Philip Roth-Patrimony
By Kyran Lucien
Patrimony is an intimate and touching album of memories on Philip Roth´s father last years of life. It is as well a celebration on the life of a man whose extraordinary vitality and complex personality are the source of one of Mr. Roth´s richest and controverted characters ever. The love of the son for his father takes the writers mind to a tour the force through the whole of his family experiences to explain and re-create every possible memory in time that could explain the man as a whole and to deal with the extreme pain of being human, it is an attempt not to understand but to accept the sad destiny of humanity. Death. Why a man should die....? Herman Roth asks his son as well as he asks himself. Philip Roth makes the same question to all of us, and even though we know there´s no answer at all, we share and live with them that most dreadful and deeply embedded fear of all. Death is our common destiny, we will be sooner or later face to face with the final moment of our existence and it is up to us only how we are gonna received this uninvited and much despised guest. Through Herman and Philip Roth we see ourselves dealing with an intense gathering of emotions that can only be lived between creator and creation. Fortunately for Philip Roth, the final sum of feelings is a very good one. His father was a very stubborn man, but a stubborn man who loved deeply his family and fought for them. With some incongruence and lack of tact, yes, but with a great deal of love. Philip Roth is a proud son and a loving son. That I think is the best gift Herman Roth could ever have expected. The patrimony, a totally unexpected one, that is what Philip Roth receives at the end of his father´s life, and he receives it with a total submission, whether good or bad, his patrimony is the greatest proof of his love for his father through the ordeal of his last years, and he made his father sure he was loved and appreciated. Not everybody can feel so rewarded in life as they were. Patrimony is a novel that can be placed among the greatest things Philip Roth has ever written.
