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13th out of 36 books
—
28 voters
Patrimony
by
Philip Roth
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 o...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
June 3rd 1996
by Vintage
(first published 1991)
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Mi ha emozionato, è riuscito a toccare corde profonde. Il resoconto della malattia del padre è essenzialmente la storia del suo amore, della sua devozione e della paura della perdita e della sofferenza. La morte è brutta, fa paura, come la malattia e il dolore. Dopo non c’è nulla, ma non c’è solitudine, bensì amore e legami con il passato, non fatto di “reliquie” o oggetti ricordati che il padre rifiuta, ma di memoria, di racconti. Un padre autoritario che ora si fa piccolo e indifeso e che il f...more
Tutto è patrimonio.
Dopo "Un calcio in bocca fa miracoli" di Marco Presta, ancora una storia che parla di vecchiaia.
Questa volta però una storia vera, quella del padre di Philip Roth che a ottantasei anni scopre di essere divorato da un tumore al cervello.
Avevo lasciato Roth con I fatti - autobiografia di un romanziere, ero entrata nella sua vita, avevo conosciuto la sua famiglia, vissuto la sua ebraicità, scoperto la sua americanità, osservato piuttosto stupefatta la descrizione delle sue storie...more
Dopo "Un calcio in bocca fa miracoli" di Marco Presta, ancora una storia che parla di vecchiaia.
Questa volta però una storia vera, quella del padre di Philip Roth che a ottantasei anni scopre di essere divorato da un tumore al cervello.
Avevo lasciato Roth con I fatti - autobiografia di un romanziere, ero entrata nella sua vita, avevo conosciuto la sua famiglia, vissuto la sua ebraicità, scoperto la sua americanità, osservato piuttosto stupefatta la descrizione delle sue storie...more
Patrimony is a memoir written by award winning novelist Philip Roth about his father; specifically about his death and the memories his illness invoked in his son.
I had mixed emotions about this book. On the positive side, this non-fiction work was thought provoking and read at least somewhat like a novel (I need to get over thinking that all non-fiction is like a text book). I could relate somewhat to the author's situation. My father had cancer when I was a teenager, and it was such a roller c...more
I had mixed emotions about this book. On the positive side, this non-fiction work was thought provoking and read at least somewhat like a novel (I need to get over thinking that all non-fiction is like a text book). I could relate somewhat to the author's situation. My father had cancer when I was a teenager, and it was such a roller c...more
In 1987, at 86, the cantankerous Hermann Roth “was utterly isolated within a body that had become a terrifying escape-proof enclosure, the holding pen in a slaughterhouse.” Philip Roth’s memoir of his father’s dying is a shock of morality and a meditation on what we owe to our loved ones. Artfully, Roth’s flashbacks to his father’s Newark and the pedestrian circles he recalled were “his Deuteronomy, the history of his Israel”. No surprise here, but Roth’s father will be familiar to any reader of...more
Philip Roth's "Patrimony" is a tribute to his father and a homage to a world that has now largely passed: the world of the first or second generation urban Jew who strove mightily to become an American, sometimes in the face of real anti-semitism. It is also a moving portrayal of a relationship between a precocious, independent son and a overbearing father who believed to the end that there was a right way and a wrong way of doing almost everything and felt compelled to correct those, such as hi...more
I thought I couldn't have asked anything more for myself before he died - this, too, was right and as it should be. You clean up your father's shit because it has to be cleaned up... why this was right and as it should be couldn't have been plainer to me, now that the job was done. So that was the patrimony. And not because cleaning it up was symbolic of something else, but because it wasn't, because it was nothing less or more than the lived reality that it was.
There was my patrimony: not the m...more
There was my patrimony: not the m...more
If I wanted to read a Philip Roth book without the misogyny, creepy old-man sex talk, this is the one for me. However, unlike the creepy old-man sex talk novels, it's so honest and sad that it doesn't feel like Philip Roth. Or, rather, it feels like a mature Philip Roth (duh), dealing with a real milestone. And that's why, for the first time, I don't have to hold my breath reading it. For the first time, it's real. Or as real as you can get in a book about a dying father.
Easily the fastest I've...more
Easily the fastest I've...more
Un Patrimonio di profonda umanità
Chi possieda un minimo di dimestichezza con l'opera di Philip Roth e abbia sentore del particolare tema di questo libro, sa cosa attendersi da "Patrimonio" e in effetti tale aspettativa non viene delusa.
Da una parte ritroviamo la straordinaria capacità di scrittura dell'autore, quell'equilibrio fra la complessità e profondità delle frasi, delle descrizioni e dei dialoghi e la scorrevolezza del periodare che non necessita mai di una rilettura per afferrarne compiu...more
Chi possieda un minimo di dimestichezza con l'opera di Philip Roth e abbia sentore del particolare tema di questo libro, sa cosa attendersi da "Patrimonio" e in effetti tale aspettativa non viene delusa.
Da una parte ritroviamo la straordinaria capacità di scrittura dell'autore, quell'equilibrio fra la complessità e profondità delle frasi, delle descrizioni e dei dialoghi e la scorrevolezza del periodare che non necessita mai di una rilettura per afferrarne compiu...more
Philip Roth's Patrimony is a beautifully written, very moving account of the final illness and death of the author's father, Herman Roth. It's something most of us have to go through to one degree or another, and Roth's descriptions and insights are instructive. Highly recommended.
This book is filled with remarkable passages. One of my favorites comes very early on, when Roth describes seeing his father's brain scan. "...I could readily identify the tumor invading the brain...my father's brain,...more
This book is filled with remarkable passages. One of my favorites comes very early on, when Roth describes seeing his father's brain scan. "...I could readily identify the tumor invading the brain...my father's brain,...more
Roth works his magic in a particularly intimate and for a lover of his work- I am in spades- special way. Chronicling the last year of his 86 year old Jewish father's life after finding a non-cancerous brain tumor, he deftly, with out sentiment but with the greatest love and tenderness, tells us the timeless story of life and death, father and son, to be cared for and then to care for. His father is a fantastically interesting character, gruff and stubborn and fierce and loyal and impossible and...more
Philip Roth is the living author I admire probably more than any other, and memoir is the genre I understand best. But for the first several pages of this book I wasn't sure it was going to work for me. Before opening it, I'd decided after about 100 pages that I didn't particularly want to continue with a novel by another author I've always liked. That one was about a failed marriage, and despite being well-written, it didn't seem to offer sufficient value to offset the downer subject. This one...more
For years I have wanted to read something by Phillip Roth, who has won about every writing award for fiction, including the Pulitzer. When I saw this memoir of his father's death, I thought it might be a good place to start. Hmmm....
While definitely more "literary" than Buckley's similarly-themed memoir _Losing Mum and Pup_, this book did not have the same impact on me, even though Roth's and Buckley's fathers shared many personality traits. Roth spends more time detailing his father's physical...more
While definitely more "literary" than Buckley's similarly-themed memoir _Losing Mum and Pup_, this book did not have the same impact on me, even though Roth's and Buckley's fathers shared many personality traits. Roth spends more time detailing his father's physical...more
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I was very pleased to get my teeth into this as Philip Roth has been described to me as one of the best if not the best living American writer. Philip Roth's father 86 year old Herman wakes up to find that half his face is paralyzed. Subsequent visits to the doctor reveal that he has a large tumour in his brain. What follows is a willfully humane portrait. Roth cleverly mentions Hamlet, the first son, the most famous of sons and of course Herman's ghost is present in the telling of his final mon...more
My last experience with Philip Roth, American Pastoral, was not positive. I couldn't even finish it. While I have enjoyed some of Roth's work (The Plot Against America and Portnoy's Complaint), I was still wary of reading this, expecting that I had lost interest in this author after a more extensive purview of his work (I kinda/sorta enjoyed The Human Stain and was bored to tears by American Pastoral).
This book is wonderful. It is a non-fiction piece about Roth watching his father die over the...more
This book is wonderful. It is a non-fiction piece about Roth watching his father die over the...more
Better than Salinger for my English even if I hope I won't have to talk about retirement castles, facial paralysises and tumors pretty soon...
Leggere un romanzo di Philip Roth è come affrontare un fiume in piena, si viene travolti e non se ne esce come prima di esserci entrati. Soprattutto un libro come questo, così personale perché narra le sofferenze e la malattia del padre dello scrittore, e al contempo così universale perché tocca le corde più intime e sensibili dell’animo, in particolar modo di chi, come me, sta vivendo oggi un’esperienza di malattia con il proprio genitore. Se ne esce stremati, sofferenti, e gonfi di lacrime. Se...more
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 facin...more
"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 facin...more
A prosa ágil e direta de Philip Roth, desta vez, está a serviço de suas memórias. Mais precisamente, dos últimos anos da vida de seu pai, Herman Roth.
É um livro triste. Não poderia ser diferente, pois nele Roth – o filho – descreve a decomposição de seu pai, mas uma decomposição que, em momento algum, me parece ser o retrato de uma decadência.
Além de ser triste, o livro é profundamente ambivalente. De um lado, temos um filho que vê nas fezes do pai o seu patrimônio; isto seria desrespeitoso, ou...more
É um livro triste. Não poderia ser diferente, pois nele Roth – o filho – descreve a decomposição de seu pai, mas uma decomposição que, em momento algum, me parece ser o retrato de uma decadência.
Além de ser triste, o livro é profundamente ambivalente. De um lado, temos um filho que vê nas fezes do pai o seu patrimônio; isto seria desrespeitoso, ou...more
Summary of the 90% of Philip Roth's work that is not about politics or baseball: (1) describing the weird, disgusting, or stressful things done by alter ego and relatives, (2) writing about the family/social complications faced by writers who write about (1), and (3) sentiment or guilt connected with being a Jewish non-believer and doing (1) and (2). This book: non-fiction version of (1), (2), and (3). The true story about how Philip Roth's dying father crapped his pants and begged his son not t...more
If you’ve only read Roth’s fiction, like I have, it’s worth checking out this moving tribute to his father Herman, who at 86 finally began to suffer from a benign brain tumor he’d been developing for years. Stylistically straightforward and pragmatically told, it’s also a portrait of Roth as a middle-aged son confronting a lifetime of feelings for a father who was charmingly cantankerous, relentlessly self-disciplined, and deeply rooted in a bygone Newark, the city his parents emigrated to from...more
The only other one of his I had read was American Pastoral. I didn't LOVE that one, but I did enjoy this one. The back cover calls it 'slyly straightforward' which I thought was an apt description. Roth writes with clarity and fearlessness about facing the death of his father. Great tenderness here and real solicitude. A tribute. I have read a lot of memoirs dealing with watching loved ones go through illness (in fact too many) but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. We are spared...more
Philip Roth's father's face is paralyzed and after a trip to the doctor it is discovered he has a tumor near his brain stem. As time goes on, the tumor will grow in size further disabling him and eventually taking his life unless he decides to have it removed. Roth carefully takes his readers through that time period as he and his father struggle with the medical decisions of surgery, care and the eventualities of old age. Through it you learn of their lives together in younger years with differ...more
This was a surprisingly riveting read. The subject matter would be considered heavy since it deals with aging and mortality of a parent and the natural conflict of parent-child relationships, but somehow, it had just the right tone and I just kept turning those pages. I can't imagine writing such a bare-it-all account of my relationships with my own parents, but I think Roth succeeded both in making me understand why he needed to and making me want to keep reading. I loved this book.
Jun 03, 2010
Sheela
added it
I work very, very, very part-time for the owner of an Inn, and on one of her shelves in one of her apartments, I saw this book, pulled it down from the shelf and began to read it as I waited for the guests to arrive. Two and a half hours later, I couldn't put it down. It was precisely on what I had just gone through in being the hospice caregiver to my mother who passed on April 13. This is an exquisite account of Roth tending his father. I read it in two days.
Finally a book that plays not a whit with the border between fiction and fact, a straightforward and affecting memoir of the author's father's declining health and death. The final entry in the fifth volume of the Library of America's collected works of Roth.
Philip Roth is a brilliant writer and there are so many of his books I could recommend, but one of his best is his biography, PATRIMONY. It's his story of past recollections of his family, and how he took care of his ailing father as his father lay dying. As sad as it was it had comic stories interwoven in it and I think would be a book that would linger with people after having read it. --Phyllis
After you get through the wince-worthy opening chapters--which chronicle, in unfiltered detail, Roth's father's symptoms and diagnoses by various doctors--things get interesting, funny, and moving. I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately, and Roth's stands apart for his powers of analysis. He's brave (or cocky) enough to offer not only unflinching description and emotion, but also scrutiny and judgment.
Reading this book is like staring into someone's apartment with a telescope. The person isn't interesting or attractive or sexy; but it's all there for you to see. I had a hard time putting it down, and felt almost dirty for not stopping. It's an extremely detailed account of the (slow) death of Roth's father, and it certainly makes you feel like you're right there.
I have a hard time sustaining interest with straight memoir, but Roth brings a lot of energy to the narrative which keeps it going for at least two-thirds of the book. He loses it at the end by bringing in a few of the worse elements of the genre: nonessential anecdotes meant to build the reader's opinion of the narrator, as well as a building sense of melodrama.
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Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960's National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint, and has continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels began with The Ghost Writer in 1979, and inc...more
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“We're the sons appalled by violence, with no capacity for inflicting physical pain, useless at beating and clubbing, unfit to pulverize even the most deserving enemy, though not necessarily without turbulence, temper, even ferocity. We have teeth as the cannibals do, but they are there, imbedded in our jaws, the better to help us articulate. When we lay waste, when we efface, it isn't with raging fists or ruthless schemes or insane sprawling violence but with our words, our brains, with mentality, with all the stuff that produced the poignant abyss between our fathers and us and that they themselves broke their backs to give us.”
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Any reason why having read 1 of Roth's 2 non fiction books you have decided that you'll avoid any of his other 29 works of fiction. Strange,...more
Jun 09, 2012 03:34pm