Patrimony, a true story, touches the emotions as strongly as anything Philip Roth has ever written. Roth watches as his eighty-six-year-old father—famous for his vigor, charm, and his repertoire of Newark recollections—battles with the brain tumor that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety, and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father's long, stubborn engagement with life.
Patrimony
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Book Description
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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."
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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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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
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format: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
6 of 6 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
Format: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.
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.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With such clarity, love, and understanding of both sides, Philip Roth writes an autobiographical account of his relationship with his father, who is 86 years old at the time the book begins. Philip Roth is to be commended for showing not only the duality in taking on such a role, but also how roles reverse...This is a must read for those who are in the role reversal, and coming to terms with a parent!
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is something sad, something utterly painful about book tributes to fathers. When reading Wiesel's "Night", Franzen's "My Father's Brain" or Roth's "Patrimony", one comes to grips with a difficult reality, of the unnatural heart ache and grief that accompany aging and what they do in the mean time to the father-son relationship.
"Patrimony" offers a glimpse of this aging, of the deterioration of the body. As one reads, one physically partakes into the burden of loosing a loved one, of facing the difficult decisions of what comes next, of recalling memories, of learning to struggle, of the heartbreaking doctor appointments...Philip Roth never holds back. He doesn't protect from the sorrow, or grief. He tells his life's story with honesty and shameless openness that requires not only brilliant clarity, but also the strength of love, love of the kind passed down from a good father to a worthy son.
This is a difficult book with an extraordinary writing and should be considered by anyone who has, is or will ever care for an aging parent.
- by Simon Cleveland
"Patrimony" offers a glimpse of this aging, of the deterioration of the body. As one reads, one physically partakes into the burden of loosing a loved one, of facing the difficult decisions of what comes next, of recalling memories, of learning to struggle, of the heartbreaking doctor appointments...Philip Roth never holds back. He doesn't protect from the sorrow, or grief. He tells his life's story with honesty and shameless openness that requires not only brilliant clarity, but also the strength of love, love of the kind passed down from a good father to a worthy son.
This is a difficult book with an extraordinary writing and should be considered by anyone who has, is or will ever care for an aging parent.
- by Simon Cleveland
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Azima
Format:Paperback
Roth's very moving account of his father's passing could serve as a model for the treatment of our aging parents. Despite the subject, the story lacks even a hint of the maudlin. I loved his rant about trying to buy a good cantaloupe. What a writer!!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By HORAK
Format:Paperback
This novel was called "A True Story" by Mr Roth. Indeed, many parts in "Patrimony" have a personal tone. The author talks about his mother's sudden death in a restaurant in 1981 and about the sad and painful last year of his father's life. Herman Roth was diagnosed with a massive brain tumou so that little by little he became more and more disabled and needed constant attention. It is impressive to see the author's devotion and attention to his ageing father, all the more since his condition required an almost constant care. One also feels the father's shame and embarrassment as his physical condition worsens.
Mr Roth manages to create an irrepressible and irresistible hero, his father.
Mr Roth manages to create an irrepressible and irresistible hero, his father.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Andre Gerard
Format:Paperback
While Patrimony's title hints at a postmodern game, there is nothing playful about the clear-eyed, plain-spoken integrity with which Roth observes his father's dying and remembers his father's life. The father lives on in the "modest no-frills style," and the book is remarkable as a strong tribute paid by a strong son to a strong father. Despite simplicity of style, Patrimony is an epic, with Roth as a Hercules labouring on his father's behalf. In fierce, moving, often comic vignettes he takes on a ghoulish, hate-filled neighbour, a psychotic cab driver, denial of anti-Semitism by Metropolitan Life, a pornographic Holocaust survivor, a quintuple bypass, his father's cack [euphemism used to circumvent squeamish Amazon filter], and, repeatedly, his father himself. In a previous book, The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography, Roth had said of his father that "narrative is the form his knowledge takes." In Patrimony: A True Story, he links his father's narrative gifts to memory: "You mustn't forget anything--that's the inscription on his coat of arms. To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory--to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing." Memory and narrative, along with the cack of "nothing less or more than lived reality" are Roth's patrimony... a patrimony which he transmutes into this profound and heartfelt testament. Book, son and father merge into "the vernacular, unpoetic and expressive and pointblank, with all the vernacular's glaring limitations, and all its durable force."
Andre Gerard,
Editor of Fathers: A Literary Anthology
Andre Gerard,
Editor of Fathers: A Literary Anthology
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Compelling and Very Human Read
Philip Roth is one of our most prolific authors. I read this memoir only a few weeks before Mr. Roth announced his retirement. Read more
Published 24 days ago by Mark Rubinstein
5.0 out of 5 stars
My first Roth, not my last
I thoroughly enjoyed this loving and heartfelt look at a son loosing his father. As a retired elder care provider it rang true in every respect.
Published 1 month ago by Fredrica M Sloan
5.0 out of 5 stars
When parents make that final trip
An excellent, thorough and emotional tale about old age, sickness, and a father and a son facing the end of all the above. Beautifully written.
Published 1 month ago by Maria Luz Barbosa
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dull reading
I expected more on the details of the illness and its impact on his father and the family. However, I guess not that much to talk about so added so much boring filler about his... Read more
Published 1 month ago by ShockwaveWriter
5.0 out of 5 stars
a brilliant and unusual novel
This is a very moving account of a man's relationship with his father, full of memorable scenes and powerful writing...
Published 4 months ago by harriet s
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting
I am actually rating this book 3,5 stars. Mr. Roth is a master of the english language.
Apart from the accounting of a father's decline until death, Mr. Read more
Apart from the accounting of a father's decline until death, Mr. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ioanna Damia
4.0 out of 5 stars
father and son
A father discover he has a tumor at the stem of his brain : His son is sharing his anxiety et helps him to take a medical decision
Published 6 months ago by france du jeu
5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving memoir of a parent's final days.
I gave this book five stars, not because it ranks among the greatest of literary creations but because it is just about perfect in what it attempts to do. Read more
Published on December 18, 2009 by William J. Fickling
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delivered in great (newe condition) on time...
As promised, the paperbook was in new and perfect condition and arrived in a very timely manner. This is a side of Roth not revealed in his fiction. Read more
Published on December 12, 2008 by grandma rrufie
4.0 out of 5 stars
Patrimony but not Matrimony!
I like Philip Roth as an author. This book is really a tribute to his father not so much his mother. Read more
Published on May 30, 2007 by Sylviastel
