Patrimony : A True Story [Paperback]

Philip Roth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1992

The best-selling author offers his poignant, sometimes witty, observations of the physical decline and death of his own father in a touching memoir of the love between father and son. By the author of Portnoy's Complaint. Reprint. NYT.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With the honesty of a skilled biographer and the sensitivity of a caring son, Roth chronicles the life of his father, Herman, in this gripping work which won a 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award. Roth holds little back in describing his father as a man of rare intensity and fierce independence who, for better or worse, stood by his principles and held others to his own rigorous standards. Writes Roth, "His obsessive stubbornness--his stubborn obsessiveness--had very nearly driven my mother to a breakdown in her final years." Frank throughout, Roth calls his father "a pitiless realist, but I wasn't his offspring for nothing, and I could be pretty realistic, too." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Alter ego Nathan Zuckerman doesn't appear in these pages, andneither is there any sleight of hand blurring the line betweenliterature and life. Instead, here is Roth (NBCC Award-winning TheCounterlife ) at his most humane as he pens a kaddish to his recentlydeceased father, Herman. A vigorous 86-year-old, Roth pere wakes upone morning and half his face is paralyzed; soon he is deaf in one earand the verdict is a benign brain tumor. Surgery is ruled out for theoctogenarian, and the author is a helpless, horrified witness to hisfather's humiliating demise, "utterly isolated within a body that hadbecome a terrifying escape-proof enclosure, the holding pen in aslaughterhouse." In a fast-paced, cogent memoir, Roth, whose filialdevotion and awe are tempered with clear-eyed observational powers,ranges far afield and discusses the anti-Semitism of the insurancefirm that employed Herman Roth for 40 years; Herman's perfectionismand his latter-day disregard for his wife whom he neverthelesselevated to quasi-sainthood after death; Herman's abandonment of hisphylacteries in a locker at the local YMHA; the author's quintuplebypass surgery weeks before his father's death; and Herman'sincontinence and the ample size of his genitals. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone Books (March 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671758624
• ISBN-13: 978-0671758622
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,166,705 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

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A devoted son tells of the last year of his father's life, October 11, 2004

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Patrimony : A True Story (Paperback)

In this work we see a kinder and more humane Philip Roth than we see in his fictions. His devotion to his father through the father's illness and loss of his own powers is moving. In the course of it Roth himself suffers a near fatal heart attack. With Roth there is always a special intensity and often beauty in the writing. This is one of his best books. It portrays a painful and difficult human reality that most come to know at one time or another, with dedication and real art.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an exceptionally fine book., July 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Patrimony : A True Story (Paperback)

Patrimony is a non-fiction account of the last years of Philip Roth's father, Herman, covering as well the family history which was so important to Herman. Not only is Roth a fine stylist, but the sensitivity of this account transcends even the exceptional style. By turns tragic, sardonic, humerous and moving, this book is a window into the values of late twentieth-century America, both good and bad

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching story that will help you better understand the aging process, March 30, 2006

By 

Blaine Greenfield "eclectic reader" (Belle Meade, NJ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Patrimony : A True Story (Hardcover)

Heard the CD version of PATRIMONY: A TRUE STORY

by Philip Roth, the touching story of how his 86-year-old

father battles with the brain tumor that eventually kills him.

If you've ever been in the situation where you have had a parent

or grandparent get old right before your eyes, then this

is a book for you . . . it will help you deal with the situation

better and, also, to understand the aging process.

I really felt I got to know Herman Roth and enjoyed in

sharing his reminisces about growing up in Newark, as

well as about life.

In addition, I could relate to the difficulties that Philip Roth

was going through in attempting to care for his

father--especially when he, too, had to deal with a serious

illness during the process.

The narration by George Guidall was excellent . . . his interpretation

of the elder Roth's voice was truly amazing.