by JULIET WATERS

Six years ago, David Remnick wrote a profile of Philip Roth for The New Yorker describing the extremely monastic life Roth lives in order to write late life masterpieces like American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America and, most recently, Everyman.

“I live alone, there’s no one else to be responsible for or to, or to spend time with,” Roth told Remnick. “My schedule is absolutely my own. Usually, I write all day, but if I want to go back to the studio in the evening after dinner, I don’t have to sit in the living room because someone else has been alone all day. I don’t have to sit there and be entertaining or amusing.”

Last year, when the release of two Library of America volumes of Roth’s work (he was only the third American writer to achieve this honour while still alive) coincided with Jose Canseco’s controversial memoir, television writer Peter Mehlman had another take. Obviously, Roth was juicing. If baseball was going to deny Hall of Fame status to ’roid-fuelled record breakers, why shouldn’t Roth be tested by the Modern Library?

Kidding aside, Everyman is a testament to Roth’s considerable skill and discipline. Other writers approaching late-life are either floundering (John Irving) or teetering (Salman Rushdie) with sprawling, epic tomes. Roth’s lean, efficient prose and his mastery of narrative flow are still inspiring. Whatever the reason behind his prolific creativity, however, Everyman has its flaws. To be frank, if there were a World Series of literature, I don’t think Roth would last three innings against fellow septuagenarian Alice Munro on one of her bad days.

A short book, almost a novella, Everyman is an intense but effortless read. Deeply thematic and relentlessly character-driven, Roth has liberated himself not only from the obligation to entertain, but from the obligation to impress. Pared down to the essential bones of a life, there isn’t an ounce of unnecessary craft or detail. The story of Everyman’s life is relatively simple. Human reality, however, is always complex.

We never discover Everyman’s first name, though we learn the names of his three wives, his three children, his three most important co-workers, his favourite mistress, and his adored eldest brother. Son of a warm-hearted Jewish jeweller, Everyman abandons dreams of becoming an artist for a successful, happy career in advertising and an unsuccessful, miserable first marriage. He leaves his shrewish first wife for what she laughably calls “that Quaker slut.” He destroys a happy, albeit sexless second marriage (with the Quaker slut) for uninhibited anal sex with a Danish model. Lustful, but naïve, Everyman makes the tragic mistake of thinking this is a good enough reason for a third marriage. And so we find him contemplating life in his ’70s, a lonely, desperate man facing death and the consequences of a life half lived and commitments broken.

Like the father who sets the standard of character that Everyman will always fall short of, Roth looks at his characters with a jeweller’s eye. Roth is of course the artist Everyman will never become, even when Everyman resumes painting later in life. The imperishable truths: the inevitability of death, the pain and pleasures of the body, the longing for enduring love and a meaningful life glitter dramatically in the simple setting of this one man’s life. His flaws, which aren’t huge, compared to many men of his century, are merely evidence of his authenticity.

This is a beautiful meditation on death, sex and family. At the same time there’s a subtle dreariness to scenes that sometimes feel less minimalist than musty, and even minor characters in Everyman talk as though they’re writing. This isn’t to say that Phillip Roth is losing his edge. It’s still there. It may just mean he needs to get out more.

Everyman by Philip Roth, Houghton Mifflin, hc, 182pp, $31.95