Everyman

Philip Roth clearly has mortality on his mind. The nameless protagonist of his novel, Everyman, is the same age as Roth, as has much the same background, a Jew growing up in the Newark, New Jersey area. Roth begins the book with his character's funeral, in a decrepit Jewish cemetery in the shadow of the New Jersey Turnpike, and then tells us the man's life story.

Most of this story is focused on two elements: his health and his series of marriages. Hospital stays, whether they are for a hernia operation at age nine, a bout of peritonitis at 34, a heart bypass in his fifties, or the final operation that kills him, are the touchstones of his life, in addition to his three marriages. Although the prose is pure Roth, with sentences polished like gemstones, it does become a bit of a laundry list of ailments. I do know that Roth underwent heart surgery some years ago, I suppose that's a confrontation with mortality that doesn't leave one's mind quickly.

The title does not indicate that Roth's protagonist is a typical man (how many men marry Danish models 26 years their junior?) but instead refers to a medieval English play, where a man is visited by death. Toward the end of the book, there is a bit of a recalling of Hamlet, as Roth's protagonist, visiting his father's grave in the cemetery where he will shortly be buried, comes across a gravedigger, and enlists the man to tell him how a grave is dug.

This is all not very cheery reading, but nonetheless powerful, profound, and moving.