Old Age and Roth's Everyman

I've now read five of the over twenty-five novels that Roth has written: the coarsely sexual (not a bad thing, btw) Portnoy's Complaint, the scathingly satirical Our Gang, the oddly surreal The Breast,  the dizzily metafictional Operation: Shylock (my favorite so far), and now Everyman, a short meditation on the life and preoccupation by death of an American Everyman.   With each new novel, I'm amazed that such a different book could be written by the same author.  The man is a master.

The novel begins at a funeral as family and a handful of friends and colleagues offer their admittedly inadequate words for the passing of a retired advertising executive. From there, we are taken back through his life, through a string of wives, affairs, diagnoses, surgeries, and ill or departed friends.  Like the 15th-century allegory's Everyman—who has, as the play's full title announces, been summoned by Death—Roth's everyman, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, moves inexorably toward that opening funeral.

Unlike the Everyman of the allegorical play, who discovered that at least Good Works would accompany him as he met his Maker, Roth's everyman does not discover any core that accompanies him, or anyone else, beyond the terrible moment of death.  In one part of the narrative, he learns that three of his acquaintances are either dead, dying, or institutionalized, and calls widow or friend to offer what comfort he can.  At the end of these conversations, he despairs at how banal and limited these conversations were:

Yet what he'd learned was nothing when measured against the inevitable onslaught that is the end of life. Had he been aware of the mortal suffering of every man and woman he happened to have known during all his years of professional life, of each one's painful story of regret and loss and stoicism, of fear and panic and isolation and dread, had he learned of every last thing they had parted with that had once been vitally theirs and of how, systematically, they were being destroyed, he would havehad to stay on the phone through the day and into the night, making another hundred calls at least. Old age isn't a battle; old age is massacre.

In the end, I'm reminded of Keats's negative capability, the ability to accept contradictory notions without feeling the need to resolve them.  Everyman does this for me; the inevitability and, at times, terror of death exist along with moments of tenderness and gentle memory.  Neither extreme is attenuated by the other, though they are both somehow changed.  Death is what it is, and it is everything we fear.  But until we die, we live.

My First Week with Aria

A little while ago, a friend of mine asked her Facebook friends to help her choose between the iPhone on AT&T and an Android phone on T-Mobile.  One of the responses, predictably, went something like, "iPhone. There is no alternative."

That's just silly.  Just at the level of market share, RIM (the Blackberry folk) has long been the most popular smartphone in the US, and worldwide Symbian (the Nokia folk) crushes all competition.  And while Apple is making gains — it will be especially interesting to see post-iPhone 4 numbers — they have a long ways to go before they enter the "only alternative" category (even more so considering that Android has been gaining market share even more quickly than Apple).

Unfortunately, as recently as three weeks ago, my friend's friend's comment was true — that is, there was indeed no real alternative — if applied to AT&T network.  (Sure, there was the Motorola Backflip, but that was universally dismissed in pretty much all the reviews I read.)  And, since I'm pretty much stuck with AT&T — as far as I can tell, it has the only acceptable reception where I live — I thought I was going to end up with a iPhone.

I'm not an Apple hater, really.  Though the quasi-religious fervor of the hard-core fanboy/girl is fairly annoying, I was an evangelical Christian when I was younger and probably deserve a taste of that medicine.  But, as I understand it, the iPhone is in fact easier, and the ecosystem of apps and media is untouched (even if Steve Jobs comes across as a bit paternal at times). 

Nonetheless, I didn't want an iPhone.  I'm a Google guy, using them for pretty much everything — personal and school mail, contacts, calendar, and so on. I wanted Android if only because it's been designed to work seamlessly with other products in the Google-verse. 

It was thus at the moment of deepest despair — when I had to decide if I should take a cheaper old version of the iPhone or pony up (and wait) for the new one — that AT&T released the HTC Aria.

A week later, I couldn't be happier.

It isn't perfect; just today I ran into some trouble sending pictures in an MMS message, and I have managed to crash the thing a few times.  And apps come without much by way of explanation — Latitude? Footsteps? Competing clocks and weather, etc.? — but I'm now pretty much in the driver's seat, with efficient ways to accomplish all the things I really want to do, and the potential to do a lot of things I don't yet know I want to do.

And it's beautiful.  It's smaller than the iPhone, and almost hilariously smaller than the EVO, which I saw side-by-side with the Aria on a YouTube video review of the phones. But I like the size; it fits comfortably in my pocket and, more important, in my relatively small hands.  It's light, yet still feels solid.  And the screen, while not iPhone 4 quality, is nonetheless beautiful.  (I wish I could take a picture of it, but my several attempts have come up pretty short...).

I've never had an iPhone, so I'm not qualified to compare the two. My sense, from friends and pundits on various podcasts, is that iPhone is probably a bit more intuitive, and thus easier to get used to.  I would recommend it to most of my friends, especially to the less geeky ones.  But I'm in love with my Aria — a great alternative, in my book, whether you just want Google integration or are actually opposed, quasi-religiously, to Apple's closed system.