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A review by marc129
Patrimony: A True Story by Philip Roth
3.0
“’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.