the various flavors of jewish cultural history in america between, oh, 1860 and present. this has presented a bit of a bias in my mind, since i now assume willco harbors a secret lust for his mother, lives with the spectre of the holocaust, wants to fuck models in the ass, and veers derangedly between intellectual atheism and a complete embrace of talmudic ritual. are all jews like this? i don't know! thanks, modern american literary greats!
the title "everyman" presents my only major beef with the book: the wholly unnamed protagonist is hardly an ordinary man, such as one might consider a thing. he is an upper middle class playboy of sort who has led a thoroughly unexamined life until various health crises force him to consider his mortality, although he remains dubiously unempathetic until the end. one of the neat tricks this book does with its eulogic, out-of-order narrative (it starts with his funeral and ends with him dying) is that re-reading the funeral prologue is a completely new experience after you get to know the main character, since roth has done a wonderful job, well, eulogizing the man. his prose is, as ever, simple yet evocative in language, although he veers into faulkner territory when he approaches the more liminal scenes within the novel. also, roth can't write dialogue. fuck you who disagree: everyone is clever and incisive in his books, and the women coin elaborate metaphors on character failings at the drop of the hat. oh, roth says later, these people are clever, but i think it subtracts from the essential humanity on display when they all talk like greek tragediennes with tourettes. still, there are many poignant scenes in the book, and he nails the failings of modern men to the door with sympathetic taps.
the metaphor of the watch is clumsy, and seems rather inelegant and forced -- yes, yes, the main character was obsessed with watches and the notion that time was mechanical, not biological; a thing to be observed, not experienced, as through a jeweler's loupe rather than one's own (failing) senses. the better message is the thread that deals with the currently american inability to rationalize mortality, and the stupid things we do to avoid the big question of death. i recently read a new republic (lol me) article on studies that show how americans' political opinions skew seriously conservative when they are thinking about their mortality (see: 9/11 in particular), and this book illustrates the same issue prosaically: when confronted with death, we retreat from life. the book is a larger eulogy for humanity; a selfish appreciation for the little deaths we die when we give into the fear of our mortal failings.
overall, it's a good read, and blessedly short. i give it 3 out of 5 jewish sons imagining their mom while fucking a shikse whore in the ass.
