Patrimony : A True Story - Softcover

Roth, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671758624 ISBN 13: 9780671758622

Publisher: Touchstone Books, 1992

Synopsis

The best-selling author offers his poignant, sometimes witty, observations of the physical decline and death of his own father in a touching memoir of the love between father and son. By the author of Portnoy's Complaint. Reprint. NYT.

About this title

Review:

With the honesty of a skilled biographer and the sensitivity of a caring son, Roth chronicles the life of his father, Herman, in this gripping work which won a 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award. Roth holds little back in describing his father as a man of rare intensity and fierce independence who, for better or worse, stood by his principles and held others to his own rigorous standards. Writes Roth, "His obsessive stubbornness--his stubborn obsessiveness--had very nearly driven my mother to a breakdown in her final years." Frank throughout, Roth calls his father "a pitiless realist, but I wasn't his offspring for nothing, and I could be pretty realistic, too."

From the Back Cover:

"A tough-minded, beautifully written memoir. . . . It smacks of honesty and truthfulness on every page." —San Francisco Chronicle

"A deeply resonant portrait of a father and son. . . . Roth has looked past all comfort and condolence to find the truth—about himself and his father; about death and the fear of it; and about the absolute vulnerability to which love condemns us all." —Chicago Tribune

"In a cunningly straightforward way, Patrimony tells one of the central true stories many Americans share nowadays. . . . Such telling is a marvel of artful wit and vigor. . . . It is the triumphant art of the literal . . . the gloriously pragmatic, unpredictable genius of Philip Roth's narrative gifts." —The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0671758624
• ISBN 13: 9780671758622
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 238