Everyman

Everyman

book data

1722 ratings, 3.48 average rating, 311 reviews (more data...)

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published

April 2006 (first published 2005) by Houghton Mifflin

binding

Hardcover, 192 pages

literary awards

PEN/Faulkner Award (2007)

isbn

061873516X (isbn13: 9780618735167)

description

"I'm thirty-four! Worry about oblivion, he told himself, when you're seventy-five." Philip Roth's new novel is a fiercely intimate yet univ...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2268)

All ratings | 5 stars (243) | 4 stars (627) | 3 stars (584) | 2 stars (227) | 1 star (45) | avg 3.48

all | this edition

Matt

Matt rated it:

09/20/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: Optimists, pre-teens, chick-lit fans

I was a little nervous about reading Everyman. I didn't know if I wanted to subject myself to a book I knew was going to be such a downer, nor was I in a hurry to be reminded that I'm going to die one day and that growing old will be a terrifying experience.

But now that I've finished it, I don't think it'll keep me up at night like I had thought it would. This book is less about the horror of facing your inevitable death, and more about the hell you can create for yourself in old age...more

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Joe

Joe rated it:

06/22/07

bookshelves: american, fiction

Read in October, 2006

recommends it for: Everyman and Everywoman

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

One of Roth's funnier books. Kidding. I cannot tell you how depressed I was after finishing this short novel. The title was the kicker too; hauntingly reminds the reader of every human mortality and the tediousness of studying morality plays in high school.

This is a book about the betrayel of the body and is a morbid reminder that while you are the king of your consciousness, your body is something that can be wholly other, a ticking time bomb that one day that will end your short e...more

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John

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

03/19/08

Read in June, 2006

"What I learned from this book": Philip Roth hates life but he also really really doesn't want to die. He's literati's crowned-king miserablist, saying "old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre."

Especially for those who give up fighting. I've tried a few Roth books on the basis of his reputation, but remain mystified -- I think the awards people keep handing him trophies simply from muscle memory. The writing is drab, the characters one-note, and the dialogu...more

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1 comment

Irwan

Irwan rated it:

(review of isbn 0099501465)

01/14/08

bookshelves: finished

Read in January, 2008

A beautiful, sometimes gentle, some other times brutal, account for the late phase of a man's life. It is about attitude towards old-age and death. The hero starts with a fearful denial, clinging to his past glories and failures, and ends with a peaceful acceptance towards the inevitable. Some sentences caught my attention like: "Old age is not a battle; old age is a massacre". The most unforgettable moment was the dialogue with the black gravedigger who explained in details the techni...more

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2 comments

M-ray

M-ray rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

12/01/08

You can finish this book in under two hours.
You will anxiously burn through the pages waiting for something meaningful to happen.
It never will.

That's kind of, I think, the point.

Even so it will break your heart and you will not be able to sleep all night and you will call your grandma and tell her you love her and you will spend the next week slow-breathing yourself out of an ever-on-the-verge-of-overwhelming-your-sensibilities panic attack.

At this poi...more

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Daniel

Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0224078690)

11/07/08

Read in November, 2008

For its first half, "Everyman" reads a bit like a condensed version of an earlier Philip Roth novel, something that could be titled "The Anatomy Lesson: Only the Medical Parts." "Everyman"'s initial focus on its protagonist's health problems, almost to the exclusion of everything else, recalls the earlier book's concentration on Nathan Zuckerman's illness.

"The Anatomy Lesson," however, had a much wider scope than "Everyman" initially ...more

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Danielle

Danielle rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

07/24/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in November, 2007

I kinda wish I hadn't finished this book, but first, the plusses: 1) As a young adult, it really gave me a new perspective on the length of a life and what really matters now and in the future. 2) The writing was refreshing: unpretentious, yet engaging.
On the downside, I just didn't want to hear that much about his various sexual relationships and regrets. Also, let's face it, getting old and dying is depressing, so it's not all that much fun to read about. I wouldn't recommend this book t...more

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Russell

Russell rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

11/07/07

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: People who are already afraid of dying.

As with any book that is well written, the message came across and had an impact on me, but I didn't love it. The main character struggles throughout his life with an overwhelming fear of death. As such almost all of his thoughts and actions are tainted by his fears and he is constantly trying to recapture the youth that has left his grasp. This leads to doubt and regret and self-loathing and all kinds of other shit that I have no patience or respect for. Maybe I'll be able to relate as I grow o...more

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Kitty-Wu

Kitty-Wu rated it:

(review of isbn )

03/28/08

Read in December, 2006

«Aquí, donde los hombres se sientan y oyen sus mutuos quejidos;
donde la parálisis agita algunas, tristes, últimas canas,
donde la juventud palidece, adelgaza como un espectro, y muere;
donde tan solo pensar es estar lleno de tristeza […]»
John KEATS, "Oda a un Ruiseñor"

---------

Elegía empieza con un entierro, para proseguir reconstruyendo la vida del difunto, primero en boca de los asistentes al entierro, para seguir en primera pers...more

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1 comment

Alissa

Alissa rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

11/05/07

Read in November, 2007

Something about Everyman struck home for me in ways that a lot of Roth's other books have not. Perhaps it is the fact that the cemetery that centers his narrative is a ringer for my mother's family cemetery. Maybe it is the everyman's medical complaints, which I see paralleling my father's. I certainly acknowledge that this is part of the point, that he is supposed to be a universal figure, that we are supposed to identify with him.

Roth hasn't lost his edge, but in a lot of ways I see...more

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Holly

Holly rated it:

05/28/07

bookshelves: 2007

Read in March, 2007

Why, oh why, did I pick this up at the library? I knew it would be utterly depressing, and it was. Utterly. But I loved The Plot Against America, and I couldn't resist Everyman's compact size for throwing into my lunch bag for reading on the train to work. (Indeed, my book choices are frequently informed by ease of carrying onto the metrolink.) In brief, the story begins at a funeral of the "everyman" main character, then Roth recounts the life that was, focusing in particular on old a...more

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Evan

Evan rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

09/17/07

Read in July, 2007

This book is a lesson on the pointlessness of life from an aging atheist's point of view. It reads like an atheistic morality tale, as the title would suggest.

I felt like the prose oversimplified and and in many ways trivialized some fairly important issues related to aging and dying. It's principal character lacks any real courage and is beyond being sympatetic because of his human frailties.

I found this book to be a whiny attempt to justify a fairly shallow existenc...more

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Suzy

Suzy rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

10/02/08

A good author does not a good novel make. Especially if the protagonist evoked nothing in me except burning contempt. Yes, the writing is deft and lovely. But the deftness and loveliness is wasted on such inferior clay! Why Roth should waste such texture and colour on a philandering, lying, self-pitying sad little man is really quite beyond me. It sickens my heart to look at the title and even briefly entertain the notion that this excuse of a human being might be the 'everyman'. Perhaps this is...more

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3 comments

Sara

Sara rated it:

08/22/07

Read in June, 2007

For such a slim book to be packed with such an emotional punch, is due in large part to Roth's mastery of the English language. He has always been able to craft a beautiful sentence. Even when the subject matter is dark and heavy - as is the case with Everyman - there is a certain unassuming beauty to the way that Roth tells a story.

To be clear, this is not a feel-good book. It deals with man's (the everyman of the title) struggle with his own mortality. While never a light topic,...more

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Pris

Pris rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

01/04/09

Everyman- Summoning The Living To Death, 4 Mar 2007

In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances. The name derives from a 16th century English morality play called Everyman"
Wikipedia

Superb, Perfect, Impassioned, Masterpiece, these are the words used to describe Philip Rot...more
Everyman- Summoning The Living To Death, 4 Mar 2007

In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances. The name derives from a 16th century English morality play called Everyman"
Wikipedia

Superb, Perfect, Impassioned, Masterpiece, these are the words used to describe Philip Roth's book, 'Everyman'. A small, 182 page books, read in one sitting for me because I could not bear to put it down. The first page grabbed me, and I had to know, had to know it all. This is a book of loss, regret, a lifetime of love, energy, work, illness, surgery, growing old, moving on, taking each day as it comes and family, most of all family. We don't know the story teller's name, father, dad, husband, child, granddad, colleague, lover; we learn all about these people as one man. A compelling story told from his funeral back to the beginning of the first surgery. Then the years of health and good fortune. Back to surgery and illness and in-between death. Death of parents, then of colleagues and then friends. A novel that is about death and how it comes to be and what occurs before. There is a portion of the book near the end where the storyteller talks to a gravedigger and learns all about grave digging, and we are listening in and learn alot. This gravedigger is special, and he digs by hand shovel. His graves are perfect. This man gives his all to his job. We are the recipients of a perfectly dug grave.
A life in full, some regrets, lots of happiness and sadness and wanting and finally death. It comes to us all, you know.

"Roth himself has been outspoken, of late, about his preoccupation with death. In the Times profile he talked at length about the "gigantic shock" of finding himself at an age when his friends are dying, it would seem, en masse (in the book, he indeed describes old age as a "massacre"):
"This book came out of what all around me, which was something I never was expected-- that my friends would die," Mr. Roth said. "If you're lucky, your grandparents will die when you're, say, in college. Mine died when I was a schoolboy. If you're lucky, your parents will live until you're somewhere in your 50's; if you're very lucky, into your 60's. You won't ever die, and your children, certainly, will never die before you. That's the deal, that's the contract. But in this contract nothing is written about your friends, so when they start dying, it's a gigantic shock."[*]Daniel Mendelssohn

A novel to be marveled, to be read slowly and savored. A life in full, and then the death. This is what we are all about. Well told and every word has meaning. Bravo, Philip Roth. Highly Recommended.
prisrob 03-04-07
...less

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Lars

Lars rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

12/19/08

Read in December, 2008

Roth’s everyman rejects religion yet his observation of nothingness, oblivion, death, is filled with a solemn awe as well as dread. His everyman is gone, but remains as memory in those who survive him. His liturgical enumeration of medical procedures as his body deteriorates parallels the procedure of prayer, and offers solace in iteration even as society’s treatment of illness turns shabby and impersonal. His insistence on acknowledging the plain ordinariness of life—“he had done wha...more

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Aaron

Aaron rated it:

(review of isbn 0224078690)

12/07/08

“Everyman” is sort of a rebuke to the “happy death” books that have started to appear in the wake of the Baby Boomers starting to age out (i.e. die). It is not a book of finding meaning in life and a resolution of regrets, but an embittered, anger tinged, reflection on wasted moments and fleeting happiness. Normally, such anger would serve Roth well, but “Everyman” suffers from the later Roth habit of turning out books that have no demand on the reader’s attention. There is not a p...more

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Alicia

Alicia rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

12/16/08

I go back and forth with this author, for example I really liked Philip Roth's last book The Plot Against America but I often think his books are a bit slow and weighty. "Plot" was inventive and had a great flow to it. This new novel opens with the burial of a Jewish serial monogamist and shifts back and forth through time reviewing his life. I had difficulty with this novel because I just didn't care that much for or about the protagonist. There was very little that was likeable or ad...more

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Jane

Jane rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

12/28/08

Read in December, 2008

I'm not a die hard Roth fan (not at all, in fact), and yet I was completely taken with this book and its narrator, the nameless 71 year old man whose story is, certainly, the story of a body, but also of the self who makes use of the body.

This is tender, precise, unsentimental, yet grand. I believe, too, that how the narrator feels is what it must feel like to come to the end of a long life: not fighting, not denying, but not willing.

My favorite scenes: the conversation w...more

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Maggie

Maggie rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

01/04/09

Read in January, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Mind-blowing. I read the first 30 pages of this book a year ago or so, and then got distracted by one thing or another. I didn't know what the book was about then, otherwise I would have read it in one fevered sitting, as I did yesterday (I went back to page 1, because I wanted to remember all the details). Philip Roth understands death, and the universal fear of dying, and he does not mince words. "Old age is not a battle. It is a massacre", is just one of his zingers.

A m...more Mind-blowing. I read the first 30 pages of this book a year ago or so, and then got distracted by one thing or another. I didn't know what the book was about then, otherwise I would have read it in one fevered sitting, as I did yesterday (I went back to page 1, because I wanted to remember all the details). Philip Roth understands death, and the universal fear of dying, and he does not mince words. "Old age is not a battle. It is a massacre", is just one of his zingers.

A man at the end of his life, considers all that he has lost, and is overwhelmed in the same way that a child is overwhelmed by his first realization of the injustice of the world. The message here, I think, is that death, and human mortality, is so utterly final and inescapable that our meager intelligence is not equipped to ponder it without short-circuiting. Death is that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

It is no mystery why humans since the dawn of time have worked to create afterlife mythologies by the bushel. Pick one that suits you, and let it comfort and reassure. But in the end you may come to the conclusion, as Everyman does (the main character is never given a name), that this life is all we get. Only then can you feel the utter isolation of your small life, trivialized by the vastness of the cold universe with its "profusion of stars" (30). Only then can you understand that death cannot be nailed down, or cheated, or tamed. It is as dark, and as dangerous as the ocean. And it sucks people up indiscriminately, with no respect for your worldly accomplishments, how hard you tried, or how good your genes are.

As you can see, I agree 100% with the philosophy put forth in this book, and not all readers will resonate with the story as I did. Even so, I think there are enough jewels of wisdom here to appeal to anyone. I would especially recommend this book to anyone who has lost a loved one. I particularly loved the line, "it seemed to him, at one point, as though this task would never end, as though they would be there burying his father forever" (59). The physical act of burying his father is clearly a metaphor for the act of grieving. As one who has lost her own father, I've certainly felt that the grieving will never end.

In conclusion, this book gets my highest accolades as one that is brimming with truth and wisdom. It's the first Philip Roth book I've read, and I will surely read more. ...less

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quotes from this book

"Terrifying encounters with the end? I'm thirty-four! Worry about oblivion, he told himself, when you're seventy-five! The remote future will be time enough to anguish over the ultimate catastrophe!" More quotes...