Everyman, de Philip Roth

Publica La Nación. Por Livia Manera (Corriere della Sera)

La nueva, espléndida novela de Philip Roth, "Everyman", comienza con un funeral en un cementerio expuesto al vandalismo de la periferia de Nueva York y termina con una operación mortal a la que el paciente se somete en un momento de vital optimismo (nunca se diga que Roth carece de ironía). Entre estos dos bastidores de teatro, sin embellecimientos y sin pretensiones, pone en escena un drama universal: envejecer es insoportable, humillante. Pero nadie es tan viejo como para no esperar tener derecho al menos a otro día más de vida. Leída así, mientras se espera que irrumpa en las librerías norteamericanas y en las páginas literarias de los diarios de todo el mundo con el clamor que corresponde al libro más esperado del año, esta novela breve (editada por Houghton Miflin Company) que toma el título de un pilar del teatro anglosajón medieval en el que la Muerte dialoga con Everyman, es decir con el hombre que nos representa a todos ("¡Oh, Muerte, has llegado cuando menos pensaba en ti!"), es atormentadora, pero es también la amarga carcajada de un escritor furioso por estar envejeciendo que ruge, despotrica, protesta y se desespera mientras afila todas las armas a su disposición para permanecer. El crítico literario del prestigioso The Atlantic Monthly, Joseph O´Neill, se arriesgó a formular este juicio: "Utilicemos una palabra que nunca he usado antes: obra maestra". La historia es simple. Un hombre de setenta y dos años (la edad de Roth) ha muerto y el día de su funeral, "como siempre cuando muere alguien, aunque haya personas destruidas por el dolor, hay otras a las que no las ha rozado o se sienten aliviadas, o bien, con razón o sin ella, están sinceramente contentas por ese fallecimiento". El hombre era un publicitario, había vivido en Nueva York gran parte de la vida. Era también un pintor y se había mudado a la costa de Nueva Jersey cuando la jubilación y el 11 de septiembre introdujeron un sentido de precariedad en su existencia. Se había casado tres veces, había tenido tres hijos, y como adúltero nunca fue lo suficientemente astuto como para enamorarse de mujeres ya ocupadas. Por eso la rencorosa primera mujer del protagonista está ausente en su funeral, los dos hijos de su primer matrimonio lo sepultan odiándolo, su tercera hija -Nancy- lo llora junto a la madre (esposa número dos) medio inválida y conmovida, y la tercera mujer, una modelito danesa muy particular que, como muchas heroínas de Roth, "tenía la capacidad de llevar todo lo erótico al límite" y de ser -por lo tanto- irresistible, pone mucho cuidado en no hacerse ver. Pobre finado que, desde ese momento, revivirá en esas páginas sus debilidades y sus errores: "Sólo distraídamente le pasó por la cabeza que era un poco ilusorio a los cincuenta años pensar que podía encontrar un agujero capaz de sustituir cualquier otra cosa". En el funeral, también está Howie, el hermano mayor que hizo fortuna en el olimpo financiero de la compañía Goldman Sachs y que, antes de provocar con su salud desvergonzada la envidia y el alejamiento resentido del protagonista, había sido su héroe desde cuando, de chicos, escuchaban al padre hablar en yiddish con los judíos ortodoxos que venían a abastecerse en la "Everyman´s Jewlery Store", la joyería que este descendiente de inmigrantes paupérrimos había abierto con temeridad en plena Depresión en 1933 y cerrado en 1974, después de haber vendido -también gracias a un letrero genial- alianzas nupciales a tres generaciones de inmigrantes de la pequeña ciudad de Elisabeth, Nueva Jersey. Esto sería más o menos todo, con el agregado de los acostumbrados achaques ocasionales y desgracias de la vida: una operación de hernia inguinal padecida de niño ("Hubiera podido jurar que el cirujano, cualquiera que fuese, le había susurrado: ?ahora te convierto en una chica´"); una peritonitis enviada del cielo a los treinta y cuatro años, y tres o cuatro intervenciones de bypass que volvieron a este hombre mucho más solo y frágil de cuanto hubiese imaginado cuando ya la única mujer que había quedado en su vida era su hija Nancy. Como dijimos, eso sería todo si Philip Roth no fuese Philip Roth. Y si su escritura no estuviese al timón del relato. Y además están sus temas de siempre, los que vuelven una y otra vez desde 1959, cuando con "Goodbye, Columbus" comenzó a preguntarse si un ser humano inteligente podría ser considerado algo más que un fabricante de equívocos en escala industrial. Está el erotismo que crea todo y destruye todo y que no tiene edad: el erotismo que en el funeral del protagonista se encarna socarronamente en una enfermera de 48 años que el tiempo ha vuelto robusta y que deja resbalar un puñado de tierra en la fosa de su ex paciente "con un gesto que pareció el preludio a un acto carnal". Está esa "singularidad sublime que marca un nuevo encuentro sexual" y que aquí se contrapone a la despersonalización que lleva consigo la enfermedad grave. Está el ateísmo como necesidad racional ("La religión era una mentira que había identificado tempranamente") y está el desencanto. Pero sobre todo, esta vez, hay un destino cínico y estafador que no se contenta con que uno envejezca, sufra y muera. Se lleva antes de uno a los amigos, a los colegas de trabajo o a los jefes que, aun sabiendo que uno la pasaba bien con la secretaria a cuatro patas, a pesar de todo eso, no echaban a nadie. "La vejez no es una batalla. La vejez es una masacre." Pero la literatura en cambio es vida y, si el hombre es el único animal que contempla la muerte pero también el único que duda de su finalidad, el escritor y el artista son aquellos que se encargan de vengar su fugacidad. Y en esto se convierte Everyman a los ojos del lector: una venganza en la cual un hombre, un escritor, lúcidamente controlado en la forma pero agresivo y pasional en las emociones, combate contra el olvido en un encuentro frontal. Lo hace a su manera, naturalmente. Un poco conmovido también él ("La ternura era incontrolable. Así como lo era el deseo que todos habían vivido. Habría que volver a tener todo desde el principio"). Un poco irónico ("Tienes algo extraño", dice en cierto momento Nancy al padre, mientras observa preocupada su rostro. "Sí, es cierto. -responde él- Nací en 1933"). Y un poco despreciativo. "¿Sabe por qué se comporta así?", le dice al protagonista, durante un funeral -otro, enésimo funeral- un desconocido crispado por los sollozos de la mujer que tiene a su lado, que probablemente sea su esposa. "Creo que sí", responde el otro en voz baja mientras piensa: "Porque para ella es como para mí desde que era muchacho. Y porque es así para todos. Y porque la intensidad más perturbadora de la vida es la muerte. Y porque la muerte es así de injusta. Porque una vez que uno ha saboreado la vida, la muerte no parece ni siquiera natural..." "Y bien, se equivoca", le reprocha secamente el desconocido, como si hubiese escuchado el pensamiento del protagonista. "Ella siempre fue así. Escucho la misma cantilena desde hace cincuenta años". Y echándole una mirada de condena, agrega: "Es así porque ya no tiene dieciocho años".
Philip Roth´s Latest Man Without Much to Show for Life. By MICHIKO KAKUTANI.April 26, 2006 The New York Times.

"Everyman," the title of Philip Roth´s flimsy new novel, announces that the book"s hero is meant to be a sort of representational figure: an average Joe, an ordinary guy, an homme moyen sensuel. At one point Mr. Roth even describes this character as "an average human being," whose autobiography might be called "The Life and Death of a Male Body." The problem is, this nameless fellow turns out to be generic, rather than universal: a faceless cutout of a figure who feels like a composite assembled from bits and pieces of earlier Roth characters. Spending time with this guy is like being buttonholed at a party by a remote acquaintance who responds to a casual "Hi, how are you?" with a half-hour whinge-fest about his physical ailments, medical treatments and spiritual complaints.He"s another one of this author"s aging narcissists, increasingly isolated and forlorn and bitter; another dutiful son, torn between responsibility and rebellion; another restless womanizer continually trading in one year"s model for the next. As for his life story, it"s been orchestrated to underscore themes that Mr. Roth has examined with more energy and originality many, many times before: the notions that freedom can devolve into rootlessness and dislocation, that sex is a flimsy bulwark against mortality, that the dizzying gap between expectations and reality can induce vertigo in even the hardiest of souls.Like Kepesh in "The Dying Animal" (2001), this novel"s hero is a lonely old geezer, filled with anger and regrets about his past and frightened by the approaching fact of death. Like Nathan Zuckerman in "The Anatomy Lesson" (1983), he is an emotionally bankrupt man, livid at the loss of his vitality and youth and health. And like the Philip character in "The Plot Against America" (2004), he is former New Jersey boy, nostalgic for the idyll of his vanished boyhood, the warmth and safety of his childhood nest.We learn that this man was the younger son of a hardworking jewelry store owner, who praised his two children as "the thorough, careful, hardworking boys you were brought up to be." His brother, Howie, he recalls, "never failed to soothe him and come to his aid," his mother doted on him, and his father entrusted him with transporting diamonds back and forth from the store. As a boy he loved the ocean, and loved to body surf on the waves.A glimpse of a drowned body that had washed up on shore, however, gives the boy a harrowing apprehension of mortality, an awareness of death that will become more pronounced after a hospital visit at the age of 9, and a series of surgeries later on in life.Over the years Mr. Roth"s hero develops a palpable fear of the grave. At 34, he takes a nighttime walk along the beach on Martha"s Vineyard with his girlfriend and experiences a terrible sense of dread: "The profusion of stars told him unambiguously that he was doomed to die, and the thunder of the sea only yards away — and the nightmare of the blackest blackness beneath the frenzy of the water — made him want to run from the menace of oblivion to their cozy, lighted, underfurnished house." In the course of "Everyman" Mr. Roth captures the more depressing aspects of aging: illness, frailty, dependency, isolation, loneliness, a loss of physical beauty and vigor, a growing awareness of limits and limitations, and an apprehension that death looms ever closer. But these harrowing evocations of age and infirmity do not a novel make. This book often reads like a laundry list of complaints about the human condition: an existential litany of grievances, regrets and disappointments, many of them expertly described but all peculiarly abstract, given the hero"s oddly sketchy life.With the exception of his childhood memories of his father"s jewelry shop, which possess a touching emotional specificity, this man"s story is depicted in spindly, cartoonlike terms: one impossible wife, one saintly wife, one ditsy airhead of a wife; two resentful, sourpuss sons, one doting daughter; several decades in the advertising game, followed by a stint in retirement as an amateur artist. All are delineated in a brusque, summary manner, as if Mr. Roth couldn"t be bothered with filling in the details, or wanted to leave those details deliberately vague in a misguided effort to make his hero more of a representative man.The allusions to King Lear — including the doting daughter, whose devotion stands in sharp contrast to the perfidy of the other two children — feel labored and contrived, and instead of adding resonance to this etiolated tale they simply underscore the story"s hollowness, the sense that it is a cobbled-together production of a writer coasting wearily along on automatic pilot.
Interview with Philip RothBy CHARLES McGRATHPhilip Roth, now 73, is in excellent health. He had back surgery a year ago but is fully recovered. He exercises faithfully, avoids red meat and consumes a morning ration of Great Grains cereal. Proof of his fitness is the jacket photo for his new novel, "Everyman," which is being published by Houghton Mifflin. This is the first time in ages that Mr. Roth, famously private and publicity-averse, has allowed his likeness to appear on one of his books.The reason for Mr. Roth"s pre-emptive photographic strike is that "Everyman" is a book about mortality. It begins in a graveyard and ends on the operating table. And Mr. Roth is hoping that the pictorial evidence on the book"s jacket will stave off autobiographical interpretations. "I figure this will halve the number of phone calls from kind friends saying, "I didn"t know you were so sick," " he said recently. "Everyman" is a slender volume of less than 200 pages. In that brief span, the novel"s nameless protagonist, a retired advertising man, undergoes a series of increasingly drastic surgical procedures. Stents, angioplasties, operations to ream out his carotids and one to install an interior defibrillator. Nor is he the only one not doing so well. One of his ex-wives has a stroke. Another character, having already lost her husband to brain cancer, commits suicide after her back pain becomes too much to bear. "Old age isn"t a battle," the protagonist thinks to himself after calling a former colleague who is dying in a hospice. "Old age is a massacre.""This book came out of what was all around me, which was something I never expected — that my friends would die," Mr. Roth said. "If you"re lucky, your grandparents will die when you"re, say, in college. Mine died when I was a schoolboy. If you"re lucky, your parents will live until you"re somewhere in your 50"s; if you"re very lucky, into your 60"s. You won"t ever die, and your children, certainly, will never die before you. That"s the deal, that"s the contract. But in this contract nothing is written about your friends, so when they start dying, it"s a gigantic shock."There was a long, melancholy stretch, Mr. Roth said, when it seemed he was attending a memorial service every six months or so, and it culminated a year ago with the death of Saul Bellow, with whom he had grown particularly close in the years after Bellow left Chicago and moved to Boston, closer to Mr. Roth"s home in Connecticut. "It should have dawned on me that Saul was going to die," he said. "He was 89, I think, when he died. Yet his death was very hard to accept, and I began to write this book the day after his burial. It"s not about him — it has nothing to do with him — but I"d just come from a cemetery, and that got me going."Mr. Roth added that when he began thinking of novels about death and illness — not just books in which sick people die, but those that take illness as their main subject — he couldn"t come up with many beyond the obvious: Mann"s "Magic Mountain," Solzhenitsyn"s "Cancer Ward" and Tolstoy"s "Death of Ivan Ilyich." "Many great books treated adultery," he said, "but very few have treated disease. So I thought to make this man"s biography his medical history — just make the medical history the narrative line — and see what happened." The title "Everyman," which is an allusion to the medieval morality play, was not exactly an afterthought, Mr. Roth said; more nearly a halfway thought. "I think I went all the way through the first draft without realizing the character didn"t have a name," he explained, "and then it struck me as useful to deliberately keep it out." As soon as the Everyman connection occurred to him, Mr. Roth took down the "Survey of Western Literature" text he used in his freshman year at Bucknell and reread the play, in which a nameless figure is called to account for his life, for the first time in years."It was hair-raising," he said. "All the terror that"s in it. It"s told from the Christian perspective, which I don"t share; it"s an allegory, a genre I find unpalatable; it"s didactic in tone, which I can"t stand. Nonetheless there"s a simplicity of approach and directness of language that is very powerful."In a passage early on, Everyman meets a messenger and says something like, You"re not a messenger, and the messenger allows that he is indeed Death. Everyman is startled. He says, "Oh Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind." The line just knocked me for a loop."Not all the research was so gloomy. The father of the novel"s protagonist is the owner of a jewelry shop, and Mr. Roth, who as a student worked briefly in the jewelry department of the old Bamberger"s in Newark, said he enjoyed teaching himself about clocks and watches. "I was never in business, but I certainly get a kick out of writing about business," he added. He even made a field trip to a jewelry story, but not to the 47th Street diamond district, he said, because "I figured they"d just say, "Do you want to buy or not?" "Instead he walked north on Broadway until he found a shop run by a Dominican who didn"t mind talking to him. Mr. Roth was prepared to pretend he was buying an engagement ring and even had $500 in his pocket he was ready to spend, but in the end it proved unnecessary. "I got off scot-free," he said.Mr. Roth declined to talk about what he was working on now except to say that he thought it would be about the same length as "Everyman." He explained: "The thing about this length that I"ve particularly come to like is that you can get the impact of a novel, which arises from its complexity and the thoroughness of detail, but you can also get the impact you get from a short story, because a good reader can keep the whole thing in mind. Motifs can be repeated, and they will be remembered."He paused and added: "You know, I used to talk this way about the pleasure of writing long novels. If I go into the plumbing business next week, I suppose I"ll be talking this way about toilets." Correction: April 27, 2006 An article in The Arts on Tuesday about Philip Roth and his new novel, "Everyman," misstated his recent policy regarding author photographs. His picture appeared inside the jacket of "The Plot Against America" in 2004; the one on "Everyman" is not the first he has allowed in recent times.