In "Patrimony," Philip Roth remembers his grandfather, Sender. Mr. Sender Roth had a very fancy shaving mug, and Philip would study it with wonder. Here, Philip tells a story:
My grandfather Roth had studied to be a rabbi in Polish Galicia, in a small town not far from Lemberg, but when he arrived in America alone in 1897, without his wife and his three sons, he took a job in a hat factory to earn the money to bring his family over and worked there more or less most of his life. There were seven children....The shaving mug inscribed "S. Roth" had seemed to free my grandfather--if only momentarily, if only for those few minutes he quietly sat being shaved in the barber's chair late on a Friday afternoon--from the dour exigencies that had trapped him and that, I imagined, accounted for his austere, uncommunicative nature. His mug emitted the aura of an archaeological find, an artifact signaling an unexpected level of cultural refinement, an astonishing superfluity in an otherwise cramped existence--in our ordinary little Newark bathroom, it had the impact on me of a Greek vase depicting the mythic origins of the race...
The mug was "pale blue porcelain...A delicate floral design enclosed a wide white panel at the front, and inside the panel the name S. Roth and the date 1912 were inscribed in faded gold Gothic lettering."
What's going on here? The paragraph tells a story. Sender has intellectual aspirations--but then, like a character in a fairy tale, he is transformed. He must flee Europe. In his new life, he takes the lowly position of factory-worker. The one vestige of a fancier "Sender" is the ornate shaving mug, which is extravagant in its own way and also symbolizes an extravagant act (getting a luxurious shave, far from one's demanding family, on a Friday afternoon). Philip, in childhood, sees the mug as something like "an ancient Greek vase," suggesting a mysterious depth within his near-silent (and surely-depressed) grandfather. Adults and children guess at one another's secrets; people rely on half-truths and conjectures, even within families.
What I really love is the level of detail. It doesn't matter if we don't quite know what Roth is alluding to: The care required to dredge up details still makes an impact on the reader. That's why we read about "a small town not far from Lemberg," and about "faded gold Gothic lettering." Remove the word "faded," and you lose something substantial.
Then there's the sense that Roth is writing with fire. There's such obvious pleasure in the stringing together of words. "Dour exigencies," as if a task could be anything other than neutral. (It's the person doing the task who may be dour.) "The mythic origins of the race," "an artifact signaling an astonishing superfluity," "the mug freed him from the life that had trapped him": Roth seems to invent fresh metaphors and to dream up unusual pairings ("astonishing superfluity") without excessive effort. His playfulness and intellectual rigor are inspiring. I recommend "Patrimony" if you're looking for a place to start!
My grandfather Roth had studied to be a rabbi in Polish Galicia, in a small town not far from Lemberg, but when he arrived in America alone in 1897, without his wife and his three sons, he took a job in a hat factory to earn the money to bring his family over and worked there more or less most of his life. There were seven children....The shaving mug inscribed "S. Roth" had seemed to free my grandfather--if only momentarily, if only for those few minutes he quietly sat being shaved in the barber's chair late on a Friday afternoon--from the dour exigencies that had trapped him and that, I imagined, accounted for his austere, uncommunicative nature. His mug emitted the aura of an archaeological find, an artifact signaling an unexpected level of cultural refinement, an astonishing superfluity in an otherwise cramped existence--in our ordinary little Newark bathroom, it had the impact on me of a Greek vase depicting the mythic origins of the race...
The mug was "pale blue porcelain...A delicate floral design enclosed a wide white panel at the front, and inside the panel the name S. Roth and the date 1912 were inscribed in faded gold Gothic lettering."
What's going on here? The paragraph tells a story. Sender has intellectual aspirations--but then, like a character in a fairy tale, he is transformed. He must flee Europe. In his new life, he takes the lowly position of factory-worker. The one vestige of a fancier "Sender" is the ornate shaving mug, which is extravagant in its own way and also symbolizes an extravagant act (getting a luxurious shave, far from one's demanding family, on a Friday afternoon). Philip, in childhood, sees the mug as something like "an ancient Greek vase," suggesting a mysterious depth within his near-silent (and surely-depressed) grandfather. Adults and children guess at one another's secrets; people rely on half-truths and conjectures, even within families.
What I really love is the level of detail. It doesn't matter if we don't quite know what Roth is alluding to: The care required to dredge up details still makes an impact on the reader. That's why we read about "a small town not far from Lemberg," and about "faded gold Gothic lettering." Remove the word "faded," and you lose something substantial.
Then there's the sense that Roth is writing with fire. There's such obvious pleasure in the stringing together of words. "Dour exigencies," as if a task could be anything other than neutral. (It's the person doing the task who may be dour.) "The mythic origins of the race," "an artifact signaling an astonishing superfluity," "the mug freed him from the life that had trapped him": Roth seems to invent fresh metaphors and to dream up unusual pairings ("astonishing superfluity") without excessive effort. His playfulness and intellectual rigor are inspiring. I recommend "Patrimony" if you're looking for a place to start!
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