5/21/2023 0 Comments Patrimony by Philip Roth![]() ![]() The only respites from this harrowing procession of bodily disasters-including diminished eyesight and incontinence-are flashbacks that provide fascinating glimpses into American Jewish life in the first half of this century-as well as into Roth père, a blunt perfectionist who sometimes drove his late wife, children, and loved ones to distraction (after being advised of the need for an operation, Herman lashes out at his long-suffering companion for not opening a can of soup correctly). ![]() As this once-vigorous retired Newark insurance manager refused to go gentle into that good night, Philip watched with mingled awe and fear. ![]() Misdiagnosed at first as having a viral infection that caused temporary paralysis to one side of the face, father Herman Roth soon learned the bleaker truth: he had a brain tumor. "You must not forget anything," Roth admonishes himself at the end of this father-and-son tale, and indeed, from the detail accumulated here, one doubts that his eye, unerring ear, and memory have missed a thing. Now, however, he discards all the artifices in this searing account of his 86-year-old father's physical decline and death. Roth has used the relationship between his life and art in a gimmicky way in his fiction, and even his brutal memoir The Facts (1988) was not free of this defect. ![]()
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