Fiction: And still the books continue to flow. Having spent the earlier phases of his career engaged upon the study of male sexual angst and the difficulties of being a great American writer, largely in relation to his angst, his genius, his Jewishness, Philip Roth began to reinvent himself, writes Eileen Battersby
With an energy comparable to that of Picasso's last years, Roth forsook his self absorption and looked instead to his country. On the publication of American Pastoral in 1997, Roth, the comedian, had become a chronicler of his country.
Since then a powerful urgency, that of wanting to forget and needing to remember, has shaped his work as has his open-eyed love of the US. Even before the death of Saul Bellow, Roth had retreated to his mountain top and had begun to stake his claim.
The talent was always there: since the publication of his first book, Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, and on through Portnoy's Complaint in 1969, a comic turn which tended to dog Roth's every move as well as each new book. There were moments of greatness, such as The Counterlife in 1986. But still Roth remained the smart Jewish guy from Newark preoccupied with sex, his vision somehow never as profound as that of Bellow, his rhythmic, earthy prose never quite as seductive as Updike's.
Still, when Roth, who was born in 1933, finally began to grow up, admittedly approaching 60, his belated maturity proved a speedy one. Interestingly, the seeds of his most recent big novels were sown in one of his most underrated works, Patrimony (1991), a graphic and heartfelt account of his father's reluctant nod to death.
Roth's new book, Everyman, may be one of his shortest but it is also one of his finest and certainly the most beautiful he has ever written. The humour for once is kept carefully in check. This is a cinematic, choreographed and bizarrely graceful narrative laced with a very real and open fear of ageing and of death. It is as relentless as it is sombre and engaging.
"Around the grave in the rundown cemetery were a few of his former advertising colleagues from New York, who recalled his energy and originality and told his daughter, Nancy, what a pleasure it had been to work with him."
This is a tone Roth sets and sustains. One man's story of a life that becomes contained within a series of medical operations, is in fact every one's story; youth to age; strength to weakness and fear. Written in a controlled, understated language, there are no fireworks, only the revelation of how memory sneaks up and bombards us with images of times past and most cruelly of all, with detailed portraits of our younger selves.
At the graveside stand his three children; two sons from his first marriage. They have never forgiven him, while his daughter Nancy from his second marriage loves him with a terrifying devotion. There were three wives, but only one, the middle one, is at the funeral. After the daughter speaks, the dead man's elder brother, the robust Howie, takes his turn. "My kid brother. It makes no sense . . . Let's see if I can do it. Now let's get to this guy . . ."
The graveside oration framed by bewilderment and nostalgia is a remarkable piece of writing. Roth may have spent the first part of his career writing about himself but he must have spent a great deal of his life listening to people speak. There is a formality about some of the exchanges, but then these are serious conversations. Interestingly, Roth is formal, but despite the feeling and the tears shed, never sentimental.
It is a book of deaths. The central character, a New York commercial artist who turns to art after his retirement, is the Everyman. He is seen in the context of the life he has made for himself and of the impact he had made on the lives of those around him. From the death, his life begins to take shape as information is filtered down to the reader. The dead man becomes a young boy keen on swimming , the first of whose hospital visits for a routine operation allows him to witness the death of another boy.
Years pass and relationships falter. Another funeral is described, that of his father. As he watches the grave being filled in, " . . . and all at once he saw his father's mouth as if there were no coffin, as if the dirt they were throwing into the grave was being deposited straight down on him, filling up his mouth . . ." The sense of ritual going on in the background is vividly evoked as the watching son's horror dominates the foreground. "He had watched his father's disappearance from the world inch by inch. He had been forced to follow it right to the end. It was like a second death, one no less awful than the first." Later he admits to his daughter, the loyal, caring Nancy, "Now I know what it means to be buried. I didn't till today."
Later, one of the women, a widow, attending his art classes, speaks about her illness, her honest fear of the pain and her embarrassment. When he thinks about the exchange, he realises "what lent a horrible grandeur to the process of reduction suffered by Millicent Kramer - and miniaturised by comparison the bleakness of his own - was, of course, the intractable pain."
Everyman is a study in regret. We watch a man learning about life just as he prepares to take leave of it. "But how much time could a man spend remembering the best of boyhood? What about enjoying the best of old age? Or was the best of old age just that - the longing for the best of boyhood?"
The narrative moves along in these tight, little sequences. It is an astonishing performance which feels as if it were written from the heart. Roth - in the later stages of a fine career - has become a master.
It is a novel that demands to be read straight through at one sitting. Admire the sheer grace, beauty and sadness. Shudder at the weight of feeling. Then turn back to the first page and read it again - it is one of those sublimely human, honest, angry books and - unless you have already read Patrimony - who would have thought Philip Roth would have been the one to write it.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Everyman By Philip Roth Jonathan Cape, 182pp. £10