I don't like the approaches that confine literature and the act of writing to certain patterns. Especially in recent times, the approaches that exaggerate techniques such as being simple, clear, showing rather than telling, and encourage them as writing rules. Because I think such restrictions make literature barren. It's as if sentences have gone on a diet and they think that when the number of words is reduced, they will look better. In my opinion, the depth that a sentence carries within it is strengthened depending on the power of the words. This richness and aesthetics also beautify the text. That's why I loved Philip Roth's language. With Kaya Genç's wonderful translation, the author's sentences dance in the paragraphs with an amazing rhythm.

It's the self-criticism of a man who starts from the last stop and reviews his life along the way. Life is beautiful with illnesses, mistakes, wrong decisions, love, betrayal, family, and passions. Because all of them are part of life. Just like old age and death.

MY STRUGGLE WITH THE WORLD’S GREATEST LIVING NOVELIST ™

When I tallied up the number of Roth books I had read, I was truly astonished. Portnoy’s Complaint - well, it was reputed to be rather risqué, so yes, I read that one. Operation Shylock - that one was truly brilliant and might just be the root of my dilemma. It convinced me that this author was indeed great. Enthralled by the hilarious Jewish self-parody, I plunged headfirst into the rest of his works. But then came a couple of blows - American Pastoral, what utter nonsense, and Sabbath’s Theater, oh, what bombastic drivel trying to shock us.... And yet, people I actually know in real life, not to mention those critics singing in unison like The Supremes to the tune of Baby Love

Philip Roth, oo Philip Roth
We love you ooo ooo Philip Roth
You’re one of the really good guys
We are crying out our eyes
Cause you deserve the Nobel Prize
Philip Philip Philip oooo!

kept thrusting Roth's books upon me, much like the French waiter serving Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life - just one teensy after-dinner novel, it’s very short, go onnn.... So I also read The Dying Animal and got the usual offensive fare. A Goodreader, whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't recall, summed up the entire body of Philip Roth's work in just FIVE WORDS, in a casual comment, and it was brilliant: Meanwhile, back at the penis.... That's it. All of Philip Roth’s work in five words. Meanwhile back at the penis. So after the abysmal The Dying Animal, was it goodbye Philip? No, I was once again persuaded to give Nemesis a try - and lo and behold, it was really good! Damn you to hell, Roth. Stop messing with me! And so, what the heck, one last roll of the dice - Everyman.

FANFARE : ENTER PENIS STAGE LEFT

Everyman plods along miserably, whining and blathering about old age and its miseries for 107 pages, and the penis hardly gets a mention. Okay, that's good. Let's keep it that way. But no, there it is on page 108, and it has the same miraculous powers over young women as it does in Roth's previous books. If Roth's novels have any basis in reality, the word should go out to all middle-aged men: go to New York immediately, 19-year-old girls are eager to have sex with you. Just like Daniel Barenboim with his baton, so shall you be with your penis. All you have to do is show up in a Manhattan office. Any one will do. Fortunately, the penis doesn't stick around for too long. Then it's back to more moaning and moping.

O MY GOD I’M OLD AND UGLY AND ILL AND I’M GONNA DIE ALONE AND IN PAIN

That could easily be the subtitle of this mercifully short novel. A sample sentence:

The worst of being unbearably alone was that you had to bear it – either that or you were sunk.

When our author attempts more flowery prose, it makes the reader wince a little:

From the age of ten she’d been like that – a pure and sensible girl, besmirched only by her unstinting generosity, harmlessly hiding from unhappiness by blotting out the faults of everyone dear to her and by overloving love. Baling forgiveness as though it were so much hay.

We could spend hours dissecting what's wrong with that passage, but - overloving love? Baling forgiveness?

SO, ER, I HAVEN’T REALLY BEEN LISTENING, WHAT DID YOU SAY THIS NOVEL IS ABOUT?

Impotently putting up with the physical deterioration and the terminal sadness and the waiting and waiting for nothing.

OH GEE, ER, THANKS

The main character of the novel has lived his life as a bad father, a bad husband, and a bad brother. Of course, in fact, he wasn't very aware of this while he was alive. Even if he was aware, he had found reasons to justify himself, truly believed in them, and lived that way. He is an extremely self-centered character. In his old age, perhaps the only thing left that he can consider a success in life is his professional achievements. But even when he retires from his profession, he tries to live the retirement life he has dreamed of for years, but to no avail. This time, too, the reckonings and grudges of the past do not let go of his neck. As we read about the character's present, we go back to his childhood, to his middle age, always with questions. The 107-page book is so full of these narratives that at the moment I feel like I have just finished a much thicker book.

It's as if the author has managed to pack a lifetime's worth of experiences and emotions into these relatively few pages. The story unfolds in a way that keeps the reader engaged and constantly wondering about the character's choices and the consequences that follow. We see how his actions have affected those around him and how he himself has been shaped by his past.

Overall, this novel offers a deep and thought-provoking exploration of human nature and the complex web of relationships that make up our lives. It makes us question our own actions and the way we treat others, and leaves us with a sense of empathy for the flawed but ultimately relatable main character.

Labai patiko.

It means "I really liked it" in Lithuanian. This simple expression can carry a lot of meaning. It could refer to a book, a movie, a meal, or any other experience that someone has found enjoyable. The link provided, https://knyguziurkes.wordpress.com/20..., might lead to more information about what exactly was liked. It could be an article, a blog post, or a review. Without clicking on the link, it's difficult to know for sure. However, we can assume that whatever is on that page is related to the thing that was liked. Maybe it's a description of the experience, or perhaps it's a discussion about why it was so enjoyable. In any case, Labai patiko is a great way to express enthusiasm and appreciation for something.

Everyman, Philip Roth

Everyman is a profound novel penned by Philip Roth and published by Houghton Mifflin in May 2006. It achieved great acclaim by winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2007, being Roth's third novel to receive this prestigious prize.

The story commences at the funeral of its unnamed protagonist. The remainder of the book, which culminates with his death, offers a mournful retrospective of various episodes from his life. His childhood was spent working in his father's shop, Everyman's Jewelry Store, alongside his older brother, Howie. He has had a tumultuous love life, being married three times. From his first marriage, he has two sons who resent him for leaving their mother. His second marriage produced a daughter who treats him with kindness and compassion, despite the fact that he divorced her mother after having an affair with a 24-year-old Danish model, who later became his third wife. After divorcing her as well, in his old age, he relocates to a retirement community at the New Jersey shore. There, he lives alone and attempts to pursue painting, having foregone a career as an artist earlier in life to work in advertising to support himself and his family.
The book meticulously traces the protagonist's evolving feelings as he ages and succumbs to illness. It also delves into his reflections on his past, which is rife with misdeeds and mistakes, as he contemplates his impending death.

This novel presents a poignant exploration of the human condition, highlighting the universal themes of love, loss, regret, and the inevitability of mortality. Roth's masterful storytelling and keen insights into the human psyche make Everyman a truly remarkable and thought-provoking work of literature.

For me, I have finished reading it and the last thing I thought about was: Why is it always a man? Why not always a woman? Since what the deceased wrote was about his wife and his failed attempt at life? Why was it always a man? Was it because Philip Roth, when he said that he was directing all his books towards men, had any connection? Or did he mean that the characters he wrote in his journalist's sense always came in the form of a man? I'm sorry that I can't find any Arabic reading for this short story. I'm really sorry that there isn't anyone who experiences illness and old age in their basic form that life brings. There is a feeling that I can't define but it clings to me strongly, a direction of life and self. I had come across an interview with Philip Roth on YouTube where the media asked him: If there was regret in his life or losses? His answer, after a short pause, that could make you feel as if he was pulling the answer from the depth of him: What is life if there are no losses? In this story, you will find many things similar to Philip in his encounters. And he always makes sure for me that I don't read for a person who knows how to write but means what he writes. He sows the experience in the right environment and builds a whole story that intersects with things he has lived with in his life. In this story, you will not find death alone presented to you but life as a similar thing, and neither one can live without the other.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on”—Robert Frost.

“The meaning of life is that it stops”—Franz Kafka.

Everyman is one of four short novels Philip Roth wrote in his later career, along with Indignation, The Humbling, and Nemesis. The name Everyman was given by the narrator's Jewish father to his jewelry store to avoid scaring away potential Christian customers with his Jewish name. It is also the name of a 15th-century English morality play, after which it came to mean an ordinary individual with whom the audience or reader can easily identify. We all experience certain things, and in the case of the 73-year-old author, the things he wants to discuss include the decay of one's body as one ages, and of course, that pesky and unavoidable death.

As with Indignation and other Roth books, there is a sweet reverence for craft in Everyman, specifically for the work of the narrator's jeweler father. But this craft-awe also makes you appreciate the craft of Roth's writing. In this novella-length book, compared to most of Roth's work, it is lean, almost subdued, eschewing bombast for a somber tone. The narrator is at times angry and unable to come to terms with the decline associated with aging, but he's not as wild as Mickey Sabbath.

There is also again a reverence for family and tradition, a theme that runs through much of Roth's work. As in Sabbath's Theater, the main character, a retired art director for an advertising firm, finds himself near the end in a decaying Jewish cemetery, speaking with his parents. His father tells him from the grave: "Look back and atone for what you can atone for, and make the best of what you have left."

We see our aging hero do something more passionately in this story than almost any male narrator in Roth's work; he repents. He is filled with remorse not just for one mistake but for all his mistakes. So is there guilt about issues with women and sexuality that this older surrogate narrator expresses on behalf of the author? Well, our narrator is old, still has desires, and has some racy memories that seem to undermine his repentance at times. He is alone, thanks to all the mistakes he made that alienated him from most women except his forgiving daughter Nancy. The most eloquent speech in this book is by the wronged ex Phoebe, who caught him having an affair with a model half his age.

If the 15th-century tale Everyman is a morality tale of atonement, this Roth Everyman novel is also (an atheist's version) of atonement. Genetics in part determine who we are, not predestination. And it is the bones of his ancestors that the narrator connects to, knowing he will soon add to them, not some idea of the afterlife. Through all the surgeries, when he is anxious, the narrator recites the names of watches his father sold in his jewelry store, which is like an atheist's prayer or meditation. However, though the spirit and determination of our everyman are important, we know that the body will ultimately lose. But a couple of days before the end, in the decaying cemetery, reminiscent of Hamlet, our everyman meets a gravedigger who reminds him about and comforts him with the practical issues of mortality. There is a kind of stoicism in Everyman: "Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There's no other way." But he is also raging against the dying of the light. He could never do what his art student did, give in to her pain and take sleeping pills. "As always—and like most everyone else—he didn't want the end to come a minute earlier than it had to." This is a simple, straightforward, somber story, but it is also a powerful tale of one man's fight against mortality, a fight for his life against impossible odds. It's an older author's novel for older readers, but a very good one.

An old man desires to have sexual relations with a younger woman...

Groundbreaking indeed! (Oh, where is the sarcasm font when you need it?!)

And yet, this work managed to win awards, so there must be something more to it, right?

The concept is centered around a man at the end of his life, looking back on everything and attempting to determine if it was a good life. By the standards of many, the main character in Everyman probably can't be regarded as having led a good life, at least not a completely blameless one. He has been divorced three times, at least once due to his own unfaithfulness. He abandoned at least one family for the embrace of a model. His relationships with two out of his three children are in a sorry state.

Is that sufficient to condemn the man? That's debatable, and a question that is contemplated throughout the story. Do you, as the reader, really give a damn? That's also debatable, and a question you'll grapple with throughout.

Everyman is Philip Roth's book about himself. Do you care about Philip Roth? Enough to read an entire book in which he ponders in his old age whether he has been a good person or not? Personally, no, I don't. However, the man is a talented writer, and he presents excellent prose. That makes him a good man in certain aspects, the kind of respect a reader requires to relish a writer's work.

This book is certain to put you in an unexpected state of shock.

It delves deeply and extremely brutally into the fears of illness and death that all humans dread. For who among us has not fallen ill for a day and who has not witnessed children, youth, and the elderly turn into mere shadows of humans due to serious diseases that may lead to death?

Who among us does not fear this unknown death, about which we know nothing but its bones and that there is no escape from it, and whether it will come easily and quickly or after painful and bitter suffering? For each of us will experience this alone.

After finishing this book, a set of mixed feelings of fear and horror assail me, as well as another set of feelings about the need to change my lifestyle, which will end one day. I hope that before that, I will be satisfied with what it has given and what I have spent my life on in it.

From you to God, oh Philip, oh Ruth.

This book by Philip Roth, like the two books I read before it (The Plot Against America and Sabbath's Theater), looks at the fear of death and diseases, and the constant anxiety of human mortality. The poignant questions that lie at the heart of all this suffering really confront the reader with fundamental questions about the meaning of life.

For me, the rating of this book is something between 3 and 4. It has its strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, Roth's writing is as powerful and thought-provoking as ever. He delves deep into the human psyche and explores the themes of fear, mortality, and the search for meaning with great insight and sensitivity. On the other hand, some of the plotlines and characters could have been developed more fully, and the pacing of the book could have been a bit tighter in places. Overall, however, it is a worthwhile read that will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Someone once said that old age is the saddest part of a person's life.
Another person said to himself that it is not sad, but terrifying.
Phillip Roth, on the other hand, called it not a battle, but a massacre.
The book is too full of shadows and sadness.

Old age is indeed a stage that many people dread. It brings with it not only physical decline but also emotional and psychological challenges. The idea of losing one's youth, vitality, and independence can be truly terrifying.
Phillip Roth's description of old age as a massacre perhaps emphasizes the harsh reality that many elderly people face. They may feel like they are being slowly but surely wiped out by the passage of time and the various ailments that come with it.
The book, with its dark and melancholy tone, seems to capture the essence of this difficult stage of life. It makes us reflect on our own mortality and the importance of making the most of our time while we still can.

I completed this rather depressing book just a few days ago. However, due to the upheaval in my online routine (as I don't possess a home computer or a smartphone), I haven't been able to update my status until now. Fortunately, my friendly local librarian has graciously lent me a spare laptop from the library's collection of items. So here I am, sitting outside the library (utilizing their Wi-Fi) in the sunny yet chilly March air, attempting to catch up a little. It is warmer inside my car, but it's rather cramped. Oh well... For the time being, I'll state that this book is well-written and mercifully concise as it documents the坎坷的 medical and romantic ordeals of its less-than-perfect narrator. To summarize: life is a clumsy farce where the few bright spots get overwhelmed by old age. Or, to express it in the words of a more accomplished writer than Roth (even though he's quite good),... "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

- 3.5* rounds down to 3*