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Loved this account of Roth processing his father’s diminishment.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
“’I must remember acurrately,’ I told myself, ‘remember everything accurately so that when he is gone, I can re-create the father who created me.’ You must not forget anything.”
This book occupies a special place in Roth's oeuvre, because it is utterly autobiographical. Of course Roth also in his other novels regularly used autobiographical elements: in his early scandal novel [b:Portnoy's Complaint|43945|Portnoy's Complaint|Philip Roth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327929440l/43945._SY75_.jpg|911489] that’s obvious, his hometown Newark prominently features in various books, and in [b:The Plot Against America|703|The Plot Against America|Philip Roth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553896240l/703._SY75_.jpg|911456] he simply put his own family on the spot. But in this book he describes in a fairly clinical way the last months and days of his father, Herman Roth, who died of a brain tumor in 1988.
Apparently, from the moment of the cancer diagnosis Roth kept a sort of diary, mainly because the possibility of the loss of his father touched him to the depths of his soul. Now that father was not just anyone: Herman Roth was a dominant personality, it was not for nothing that young Philip rebelled against him. While the decaying process is going on 40 years later, we see Philip constantly appraising his relationship with his father, “he was the father, with everything there is to hate in a father and everything there is to love.”
And we see him struggling with the classic end-of-life questions: what is a humane end, are all those medical interventions still needed, can I and may I take decisions about the treatment instead of my father, etc? The desperation that grips Roth is continuously emphasized, so that this is at least as much a story about Philip as about his father.
This may be a special book, but it also contains the typical Roth approach: here, too, he focuses on life in all its glory and misery, man with his heights and lows, in short, life itself. One day when his father smeared the entire bathroom with his bowel movements and sits there crying, Philip notes, after he has cleaned everything: “ 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.” Vintage Roth this is.
The portrait that Roth paints in this book from his father is sometimes hard and merciless, because all the petty human aspects of Herman regularly are covered and ruminated upon. But in the end this novel has become a tribute to a man who gave everything, a genuine storyteller who harassed everyone with endless stories about his past (it is clear where Philip got his telling talent from), a man who clung to life till the end, "Dying is work, and he was a worker". This little booklet naturally does not have the epic power of Roth's greatest novels, but it is a book that touches deeply, without becoming sentimental.
This book occupies a special place in Roth's oeuvre, because it is utterly autobiographical. Of course Roth also in his other novels regularly used autobiographical elements: in his early scandal novel [b:Portnoy's Complaint|43945|Portnoy's Complaint|Philip Roth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327929440l/43945._SY75_.jpg|911489] that’s obvious, his hometown Newark prominently features in various books, and in [b:The Plot Against America|703|The Plot Against America|Philip Roth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553896240l/703._SY75_.jpg|911456] he simply put his own family on the spot. But in this book he describes in a fairly clinical way the last months and days of his father, Herman Roth, who died of a brain tumor in 1988.
Apparently, from the moment of the cancer diagnosis Roth kept a sort of diary, mainly because the possibility of the loss of his father touched him to the depths of his soul. Now that father was not just anyone: Herman Roth was a dominant personality, it was not for nothing that young Philip rebelled against him. While the decaying process is going on 40 years later, we see Philip constantly appraising his relationship with his father, “he was the father, with everything there is to hate in a father and everything there is to love.”
And we see him struggling with the classic end-of-life questions: what is a humane end, are all those medical interventions still needed, can I and may I take decisions about the treatment instead of my father, etc? The desperation that grips Roth is continuously emphasized, so that this is at least as much a story about Philip as about his father.
This may be a special book, but it also contains the typical Roth approach: here, too, he focuses on life in all its glory and misery, man with his heights and lows, in short, life itself. One day when his father smeared the entire bathroom with his bowel movements and sits there crying, Philip notes, after he has cleaned everything: “ 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.” Vintage Roth this is.
The portrait that Roth paints in this book from his father is sometimes hard and merciless, because all the petty human aspects of Herman regularly are covered and ruminated upon. But in the end this novel has become a tribute to a man who gave everything, a genuine storyteller who harassed everyone with endless stories about his past (it is clear where Philip got his telling talent from), a man who clung to life till the end, "Dying is work, and he was a worker". This little booklet naturally does not have the epic power of Roth's greatest novels, but it is a book that touches deeply, without becoming sentimental.
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Patrimony tackles a subject that is perpetually on my (and I assume many others') mind: the death of a parent. Roth recounts the last few years of his father's life as a brain tumor slowly deteriorates his bodily functions. As a brain tumor survivor myself, I could relate a little bit to the medical consequences and the fear of that type of diagnosis. Of course, Roth is a brilliant storyteller as always and showcases an impeccable memory. He includes various asides (his encounter with a pugnacious cab driver and his own heart surgery, for example) that are tangential to the plot but feel like they were almost ripped right out of one of his own Zuckerman novels. Most interesting is Roth's dilemma of choosing how to advise his father's medical care. He receives consultations from 3 trusted medical experts with varying perspectives on his father's tumor. Roth ultimately opts to steer his 86-year-old father away from the surgery, which almost certainly shortened his life in hindsight. But what is sadder is the degradation of his father, whom Roth idolized, and reading Roth's never-saccharine but stoically painful feelings of acceptance of the situation. He does not try to "make sense" of his father's dying in an emotional or eschatological sense, but his memoir does reflect upon the difficulty of making a choice in the face of uncertain but fatal consequences. The memoir suggests through his overtaking of a parental role for his father, most notably in an unforgettable scene where he purifies a bathroom of his father's accidental explosive diarrhea, that the titular patrimony refers to "fatherness" itself being inherited and reversed.
I felt sad reading this story. It is a realistic and cutting reminder that the death of our parents, and ourselves, is inevitable, unfair, and painful. That our choices matter, but that it is basically impossible to determine what the best course of action is. I feel appreciative that my parents are alive and that I have my wife and soon-to-be-born first child on the way so that I can make the most of my life.
I felt sad reading this story. It is a realistic and cutting reminder that the death of our parents, and ourselves, is inevitable, unfair, and painful. That our choices matter, but that it is basically impossible to determine what the best course of action is. I feel appreciative that my parents are alive and that I have my wife and soon-to-be-born first child on the way so that I can make the most of my life.
emotional
funny
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Fue desgarradora toda la lectura, sobre todo al final. Al principio me molestó cierto humor negro pero la ternura ganó por mucho la pelea y terminé el libro llorando y tomando hartos tés para imaginarme cómo debe ser lidiar con la pérdida así. Es un libro duro y hermoso y si se ha enfrentado o se está a punto de enfrentar la pérdida, dolorosísimo.
Es también el primer libro que leo de Roth y todos me habían dicho antes sobre su capacidad para el humor y no sé si la traducción no es buena o es un mal libro para empezar así, pero no lo noté tanto. Noté sobre todo el dolor de hacerse el fuerte. Y me gustó.
Es también el primer libro que leo de Roth y todos me habían dicho antes sobre su capacidad para el humor y no sé si la traducción no es buena o es un mal libro para empezar así, pero no lo noté tanto. Noté sobre todo el dolor de hacerse el fuerte. Y me gustó.
Se già si conosce Roth, leggere un suo libro è come essere avvolti nella tua coperta preferita, mentre ti senti in pace con il mondo, e sopratutto compreso. Anche nell’affrontare i temi più cupi, come, in questo caso, la perdita di un genitore, sa incantare con la potenza della sua scrittura, sa aiutare ad essere curioso ed attento, sa raccontare l’inevitabile verità.
“Non devi dimenticare nulla.”
“Non devi dimenticare nulla.”