Everyman [Mass Market Paperback]

Philip Roth (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 182 pages
• Publisher: Random House Inc. (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307280365
• ISBN-13: 978-0307280367
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 0.5 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (160 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,444,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient." In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians Award for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003--2004." In 2007 Roth received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

135 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Existential angst and Everyman., April 28, 2006

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Everyman (Hardcover)

This book turned out to be more than a good read for me; it was an experience.

I need to start this review by saying I really like Philip Roth. Books like American Pastoral and The Human Stain and many of his older books were terrific reads for me.

This is a very short book. Normally Philip Roth can go on and on, (you know how often you can turn the page in a Roth book and see that the next two pages are all one paragraph....) but he rarely does that here. This book is very spare. Some reviews say too much so, but I disagree.

Summary, no spoilers:

The story first starts off with the protagonists funeral, and then goes back in time with him narrating the story of his life.

We hear about his fear of death, and his intense frustration with his increasing health problems. In essence, the human condition. And the narrator is a man with no religious convictions to soften the blow.

I have read some criticism that the character is not fully developed, but I disagree. Our narrator, (unnamed), tells us bits and pieces of his life, from different times in his life. It is a thumbnail sketch of an existence. There is just enough detail so that it feels real, and we can identify with his childhood exuberance, and his middle-age wanderlust.

Roth manages to touch on so many universal truths, and for me, there were many times I found myself nodding my head in understanding.

Yes, the book is short, very short, but perhaps because of this, and because of Roth's skill as a writer, when I turned the last page I felt like I had read something much longer. It did not need one more word.

Highly recommended. It's the work of a great artist again sharing his observations about life in a way that makes us empathize.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Caveat emptor., April 13, 2007

By 

Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everyman (Paperback)

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.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying, April 29, 2006

By 

Moose - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyman (Hardcover)

If you're like me, and you consider Philip Roth to be one of the historic literary greats, it doesn't matter what I or anybody else has to say about Everyman: you're going to read this book. But I think you'll find Everyman to be less than satisfying. There's very little "astonishing" in this book, as there is in every page, if not in every paragraph, of Roth's best novels. On the subject of old age and imminent oblivion, Roth himself did a better and more artistic job in Sabbath's Theater and the novels narrated by Zuckerman (remember the old man in I Married a Communist?). Death is horrifying, but awesomely horrifying. Everyman is devoid of awe.

It's not apparent to me what Roth wants the reader to think of the main character. The title and numerous passages in the book indicate the guy exemplifies average, normal mankind, but he doesn't. As you would expect from a Roth protagonist, the Everyman character is abnormally incompetent at family life, and abnormally obsessed with silly sex. I'm not giving anything away here, but the guy craters a good marriage in favor of anal sex with an airhead. What are we supposed to make of that particular in a book that takes on existential themes? The good wife's furious denunciation of her husband are the best pages in the book: fluent, copious, intelligent rage, like something out of Greek tragedy.

As I said, you know Roth is a national treasure, you're going to read this book, and you should. But you won't re-read it, as you do your favorite Roth novels.