Elegia

by Philip Roth

book data

2,176 ratings, 3.46 average rating, 386 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		14%
4		36%
3		34%
2		12%
1		2%

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published

February 6th 2007 (first published 2005) by Random House Mondadori

binding

Paperback, 160 pages

literary awards

PEN/Faulkner Award (2007)

isbn

0307391116 (isbn13: 9780307391117)

description

Una novela sobre la perdida, el arrepentimiento y el estoicismo.

La nueva novela de Philip Roth es una historia profundamente íntima sobre la pérdida

...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,869)

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07/09/07

Matt Kosinski rated it:

(review of isbn 061873516X)

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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06/20/07

Joe rated it:

(review of isbn 061873516X)

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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03/19/08

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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

01/13/08

Irwan rated it:

(review of isbn 0099501465)

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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06/02/09

Scott rated it:

(review of isbn 061873516X)

Read in June, 2009

The second book that I've read this week (the other being McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City") where the main character doesn't have a designated name. A tell-tale sign that I am reading literature with a capital "L," or at least literature with allegorical significance, as this slim Roth entry truly has, being named after the 15th Century English play I was forced to read in Graduate school.

Maybe this isn't one for the Roth novice. There are some beautifully ...more The second book that I've read this week (the other being McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City") where the main character doesn't have a designated name. A tell-tale sign that I am reading literature with a capital "L," or at least literature with allegorical significance, as this slim Roth entry truly has, being named after the 15th Century English play I was forced to read in Graduate school.

Maybe this isn't one for the Roth novice. There are some beautifully written passages (eloquent not in demanding wordiness, but instead in their simplicity), and the novel's obstinate obsession with illness and death is admirable, but the specifics of the narrative are painfully cliched. Many might lament that Roth is simply retreading his own themes and characters; I would argue he is retreading themes and character exhausted by the last 100 years of literary history.

The Edenic memories of youth (where, in one scene right out of Judy Blume and every other coming-of-age story you have ever read, he tries to convince himself that his hernia has magically healed itself the night before his scheduled operation). Senior citizens who congregate only to talk about their recent health scares and their love for their grandchildren. The aging leach who leaves his wife for a 24 year old Danish model who lets him do wonderful things with one of her holes. (Okay, maybe that last one is a little less cliched, especially in a work by a 73 year old novelist).

All of these snapshots from the man's life (the book's 182 short pages leaving room for little more) don't add up to much in the way of narrative. And the argument that Roth is knowingly dealing with archetypal experience does not make a banal narrative any more tolerable. Why I am giving the book a minor pass is because I found the second half to be quite emotionally affecting, even haunting when illness and burial procedures are detailed in a detached, almost clinical, fashion, and the lead character's serial hospitalizations for heart problems made me think about my own father's almost identical experience. (Everyman indeed!) Roth's Everyman may be another one of his self-centered, almost contemptible, creations, but as he reminds us, "prolonged illness's deadliest trap [is:] the contortion of one's character." As one who has been around a loved one who has looked death in the face, I can attest this is one cliche that rings painfully true.(less)

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12/01/08

M-ray DeFreese rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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11/01/08

Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0224078690)

bookshelves: first-edition

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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3 comments

01/15/08

Danielle rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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11/05/07

Russell rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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03/28/08

Kitty-Wu rated it:

(review of other edition)

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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11/05/07

Alissa Nelson rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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05/28/07

Holly rated it:

(review of isbn 061873516X)

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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09/17/07

Evan rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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10/02/08

Suzy rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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

06/08/07

Sara rated it:

(review of isbn 061873516X)

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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05/13/09

Tim added it (review of isbn 061873516X)

As I was reading Philip Roth's Everyman, the person sitting next to me noticed the plain black cover and said, "That looks depressing." I think it is more accurate to call it an existential meditation on death. But don't let even that somber description put you off. Mind you, the book isn't a blithe beach read but it is far better than you would think given the topic.[return][return]Everyman opens with the funeral of the never-named narrator. The book is essentially the narrator lo...more

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01/04/09

Pris robichaud rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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
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12/19/08

Lars rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

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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06/12/09

Stephanie rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

Read in July, 2006

IN THE 15th-century English morality play Everyman, the titular character is summoned by Death and learns that neither friends, worldly goods nor beauty will go with him – none except good deeds.

In American author Philip Roth’s identically named latest novel, the protagonist ponders whether he possesses much of any of those things in the first place.

The novel opens at the burial of the unnamed protagonist, where Roth clumsily makes two characters deliver eulogies tha...more IN THE 15th-century English morality play Everyman, the titular character is summoned by Death and learns that neither friends, worldly goods nor beauty will go with him – none except good deeds.

In American author Philip Roth’s identically named latest novel, the protagonist ponders whether he possesses much of any of those things in the first place.

The novel opens at the burial of the unnamed protagonist, where Roth clumsily makes two characters deliver eulogies that outline his life to the reader.

Rising from a working-class Jewish childhood in New Jersey to become a New York advertising man, he spent his last years at a private retirement community on the Jersey shore. He is close to his daughter and his elder brother, but also has three failed marriages and two estranged sons.

As the narrative moves back in time to the protagonist’s own thoughts as he awaits surgery, the reader learns he has had his share of the good and the bad. But the defining characteristic of his life is his battle for it not to end. In and out of hospital for various bodily failures all his life, from a hernia in his childhood to collapsing arteries in his old age, much of his musings are on the frailty of the human body.

Roth devotes large chunks of text to describing hospital stays and operations, and the descriptions are admirable in detail and depressing in content. The deterioration of the protagonist’s body over the years also physically parallels the deterioration of his life over the years. His life succumbs to forces he cannot seem to control – generally emotional, frequently sexual. Betraying a series of wives because he lusts and longs for someone or something else, he leaves behind a trail of wounded women and confused children.

These dysfunctional relationships make up the bulk of the novel, and he recalls his past decisions with a mixture of regret and resignation.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to care about any of these characters – and consequently, the protagonist himself – since Roth seems content to leave them as sketches. There is the successful elder brother, the vulnerable daughter, the trinity of ex-wives (shrew, saint and ditz, respectively), and even a wise gravedigger who appears at the end to provide an epiphany.

Perhaps Roth intended his characters, like in a morality play, to embody various human virtues and vices. In any case, they are trotted in for the protagonist to muse upon what it means to be human, without being convincingly human themselves.(less)

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05/09/09

Kathy rated it:

(review of isbn 0307277712)

Read in May, 2009

Everyman takes its title from an anonymous 15th century allegorical drama whose theme is the summoning of the living to death.

This book is a reflection on attitude toward aging and death. At one point the protagonist posits, "Old age is not a battle. It is a massacre." This is not a book to read when melancholy! It's possible to read its 182 pages in one sitting, but preferable to read it slowly because it's a worthy read that leaves you thinking.

The prota...more