EVERYMAN by PHILIP ROTH

"Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre."

In the fifties, when pop-intellectualism was at its height, there was a series of records called "The Heart of the Symphony," a kind of K-Tel's greatest hits of Beethoven, Mozart and Bach with just the catchy bits, the dull stuff cut out. Philip Roth's Everyman has a similar intoxicating compactness to it, a man's life distilled to the worst of times. Nothing but regret, death, illness, loneliness and yet more regret, this taut novel is a bummer of the highest degree. That the novel is not subtitled "A Cautionary Tale" seems to be an editorial mistake.

A bitter musing on "The Life and Death of a Male Body," - the title of a never-writ autobiography of the unnamed protagonist - Roth reaches for a universality with the terror of growing old and losing the potency of youth. And, to a large degree, he achieves it, in that singular way that Roth does, flattering himself - and by extension, flattering his male readers in creating a hero undone by degrees, but virile to the last. Everyman is simple in structure, opening at the hero's funeral and then, starting from his youth, delineating each health and marital crisis until he is found "entering into nowhere without even knowing it." Loss in all of its disappointing forms is the sole subject of the novel. From the outset, we see the protagonist playing with broken watches at his father's jewelry shop while his hale and hearty brother busies himself with the jewels and the ladies. When he tried to fix the watches "generally he only made them worse." This foreshadowing is borne out as his heart provides him a decade and a half of prolonged difficulty, eventually being carried out into the void, as there was "no hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him." This utter lack of hope and absolute lack of meaning is frankly difficult to take. Roth presents happiness as not a blessing, or even the reward of good living, but rather as a rare cosmic accident. Our hero ultimately hates his successful brother, not for his impressive material gains, but for his good health. The surprise, then, is that Roth takes such a bluntly unlikable character and makes the reader feel for him for the fact that his body is failing him for no discernable reason.

Despite the depressing tone, Roth sprinkles moments of ecstasy in the book, carrying the

reader through. He takes moments of carnal pleasure and describes them with a lean muscularity that is both exhilarating and a little offensive, as in all of his novels. In Everyman, Roth seems to posit that all that we are doing in our slow shuffle off this mortal coil is yearning for our own youth: ...was the best of old age just that - the longing for the best of boyhood? the ecstasy of a whole day of being battered silly by the sea, the taste and smell intoxicated him so that he was driven to the brink of biting down with his teeth to tear a chunk of himself and savor his fleshly existence.

The temple of the flesh is presented as the one holy thing in the world, providing us with the only moments of transcendence and every failure leading up to and including the only true universal human quality of death. Roth's considerable gifts sometimes renders this truth in such exquisite beauty that one is scarcely bothered at the time.

The last few years have been oppressive ones for fans of Philip Roth. Once a libidinous bad boy a shonda for the Jews, a tonic for literaturehe has been elevated to something of a secular saint, praised and overpraised, for his trio of fat books (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain) on worldly topics (terrorism, McCarthyism, race). So its a relief to open Everyman, which at 192 pages feels like an attempt at something else entirely: a small-scale universality. If it fails in that task, it succeeds in almost every other way. Everyman takes its title from a medieval morality play, a nasty little allegory of what happens when the party ends. Called by Death, the central character is abandoned by his false friendsfriends, family, wealthand leans instead on Good Deeds, Strength, Beauty, Intelligence, and Knowledge. By plays end, he is alone: All but Good Deeds have left him, and he must confront his grave with Christian humility. The world he has left behind is drowned in synne, as God complains in the plays prologue, overflowing with pryde coueteyse wrathe and lechery. Pride, covetousness, wrath, and lechery are, of course, Roths specialty. And he supplies servings of each here, turning modern twists on Everymans search for meaning. Most noticeably, in Roths account, Everyman is not so much deserted as he is deserterhe abandons his first wife and their resentful sons, then cheats on his second wife and loving daughter. He pulls away from his brother, envious of his health. Only the forgiving child of his second marriage, Nancy, sticks by him. As for humility, that was never Roths strong suit. The book opens with the protagonists funeral, and early on, we are told that our central figure is reasonable and kindly, an amicable, moderate, industrious man, a square who took on a moneymaking career to support his family. But this attempt to distinguish author from character dissolves quickly. By the books end, our protagonist has

morphed into an anti-hero who more strongly resembles Everyroth: a cynical, secular Jewish prick with working-class pride, a yen forshiksas, and a terror that his seductive forces are fading. Like Portnoy and Roths other avatars, he isto put it in the positive sensethe man of appetite; a charming pig, cheating on his wives because the heart wants, etc. And an artist, of course: in this case, a gifted painter who made his fortune in advertising. To a more critical eye, Everyroth may appear something very different: a metronome of self-pity and pique. His signature trait is defensiveness. You wicked bastards! You sulky fuckers! You condemning little shits, he raves about the adult sons who will not absolve him for cheating on their mother. These rants can be wearying reminders of The Human Stain, a flawed book that returned obsessively to the questionable notion that elderly lechers are victims of a cruel world. The Human Stain was notable for the narrators unlikely lover, an absurd concatenation of all the Rothian motifsilliterate (but secretly not!), poor (but secretly not!), a goyishe exotic with occult sexual skills. Everyman has a similar fascination with sex on the sneak (and its own healing shiksas, including a salty Irish nurse), but it takes a more nuanced approach to its heros wrecking-ball libidothis is, after all, meant as a final accounting. Besides, Roths primary concern here is not sex but deathdeath as the event that blots out individuality more than any orgasm ever could. In Everymans memories, life itself narrows to a series of near escapes. As a 9-year-old about to be operated on for a hernia, Everyman sees the surgeon for the first time wearing a surgical gown and a white mask that changed everything about himhe might not even have been Dr. Smith but rather someone who had just wandered into the operating room and picked up a knife. At his fathers funeral, the dirt hitting the coffin makes the sound tha t is absorbed into ones being like no other. Watching family and friends tilt one by one toward the grave, he is forced to confront the horrible truth: Old age isnt a battle; old age is a massacre. And, step by step, his own body begins to come apart. His appendix bursts; he has one heart operation, then another. He suffers through a terrifying procedure without general anesthesia: It was a mistake, a barely endurable mistake, because the operation lasted two hours and his head was claustrophobically draped with a cloth, and the cutting and scraping took place so close to his ear, he could hear every move their instruments made as though he were inside an echo chamber. With bitter precision, Roth captures the way such catastrophes reduce us all to the dependence of childhood: the search for good news in a doctors voice, the struggle to learn medical jargon like a new language. Theres no God here, no afterlife. Instead, our protagonist tries to craft meaning from his own history and while others seek solace in art and in family, for him, these props drop away. Physical sensation is all that remains. Should he ever write an autobiography,Everyman muses at one point, hed call it The Life and Death of a Male Body. He clings to surges of desire, ogling girls on the beach with a neediness that even he finds pathetic. Finally, though, it is not young womens bodies that obsess him. It is his own. In some of Roths best passages, Everyman is consumed with a nearly autoerotic nostalgia for the pleasure with which he once consumed the worldnarcissism turned outward, magnifying the joys of life. Nothing could extinguish the vitality of that boy whose slender little torpedo of an unscathed body once rode the big Atlantic waves from a hundred yards out in the wild ocean all the way in to shore. Oh, the abandon of it, and the smell of the salt water and the scorching sun! Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea . . .

Roths vision is a bleak one, but at moments like these, theres beauty in it, too. Everyman may have drowned in sin, yes, but at least he enjoyed the swim on the way out.

Canto XLV
BY EZRA POUND

With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face, with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall harpes et luz or where virgin receiveth message and halo projects from incision, with usura seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper, with no mountain wheat, no strong flour with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling. Stonecutter is kept from his tone weaver is kept from his loom WITH USURA wool comes not to market sheep bringeth no gain with usura Usura is a murrain, usura blunteth the needle in the maids hand and stoppeth the spinners cunning. Pietro Lombardo came not by usura Duccio came not by usura nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin not by usura

nor was La Calunnia painted. Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis, Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit. Not by usura St. Trophime Not by usura Saint Hilaire, Usura rusteth the chisel It rusteth the craft and the craftsman It gnaweth the thread in the loom None learneth to weave gold in her pattern; Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered Emerald findeth no Memling Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young mans courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom CONTRA NATURAM They have brought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura.

N.B. Usury: A charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production. (Hence the failure of the Medici bank.)
"Usura slayeth the child in the womb ..." To explain the very meaning of this picture, it can be helpful to bring in mind one disgusting practice, at times carried out by soldiers onto the defenseless civil population. The belly of the pregnant women of their enemies would be cut open, the unborn children smashed on the ground. This indescribable act of violence was meant to symbolise the power over life and, moreover, the death of hope. Taking the word "subdue" to its extremes - here we are confronted with its ultimate alongation-, we can encounter the quintessence of the word usura, which is indeed the death of hope. But hope is yet not dead to man. It is "painted paradise on his church wall". This expression does not represent a transcendent idea. Pound is by no means refering to an otherwordly existence, to a blessed afterlife. The "church wall" in his Canto is a real, tangible church wall. The fresco on it is visible to the living eye. And both, the wall and the paiting, were made by the hand of man. According to Pound, and the way he depicts human activities in his Canto XLV, there is no gap beetween the stockman and the sculptor, between the painter and the peasant. (The artist does not appear to be the modern conversion of a priest, or the inhabitant of some aesthetic anti-world.) Procreating art is neither presented to us as a strict metaphysical engagement nor supposed to

serve as a compensation for a lost relegion. It is rather shown as a natural neccesity, as a complex labour, such as building a house, baking bread, weaving linen cloth. And neither one is being done with usura. In fact, nothing is being done with usura. Usura is the negation itself. It is the repressing of life, a destructive process and a lingering "ravage". It is an erosion and a wearout, corroding man, and everything he touches. "Usura rusteth the chisel, it rusteth the craft and the craftsman" Usura is the idle hand, a hand that is taking without giving in return. It cosumes the " substance" of this world, that equals the "substance" of man, leaving behind a wasteland, a wasted land - "terra usurata". Usura is the name for the way, mankind spent away paradise, trading it in - for nothing. If it is true that life is a struggle, then it is a struggle for more life. It was human pretentiousness that turned human life into a struggle for power. Instead of "completing" and "regenerating" the earth, man appointed himself as its owner, misjudging life and his own kind. Everything done without the love of life is a dead activity, not done to make a living, but to make profit and to increase power. A power over what is already dead or dying, and what man can only detest. Therefore Pound's Canto ends with the verse: "Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura"

Analysis and commentary of Canto XLV by Ezra Pound

Modernism firmly rejected industrial capitalism, which was considered as the cause of the degradation of humanity and arts (Strickland). Following this idea, Ezra Pound in his Canto XLV writes about usury[1], and how it corrupts society and, especially, art. The purpose of this paper is to analyse Pounds idea of usury and how it is reflected in his poem, first highlighting the effects of usury on the human race and, then, on arts. Written in free verse, Canto XLV starts saying that With usura hath no man a house of good stone (line 1). Its meaning seems to be obscure, but, from my point of view, the author refers to the idea of the house as a symbol of the hard work and the effort. Nevertheless, it is apparently not sufficient to work hard to have a dignified home if the worker is a victim of a usurer. Pound also believes that with

usura political and economical frontiers do not exist[2] (line 18). In my opinion, with this line published in 1937[3], Pound foreshadowed the foreign policy of the United States and the allies during the near World War II (1939-1945). A few years later, in 1942, Pound criticised the allies of being only united by one purpose, money: Gold. Nothing else uniting the three governments, England, Russia, United States of America (qtd. in Collins Piper). It was in the decade of the 1930s when the modernist poet openly accused the Jews of being usurers (Wilmer). However, it is remarkable to say that there is no reference of this affirmation in Canto XLV. According to Michael Collins Piper in What Did Ezra Pound Really Say?, usury and the control of money by private interests were the main concerns of Pound, evidenced in a broadcast given by the poet where he argued that There is no freedom without economic freedom(qtd. in Collins Piper). Moreover, Pounds thought that usury was the main cause of war throughout history and that it was important to understand this matter to understand history (Collins Piper). Furthermore, Pounds denounces that the man has difficulties in getting a place to live and that his job does not belong to him: and no man can find site for his dwelling/ Stone cutter is kept from his stone/ weaver is kept from his loom (lines 19-21). In lines 42-43, the poet claims, with a borrowing, that usury goes CONTRA NATURA, since it assassinates the child inside the mother, impedes the youth to woo and hinders the bride and the bridegroom from having sexual relations. In other words, usury also affects the natural laws. With regard to the effect of usury on art, Claire Colebrook states that for Pound artists could develop, choose and determine the very forms of experience in the past, specifically in the Renaissance; nevertheless, this situation is impossible to reach in a world where money rules the world. According to Pound, Pietro Lombardo, Duccio, Pier della Francesca, Zuan Bellin, La Callunia, Angelico, Ambrosio Praedis[4], and St Trophine and St Hilaire (lines 2732) were examples of artists and works of art that had not been dominated by the

market. Although the repetition of the word usura is considerable throughout the entire canto, it is in these lines (27-32) where this word appears more times, attaching more importance to the effect of usury on the production of artistic forms. In conclusion, Canto XLV is a perfect example of what Pounds thought of industrial capitalism and its consequences in society. The modernist poet was worried about the dehumanised world which he lived in at that time, but, in my opinion, his main concern was the artistic production, as we could see above. This canto, as well as the majority of Pounds work, requires a high degree of the readers competence due to the volume of cultural references. However, this does not mean that the reader cannot enjoy the poem after acquiring the essential information to understand it.