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If I have it my way, I would have included the book in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Why? This book teaches, or reminds, us on what really matters in life. This prepares us on what to do when it is time to face the music: of getting old, of facing death. I know that sounds like a cliché, but Roth seemed to have poured his heart out in this book. Roth was 71 when he was writing this and the sequence of his life, e.g., series of sickness and divorces, is said to parallel the life of the unnamed narrator in this book. So, while reading the book, I felt I was reading Roth’s narrating as himself. And boy, he is in pain!

The story opens during the narrator’s burial day. In attendance are his few loved ones. Judging from the number of the people witnessing his coffin being lowered to the ground and listening to the thoughts of the people who he might have loved or might have loved him, one can right away deduce that his was not a well-lived life. He died at 71 yet he agonized finally living this world with his what-if’s, what I could have done better, what went wrong, etc.

I dog-eared some of the pages with some of the thought-provoking lines that I encountered and they are enough to summarize the message of this book without spewing spoilers:

”There’s no remaking reality,�� she told him. “Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes.�� p.5

This line is uttered by the narrator’s daughter Nancyby his second marriage. She is the only two �� the other being his older brother Howie who seems to have loved the narrator, her father, sincerely. I loved Nancy because I hope or I know to some extent that my own daughter would be like her when I become really old and gray.

”You wicked bastards! You sulky fuckers! You condemning little shits! Would everything be different, he asked himself, if I’d been different and done things differently? Would it all be less lonely than it is now? Of course it would! But this is what I did! I am seventy-one. This is the man I have made. This is what I did to get here, and there’s nothing more to be said!��pp. 97-98

While Nancy is sprinkling the dirt (soil) unto her father's coffin, Roth presents the back story of the narrator, told in the narrator’s (corpse) point-of-view. So, the narrator speaks to the reader in monologue akin to Hamlet spewing his innermost thoughts mostly in anger, pain, regret and utter loneliness. There are many lines like this and so the narration could really be depressing. Don’t read this book if you want a happy read!

”Old age is a battle, dear, if not with this (drug), then with that (weariness). It’s an unrelenting battle and just that when you’re at your weakest and least to call up your old fight.��pp. 143-144

The words in parenthesis are my interpretation based on the previous statements in this hospital scene when the narrator’s health condition is turning from worse to worst. This metaphor of battle for old age is introduced in the portion but will be reversed by Roth later in the next quote like a two-step ascending crescendo in a dark funereal orchestra.

”Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.��p. 156

Probably the most quoted part of this book’s narrative. It is a reality that old age leads us to death. Prior to that, it makes us ugly: wrinkles, expanding waistline, stooping posture, white hairs, shrinking, fluffier face, swollen joints, pigmented and dull skin, etc. However, for me, focusing on these is forgetting that: Old age is a bliss too. If you played your cards well when you are young and strong, chances are you are financially-secured when you become old and frail: no more children’s education to support, debt-free so you can sleep all you want, you can get up in the morning really late, you can read all the books you want, you can see all the movies you fancy seeing and you can do nasty things to young people and they would ignore or forgive you quite easily compared when you were younger and so people were less forgiving.

However, this last phrase nicely recaps all the quotes above. During the last years of our life on earth or when we breath our last, this is all that I think matters:

”Look back and atone for what you can atone for, and make the best of what you have left.��p. 171

Even if we do our best, as human beings, we cannot avoid hurting people. So, we say sorry. So we learn from our mistakes. Yet, we always stumble. We always fall. But we raise up again and again. As life goes on and on.

And yet, why wait for the time that we are dying? We are all born to die. So, everyman should always try to live each day as it if is his last.