American Pastoral by Roth, Philip (1998) Paperback Paperback

I am still reading this book. I have in the past read all of Philip Roth's books and I think he's a genius. This particular book seems to be mostly about his memories of growing up in the Weequahic section of Newark, NJ. I grew up in the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ so I can relate to some of these memories. But, having said that, this book is very sentimental. It is so sentimental that I find it sometimes a little depressing to read. I might just feel this way because of the affiliation I have with Newark, NJ. I'm not sure. I haven't finished the book and have only gotten one quarter through it so far. If you love Philip Roth's other books, you will probably love this one too. I always meant to read it but never did when it was first published. It's written as only Philip Roth can write. No one can get into a character like he can. So I guess I would recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with Philip Roth's other books and liked them.

Easily the finest, most important novel of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Not an easy read, but worth the effort. Bring your lunch pail, along with a solid knowledge of Vietnam Era counter-culture.

Great product!

Somewhat long but intense and beautifully written.

I liked Letting Go but so many of Roth's other novels, like this one, are even better.

It is a great book written in a fascinating style of deep, insightful understanding.The author obviously had unlimited linguistic resources at his disposal to stretch simple lines to infinity.Before this book, I've read another wonderful novel - "Waiting" by Ha Jin. The story there covers roughly the same period of time, but in a different country - China. They say that a measure of any national success is a happiness of the population. Astonishingly, looking at the life stories of the main characters of these two great books, you find so much less sadness and so much more hope in "Waiting" - a book about love story during the Cultural Revolution in China...

Philip Roth’s Pulitzer prize-winning American Pastoral is beautifully written, deeply disturbing and at times offensively misogynistic. It is also bitter, angry, sharply incisive about the frailty and illusion of the American Dream – and, heart-breakingly tender about the ties that bind us, particularly the love of a parent for their child, however wayward, however lost.And, as well as all this, it is a fascinating series of challenges about the nature of writing and the nature of the writer. Roth throws down the gauntlet from the start, asking us not to forget that one of the central characters is his continuing alter-ego , Nathan ‘Skip’ Zuckerman. The story we reading, presented by Zuckerman, into the life of Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov, Zuckerman’s childhood hero, is possibly Zuckerman’s invention. Certain events happen to Levov, but the reason they happened, the psychoanalytical unpicking of them, may be only the writer in the book (not to mention the writer of the book) shaping a chimera.Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov, whose story Zuckerman tells, was a gifted athlete, an inheritor and emblem of the aspirational dream of America’s European immigrant community. Looking like a WASP, he is Jewish, his family, a generation or so back, by hard work, dedication and talent, rising in the Promised Land. Swede’s success at football, basketball and baseball, and his upright, hard-working personality have made him envied and adored, a kind of hero to others. One of whom is the slightly younger Zuckerman. Meeting again, in late middle age, it is now Zuckerman who has achieved fame, as a writer, and he is long past a time of adulating the seemingly much more simple character of a former sporting hero. Zuckerman in fact perceives the apparently settled straight as a die, unthinkingly patriotic, successful businessman, husband and father that Levov has become as a bit of a simp. The writer rather takes a position of intellectual, metropolitan, sophisticated arrogance. Though written in 1998, there are definite pointers and echoes here of the roots of our divided nation – both here and in the States, between the cultural intelligentsia and those who ‘seem’ as if they inhabit and engage with nuance less. Zuckerman indulges in various fantasies and theories, trying to worm behind the simple, satisfied persona Swede seems to represent. There are several writerly inventions Zuckerman engages in, each of which, again and again, proves wrong. Finally, Zuckerman, sophisticated in his cynicism, dismisses Levov“There’s nothing here but what you’re looking at. He’s all about being looked at……..He always was…..You’re craving depths that don’t exist……The guy is the embodiment of nothing”And then Zuckerman finds out how wrong, how very wrong he has been, and how he knew nothing of Swede, nothing of his life.Swede had reached adulthood and maturity shortly before the end of the Second World War. Enlisting as a marine, trying to meet the manly, right, patriotic challenge of the war, he was still going through boot-camp training when the bomb was dropped at Hiroshima. He took his desire to serve his country into the post-war world. A model citizen, her worked hard, had a developed awareness of social responsibility, married his childhood sweetheart, Dawn, entered and successfully ran the family glove-making business, and fathered a beloved daughter. Meredith, the daughter, was a teenager in the 60’s, at the time of the Civil Rights movement, resistance to Vietnam, and she became intensely radicalised, revolutionary. Merry, the apple of Swede's eye, committed a shocking and violent act whilst still at high school, and then went on the run, hunted as a terrorist. Swede’s family, marriage, business and life suddenly shattered.Belatedly discovering these events, Zuckerman then weaves this into story. He creates a narrative of motive, a narrative to ‘explain’ how this normal family, and privileged, loved child could have so violently changed. However……because of the constant reminders earlier in the book that narrator Zuckerman was inventing stories and sub stories which were wrong, Roth is reminding us that this too is narrative, story, invention. We know certain facts happened, but the interpretation of why Swede, Merry and Dawn got to where they did, may not be right. Zuckerman ‘blames’ a childhood event for Merry going to the bad – but the event is Zuckerman’s imagined narrative, and may never have happened.Going forward, to after Merry has gone underground, is a deeply disturbing, highly misogynistic section in the second part of the book, with the introduction of a young Jewish woman who may have been responsible for Merry’s violent radicalisation. This is a section distasteful to read, and highly unsettling – are we being shown an unconscious misogyny, particularly towards Jewish women, which comes from Roth himself, through his alter ego as Zuckerman – or is the author placing himself firmly and consciously on a slab, for the reader to dissect Roth himself?And then, at the point where the reader might think they have been able to negatively ‘get’ Roth himself, as the creator of all this, comes a section, where, after many years of searching for his vanished daughter in hiding from the law, Swede finds her, living in utter degradation, weirdly, most weirdly, transformed. This is a section of utter heartbreak, riven tenderness and almost unbearably painful humanity. Roth took my breath away in this raw exposure of all our suffering, poor, magnificent, broken complex humanity. Like Zuckerman with Swede, we get it wrong with each other, again and again.American Pastoral rightly won its Pulitzer prize. It is not in any way an easy book; it is a greatly, painfully challenging one – by turns horrible, horrific, stony, violent, hating and hateful – and full of compassion and suffering. Published in 1998, looking back over a roughly 50 year sweep, it is far from dated, and seems horribly pertinent today.I shall for sure, read more of Roth’s later work, though I am still, months after finishing this one, processing it.

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