Writing for The New York Times Book Review, the poet Robert Pinksy praised the book for telling “one of the central true stories many Americans share nowadays: the agonized, sometimes comic labor of a family and a dying parent who must deal with all the loyalties and grudges of their past while coping with their transformed future.” The book went on to win the National Critics Circle Award for biography.Ī year after the publication of Patrimony Roth became the first novelist to receive the New Jersey Historical Society award, given annually to “an individual or individuals who have made significant contributions to New Jersey history.” Katharine L.

In Patrimony Philip Roth accompanies his father through each stage of his final ordeal. “It’s pressing on the facial nerve, and that’s what’s caused the paralysis.” Meyerson had told me that it was wrapped around the facial nerve, but I couldn’t say that either.After a yearlong illness Herman Roth died in October 1989. Not that he had registered any shock as yet-he sat there emotionless, waiting for me to go on. That there was a tumor seemed enough for him to take in. Meyerson says that given the location, the chances are ninety-five percent that it’s benign.” I had intended, like Meyerson, to be candid and describe it as large, but I couldn’t. “You have a serious problem,” I began, “but it can be dealt with. I sat in the chair across from him, my heart pounding as though I were the one about to be told something terrible. As he recalls in his 1991 memoir, Patrimony: Philip drove to his father’s apartment to break the news. After Herman returned to New Jersey, an ophthalmologist expressed doubts about the diagnosis and an MRI scan was ordered by the family physician, who called Herman’s son, the novelist Philip Roth, with the results.

The condition worsened, however, and he soon couldn’t hear out of his right ear. A doctor misdiagnosed the ailment, with its accompanying facial paralysis, as Bell’s palsy, which is usually temporary.

While wintering in Florida in late 1987, eighty-six-year-old Herman Roth lost most of the sight in his right eye. The photograph was used for the front cover of Roth’s 1991 book, Patrimony. Herman Roth with his sons Sandy and Philip at Bradley Beach, NJ, in 1937. The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings

“ You Can’t Tell a Man by the Song He Sings,” Philip Roth.

Review of Patrimony: A True Story (Robert Pinsky, The New York Times Book Review) “ Roth Returning to Newark to Get History Award” (Marjorie Keyishian, The New York Times) Exhibit: “ Philip Roth: An Exhibit of Photos from a Lifetime” (Newark Public Library)

Patrimony by Philip Roth