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By DAN DERVIN
For THE FREE LANCE-STAR
Philip Roth claims he was inspired by a snatch of dialogue in the late medieval morality play "Everyman" in which the nameless hero is confronted by his imminent death and need for repentance.
Roth's nameless hero (call him "EM") has been criticized for being more generic than universal, but he takes his place in a long and illustrious line. It is also generously inclusive. One recalls the spiritual quest of Ingmar Bergman's knight in "The Seventh Seal," buying time from Death while he struggles to reconcile suffering and evil with his religious faith. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby qualifies as an American Everyman in pursuit of the American dream. Similarly, Louis Begley's cancer-stricken hero in "Mistral's Exit" comes closer yet to Roth's version. But Mistral, who has been offered the choice of prolonging his life through debilitating treatment, defies his medical forecast to live his final months in Venice with the relative freedom his physical condition allows.
Like most of these figures, Roth's hero is Jewish, but not religious and, instead of pursuing his true love, a career in art, earns his livelihood in New York's commercial world. "He was too much the good boy, and, answering to his parents' wishes rather than his own, married, had children, and went into advertising to make a secure living. He never thought of himself as anything more than an average human being." When his first marriage proves to be a prison cell, he begins to "tunnel his way out." Isn't that what an average human being would do? In fact, he tunnels his way into two more marriages and a few affairs along the way. His two sons from his first marriage are unforgiving; his daughter Nancy from his second is adoring.
But Roth's EM does not embark on a spiritual quest for life's meaning, does not flame out in pursuit of the American dream, does not suffer any of the century's great catastrophes, or commit any self-defining moral act. In these respects, his hero is an anti-Everyman. Rather than his moral history, his medical history is depicted. "He was still in his sixties when his health began giving way and his body seemed threatened all the time." After a reasonably full life, "eluding death seemed to have become the central business of his life and bodily decay his entire story."
His first medical encounter had been a trip to the hospital at age 9 for a hernia. Accompanied by his devoted parents and operated on by a family friend, he was treated royally. He projected his anxieties and fears onto an injured boy in a neighboring bed whose disappearance in the morning is falsely construed as his death. In later years, Roth's EM will become that boy. After retiring, he contemplates an autobiography, titled "The Life and Death of a Male Body," which he uses for titles to his belated artwork.
As a 9-year-old, he could touch the troublesome bulge in his abdomen, but his later surgeries grow more abstract and anonymous. He had no warning when he suffered from acute appendicitis. After swimming his usual mile, a sudden shortness of breath leads to quintuple bypass surgery. On a later occasion, for a carotid endarterectomy, he simply drives in alone and sits in the waiting room. Things come full circle when a defibrillator, the "size of a cigarette lighter," is inserted in his chest, making a lump similar to the lower one corrected in his childhood.
Roth's hero is very much a material man. His jeweler father called his New Jersey outlet Everyman's Jewelry Store. "It's a big deal for working people to buy a diamond," he told his boys. It is a "piece of the earth that is imperishable, and a mere mortal is wearing it on her hand!" But unlike the earth, mere mortals have no immortal part. There is nothing beyond the grave, and what we leave behind are a few family memories along with our medical records. This is Roth's take on Everyman.
And in contrast to medieval Everyman's summoning his good deeds to argue on his behalf, Roth's EM finds no consolation in the past. His foray into psychoanalysis is futile, and he tells his daughter, "There's no remaking reality." Returning to his earlier love of art, he organizes painting classes in his retirement village. But he and his fellow seniors "become identical with their medical biographies." They come to identify one another by their ailments.
Roth, who insists he enjoys good health, has witnessed in recent years the growing loss and decline of his friends. Thus is his bleak vision bracketed, and within it his blighted hero does learn compassion. He may not be an Everyman for all time, but many will see him as one for our time.
Dan Dervin, a retired UMW professor, is now devoted to writing full time.
Everyman By Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin, |
