Everyman * bookray
12 journalers for this copy...
Philip Roth's twenty-seventh book takes its title from an anonymous fifteenth-century English allegorical play whose drama centres on the summoning of the living to death and whose hero, Everyman, is intended to be the personification of mankind. The fate of Roth's Everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers and during his hospitalisation as a nine-year-old surgical patient through the crises of health that come close to killing him as a vigorous adult, and into his old age, when he is undone by the death and deterioration of his contemporaries and relentlessly stalked by his own menacing physical woes. A successful commercial advertising artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons who despise him and a daughter who adores him, the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and the lonely ex-husband of three very different women with whom he's made a mess of marriage. "Everyman" is a painful human story of the regret and loss and stoicism of a man who becomes what he does not want to be.;The terrain of this savagely sad short novel is the human body, and its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.
And I already thought it would be a good idea to put it on the forum again when I've read it, because I can't imagine there aren't a lot more readers interested in this book. So in due time we'll see.
And the next readers on the bookray are:
Banquo (Utrecht)
Gnoe (Utrecht)
Suzy26 (Delft)
afraberg (Amsterdam)
Fifna (Leiden)
EmEli (Leiden)
gerbie7 (Goor, Overijssel)
violoncellix (Groningen)
Frakke-Per (Rottumeroog, Groningen)
ana-b (Gouda)
Eline64 (Zoetermeer)
And that's the end of this ray.
Update 15-04-2007
An incredibly beautiful story - Philip Roth is a great writer! I am going to get myself a personal copy of this book.
Thanks for sharing, LenaLena and monalisaa! Now it's on it's way to Suzy26; I hope she'll enjoy it as much as I did.
(BTW: have you read Patrimonium by Roth? That's also very beautiful!)
Little gem of a story about one man's struggle to come to terms with his own mortality. Starting off with the protagonist's funeral, the story follows up on his youth, his marriages, his children and the problems with his health. The protagonist has a very realistic view on life which was quite refreshing to read. Roth's writing style was very much to my liking anyway. Thanks for sharing this book with us, LenaLena and monalisaa!
Update May 1, 2007: book is on its way to afraberg.
Thank you very much Suzy26 for sending, I'll start reading tomorrow.
Thank you very much for sharing Monalisaa!
Tomorrow I put this book in the mail, on its way to Fifna.
I am going to pm gerbie7 for his/her address.
Edit 30/6: I already brought the book to the mailbox.
Released 16 yrs ago (7/26/2007 UTC) at BookRing in Bookring, A Bookring -- Controlled Releases
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Vanochtend de laatste bladzijden gelezen, vanmiddag op weg naar de volgende lezer.
Later the same day:
Finished the book. It was a light read in spite of its heavy subject matter. The scenes that stand out for me are the protagonist's meeting with one of his painting students, the most talented one who has to stop because of unbearable back pain, in his old people's village by the sea; and his meeting with the grave-digger who had painstakingly dug his parents' graves years before.
Nothing could extinguish the vitality of that boy whose slender little torpedo of an unscathed body once rode the big Atlantic waves from a hundred yards out in the wild ocean all the way in to shore. Oh, the abandon of it, and the smell of the salt water and the scorching sun! Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea, an optical treasure so vast and valuable that he could have been peering through the jeweler's loupe engraved with his father's initials at the perfect, priceless planet itself -- at his home, the billion-, the trillion-, the quadrillion-carat planet Earth!
On to Frakke-Per, who is the next on this ring.
The book will travel further to ana-b
Released 16 yrs ago (8/30/2007 UTC) at
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Released 16 yrs ago (10/3/2007 UTC) at
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Ik stuur het boek vandaag per post naar Eline64.
A beautiful book. I read it with much pleasure although it's a very sad story
Philip Roth – Everyman (07-051)
“The Plot against America” was the first book I read by Roth and I was really impressed. This ring book was a good opportunity to get more familiar with Roth, often praised, every year a favorite to win the Noble price for literature.
The story about the Jewish main character going through life until he finally dies, as he himself predicted at reasonable old age, does not appeal to me as much as ‘the plot’ did. It was certainly a nice book to read, I’m glad I have. It was fun to see how human the character was, with all his flaws, with his ability for self reflection, but it didn’t hit home as I hoped.
Probably me I guess. The next Roth book is already on my shelf. It’ll have to wait a bit though. Other books to be read first.
Number: 07-051
Title: Everyman
Author: Philip Roth
Language: English (US)
Year: 2006
# Pages: 184 (9173)
Category: Fiction
ISBN: 978-022407-8690
Released 15 yrs ago (8/21/2008 UTC) at Coogee Beach Hotel in Coogee, New South Wales Australia
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
in the lobby of the hotel