{"product_id":"everyman-isbn-9780307277718","title":"Everyman","description":"\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE PEN\/FAULKNER AWARD \u003cb\u003e• \u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eA candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Pastoral\u003c\/i\u003e and “our most accomplished novelist” (\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e) turns his attention to one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes. The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.\"Our most accomplished novelist.... [With \u003ci\u003eEveryman\u003c\/i\u003e] personal tenderness has reached  a new intensity.\" \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “If descriptive amplitude went out with the nineteenth  century, Philip Roth, who strides the whole time and territory of the word, has resuscitated  it—in description revved with the power of narrative itself.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times  Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Let's use a noun I've never used before: masterpiece.\"\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eAtlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[Roth is] as essential to the experience of modern America–its literature, history,  and moral reckoning–as any writer on the planet.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003ePHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for \u003ci\u003eAmerican Pastoral\u003c\/i\u003e. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ethe White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eAcademy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eHe twice won the National Book Award and the National\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eBook Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN\/Faulkner\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eAward three times. In 2005 \u003ci\u003eThe Plot Against America \u003c\/i\u003ereceived\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ethe Society of American Historians’ Prize for “the outstanding\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ehistorical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004.”\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eRoth received PEN’s two most prestigious awards:\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ein 2006 the PEN\/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN\/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. In 2011 he received the National Humanities\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eMedal at the White House, and was later named the fourth\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003erecipient of the Man Booker International Prize. He died in 2018.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. There were also people who'd driven  up from Starfish Beach, the residential retirement village at the Jersey Shore where  he'd been living since Thanksgiving of 2001--the elderly to whom only recently he'd  been giving art classes. And there were his two sons, Randy and Lonny, middle-aged  men from his turbulent first marriage, very much their mother's children, who as  a consequence knew little of him that was praiseworthy and much that was beastly  and who were present out of duty and nothing more. His older brother, Howie, and  his sister-in-law were there, having flown in from California the night before, and  there was one of his three ex-wives, the middle one, Nancy's mother, Phoebe, a tall,  very thin white-haired woman whose right arm hung limply at her side. When asked  by Nancy if she wanted to say anything, Phoebe shyly shook her head but then went  ahead to speak in a soft voice, her speech faintly slurred. \"It's just so hard to  believe. I keep thinking of him swimming the bay--that's all. I just keep seeing  him swimming the bay.\" And then Nancy, who had made her father's funeral arrangements  and placed the phone calls to those who'd showed up so that the mourners wouldn't  consist of just her mother, herself, and his brother and sister-in-law. There was  only one person whose presence hadn't to do with having been invited, a heavyset  woman with a pleasant round face and dyed red hair who had simply appeared at the  cemetery and introduced herself as Maureen, the private duty nurse who had looked  after him following his heart surgery years back. Howie remembered her and went up  to kiss her cheek.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nancy told everyone, \"I can begin by saying something to you  about this cemetery, because I've discovered that my father's grandfather, my great-grandfather,  is not only buried in the original few acres alongside my great-grandmother but was  one of its founders in 1888. The association that first financed and erected the  cemetery was composed of the burial societies of Jewish benevolent organizations  and congregations scattered across Union and Essex counties. My great-grandfather  owned and ran a boarding house in Elizabeth that catered especially to newly arrived  immigrants, and he was concerned with their well-being as more than a mere landlord.  That's why he was among the original members who purchased the open field that was  here and who themselves graded and landscaped it, and why he served as the first  cemetery chairman. He was relatively young then but in his full vigor, and it's his  name alone that is signed to the document specifying that the cemetery was for `burying  deceased members in accordance with Jewish law and ritual.' As is all too obvious,  the maintenance of individual plots and of the fencing and the gates is no longer  what it should be. Things have rotted and toppled over, the gates are rusted, the  locks are gone, there's been vandalism. By now the place has become the butt end  of the airport and what you're hearing from a few miles away is the steady din of  the New Jersey Turnpike. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf course I thought first of the truly beautiful places  where my father might be buried, the places where he and my mother used to swim together  when they were young, and the places where he loved to swim at the shore. Yet despite  the fact that looking around at the deterioration here breaks my heart--as it probably  does yours, and perhaps even makes you wonder why we're assembled on grounds so badly  scarred by time--I wanted him to lie close to those who loved him and from whom he  descended. My father loved his parents and he should be near them. I didn't want  him to be somewhere alone.\" She was silent for a moment to collect herself. A gentle-faced  woman in her mid-thirties, plainly pretty as her mother had been, she looked all  at once in no way authoritative or even brave but like a ten-year-old overwhelmed.  Turning toward the coffin, she picked up a clod of dirt and, before dropping it onto  the lid, said lightly, with the air still of a bewildered young girl, \"Well, this  is how it turns out. There's nothing more we can do, Dad.\" Then she remembered his  own stoical maxim from decades back and began to cry. \"There's no remaking reality,\"  she told him. \"Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The next to throw dirt onto the lid of the coffin was Howie, who'd been the object  of his worship when they were children and in return had always treated him with  gentleness and affection, patiently teaching him to ride a bike and to swim and to  play all the sports in which Howie himself excelled. It still appeared as if he could  run a football through the middle of the line, and he was seventy-seven years old.  He'd never been hospitalized for anything and, though a sibling bred of the same  stock, had remained triumphantly healthy all his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His voice was husky with  emotion when he whispered to his wife, \"My kid brother. It makes no sense.\" Then  he too addressed everyone. \"Let's see if I can do it. Now let's get to this guy.  About my brother ...\" He paused to compose his thoughts so that he could speak sensibly.  His way of talking and the pleasant pitch of his voice were so like his brother's  that Phoebe began to cry, and, quickly, Nancy took her by the arm. \"His last few  years,\" he said, gazing toward the grave, \"he had health problems, and there was  also loneliness--no less a problem. We spoke on the phone whenever we could, though  near the end of his life he cut himself off from me for reasons that were never clear.  From the time he was in high school he had an irresistible urge to paint, and after  he retired from advertising, where he'd made a considerable success first as an art  director and then when he was promoted to be a creative director--after a life in  advertising he painted practically every day of every year that was left to him.  We can say of him what has doubtless been said by their loved ones about nearly everyone  who is buried here: he should have lived longer. He should have indeed.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere, after  a moment's silence, the resigned look of gloom on his face gave way to a sorrowful  smile. \"When I started high school and had team practice in the afternoons, he took  over the errands that I used to run for my father after school. He loved being only  nine years old and carrying the diamonds in an envelope in his jacket pocket onto  the bus to Newark, where the setter and the sizer and the polisher and the watch  repairman our father used each sat in a cubbyhole of his own, tucked away on Frelinghuysen  Avenue. Those trips gave that kid enormous pleasure. I think watching these artisans  doing their lonely work in those tight little places gave him the idea for using  his hands to make art. I think looking at the facets of the diamonds through my father's  jewelry loupe is something else that fostered his desire to make art.\" A laugh suddenly  got the upper hand with Howie, a little flurry of relief from his task, and he said,  \"I was the conventional brother. In me diamonds fostered a desire to make money.\"  Then he resumed where he'd left off, looking through the large sunny window of their  boyhood years. \"Our father took a small ad in the Elizabeth Journal once a month.  During the holiday season, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he took the ad once  a week. `Trade in your old watch for a new one.' \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll these old watches that he accumulated--most  of them beyond repair--were dumped in a drawer in the back of the store. My little  brother could sit there for hours, spinning the hands and listening to the watches  tick, if they still did, and studying what each face and what each case looked like.  That's what made that boy tick. A hundred, two hundred trade-in watches, the entire  drawerful probably worth no more than ten bucks, but to his budding artist's eye,  that backroom watch drawer was a treasure chest. He used to take them and wear them--he  always had a watch that was out of that drawer. One of the ones that worked. And  the ones he tried to make work, whose looks he liked, he'd fiddle around with but  to no avail--generally he'd only make them worse. Still, that was the beginning of  his using his hands to perform meticulous tasks. My father always had two girls just  out of high school, in their late teens or early twenties, helping him behind the  counter in the store. Nice, sweet Elizabeth girls, well-mannered, clean-cut girls,  always Christian, mainly Irish Catholic, whose fathers and brothers and uncles worked  for Singer Sewing Machine or for the biscuit company or down at the port. He figured  nice Christian girls would make the customers feel more at home. If asked to, the  girls would try on the jewelry for the customers, model it for them, and if we were  lucky, the women would wind up buying. As my father told us, when a pretty young  woman wears a piece of jewelry, other women think that when they wear the piece of  jewelry they'll look like that too. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe guys off the docks at the port who came in  looking for engagement rings and wedding rings for their girlfriends would sometimes  have the temerity to take the salesgirl's hand in order to examine the stone up close.  My brother liked to be around the girls too, and that was long before he could even  begin to understand what it was he was enjoying so much. He would help the girls  empty the window and the showcases at the end of the day. He'd do anything at all  to help them. They'd empty the windows and cases of everything but the cheapest stuff,  and just before closing time this little kid would open the big safe in the backroom  with the combination my father had entrusted to him. I'd done all these jobs before  him, including getting as close as I could to the girls, especially to two blond  sisters named Harriet and May. Over the years there was Harriet, May, Annmarie, Jean,  there was Myra, Mary, Patty, there was Kathleen and Corine, and every one of them  took a shine to that kid. Corine, the great beauty, would sit at the workbench in  the backroom in early November and she and my kid brother would address the catalogues  the store printed up and sent to all the customers for the holiday buying season,  when my father was open six nights a week and everybody worked like a dog. If you  gave my brother a box of envelopes, he could count them faster than anybody because  his fingers were so dexterous and because he counted the envelopes by fives. I'd  look in and, sure enough, that's what he'd be doing--showing off with the envelopes  for Corine. How that boy loved doing everything that went along with being the jeweler's  reliable son! That was our father's favorite accolade--`reliable.' \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the years  our father sold wedding rings to Elizabeth's Irish and Germans and Slovaks and Italians  and Poles, most of them young working-class stiffs. Half the time, after he'd made  the sale, we'd be invited, the whole family, to the wedding. People liked him--he  had a sense of humor and he kept his prices low and he extended credit to everyone,  so we'd go--first to the church, then on to the noisy festivities. There was the  Depression, there was the war, but there were also the weddings, there were our salesgirls,  there were the trips to Newark on the bus with hundreds of dollars' worth of diamonds  stashed away in envelopes in the pockets of our mackinaws. On the outside of each  envelope were the instructions for the setter or the sizer written by our father.  There was the five-foot-high Mosley safe slotted for all the jewelry trays that we  carefully put away every night and removed every morning ... and all of this constituted  the core of my brother's life as a good little boy.\" Howie's eyes rested on the coffin  again. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And now what?\" he asked. \"I think this had better be all there is. Going  on and on, remembering still more ... but why not remember? What's another gallon  of tears between family and friends? When our father died my brother asked me if  I minded if he took our father's watch. It was a Hamilton, made in Lancaster, P-A,  and according to the expert, the boss, the best watch this country ever produced.  Whenever he sold one, our father never failed to assure the customer that he'd made  no mistake. `See, I wear one myself. A very, very highly respected watch, the Hamilton.  To my mind,' he'd say, `the premier American-made watch, bar none.' Seventy-nine  fifty, if I remember correctly. Everything for sale in those days had to end in fifty.  Hamilton had a great reputation. It was a classy watch, my dad did love his, and  when my brother said he'd like to own it, I couldn't have been happier. He could  have taken the jeweler's loupe and our father's diamond carrying case. That was the  worn old leather case that he would always carry with him in his coat pocket whenever  he went to do business outside the store: with the tweezers in it, and the tiny screwdrivers  and the little ring of sizers that gauge the size of a round stone and the folded  white papers for holding the loose diamonds. The beautiful, cherished little things  he worked with, which he held in his hands and next to his heart, yet we decided  to bury the loupe and the case and all its contents in his grave. He always kept  the loupe in one pocket and his cigarettes in the other, so we stuck the loupe inside  his shroud. I remember my brother saying, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e`By all rights we should put it in his  eye.' That's what grief can do to you. That's how thrown we were. We didn't know  what else to do. Rightly or wrongly, there didn't seem to us anything but that to  do. Because they were not just his--they were him ... To finish up about the Hamilton,  my father's old Hamilton with the crown that you would turn to wind it every morning  and that you would pull out on its stem to turn to move the hands ... except while  he was in swimming, my brother wore it day and night.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300710699237,"sku":"NP9780307277718","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307277718.jpg?v=1767726459","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/everyman-isbn-9780307277718","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}