![]() ![]() ![]() He writes of fearfully approaching his father with a living will to read and sign, terrified of further depressing a man so close to the end of his life. Philip Roth learned much and wrote often about death, but in Patrimony he learns a lesson about insurance as well. Patrimony won Philip Roth the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1991. ![]() He follows the timeline of his father’s impending death with curiosity, anxiety and love. His son Philip once described him as a cross between Captain Ahab and Willy Loman.Īny modicum of fame Herman gained was from the 1991 memoir Patrimony, which Philip wrote while watching his father die from a brain tumor, a struggle that ended in 1989. It was a creditable climb for a man who often felt passed over because of his religion. ![]() For most of his life, he was employed by Metropolitan Life he started out as a door-to-door insurance agent and retired as a district manager in 1964. Herman was a first-generation immigrant who left school at 13 to work in a Newark factory. On the other hand, his father Herman Roth was lively and endearing, with a celebrated gift for remembering and recounting colorful anecdotes about Newark, New Jersey, where he lived all his life. Roth wrote about being Jewish, midlife crises, alienation and general disillusionment. ( Portnoy’s Complaint, Goodbye, Columbus and 15 more). The younger Roth was one of America’s greatest novelists. ![]()
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