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American Pastoral: American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International), by Philip Roth
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Soon to be a major motion picture!
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
- Sales Rank: #8312 in Books
- Color: White
- Brand: Roth, Philip
- Published on: 1998-02-03
- Released on: 1998-02-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 423 pages
Amazon.com Review
Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the century's most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquillity. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip: His own daughter, Merry, commits an unpardonable act of "protest" against the Vietnam war that ultimately severs the Swede from any hope of happiness, family, or spiritual coherence.
From Library Journal
A terrorist bombing in a quiet rural community is the focal point of this novel. Protagonist "Swede" Levov is living the American dream. After growing up in Newark, New Jersey, during the post-World War II era, he takes over the glove business started by his grandfather, marries the "all-American" girl, has a daughter, and lives in a big country house. But the dream is shattered when his daughter becomes a terrorist during the Vietnam War years. Roth takes the family from the orderly postwar years, through the turmoil of the 1960s, through to the present. He evokes nostalgia for the "good old days," but makes his characters take more realistic views as they mature. Not to be listened to in a hurry, this novel requires reflection. Reader Ron Silver expresses a wide range of emotions and moods in his narration and characterizations. Recommended for adult fiction collections.?Catherine Swenson, Norwich Univ. Lib., Northfield, Vt.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
There is no sex in the new Philip Roth novel, but that is only one shortcoming. Pastoral, like Roth's 21 previous works, is well crafted with vivid, crisp prose, but unlike the others, it's empty. There's no there there. Roth resurrects alter ego Nathan Zuckerman to introduce Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Phineas-like character from Roth's childhood at Newark's Wequahic High School. Swede and Nathan meet by chance at a Mets' game years later. Swede, a towheaded, square-jawed, six-foot superathlete, had a knack for transcending the turbulence of wartime America. A marine at the end of World War II, he is spared the South Pacific slaughterhouse and is kept stateside to play baseball for the Parris Island squad. After the war, he marries Dawn, the blond Miss New Jersey, buys a house in the country, and takes over his father's multimillion-dollar glove factory in Newark. And after that, Roth delights in the destruction of his all-American hero, filling page after page with frustration, humiliation, and anxiety: Vietnam radicalizes Swede's daughter, Merry, destroying the family; Dawn's depression and infidelity ruin their marriage; and a jealous, vindictive brother and controlling father each take a toll. Pastoral is both sentimental and savage. Roth vents his bitterness with America and himself. Once again, no one escapes the misery that personifies modern America. Ted Leventhal
Most helpful customer reviews
165 of 178 people found the following review helpful.
Sixties at their worst
By Tim Klobuchar
One of the knocks on this book, even from reviewers who have liked it, is that it trivializes the rebellious spirit of the 1960s through the screeching lunacy of Merry Levov. There were countless examples of logical, righteous, nonviolent protest, they argue, and by showing only the thoughtless Merry and her equally deranged companion, Rita Cohen, along with the destruction of the Newark race riots (carried out by blacks who, Swede Levov seems to think, are just being ungrateful), Philip Roth comes off as someone who missed the decade altogether, perhaps in seclusion doing research for Portnoy's Complaint.
I think, however, that Roth's one-maybe-two-dimensional portrayal of Merry and the other revolutionary forces of the '60s was precisely the point. This novel was not so much about the turbulent '60s as it was about the disintegration of the '50s. The story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman and told through the (imagined) eyes of Swede Levov, both of whom graduated high school before 1950. Roth is not only concerned with the collapse of the Swede's American dream, but also with his assimilation into American society, his pursuit and eventual attainment of the American dream -- all typical characterstics of the '50s. The Swede had no concept of the attributes which we typically ascribe to the '60s. He was too busy worrying about how to make the perfect lady's dress glove. The reason Roth did so much research and wrote in such painstaking detail about the glove industry was to tell the reader precisely what Lou and Swede Levov's lives revolved around. Since the Swede is the only character whom we see others through, of course he isn't going to question himself for being concerned with such things as D rings and piece rates. It's up to the readers to draw the inference that maybe, just maybe, the Swede is out of touch and too concerned with materialism and achieving the perfect life. This is not necessarily a terrible thing by itself.
What Roth aims to do is not to paint a 100 percent historically accurate portrait of the '60s, but instead to illustrate what a horror the '60s looked like to someone who was not a participant in the counterculture movement -- to someone who had something to lose. The best way to do that was to take the worst of that counterculture movement -- self-absorbed adolescents who raged against their successful upbringing in order to conform to the growing popularity of the rebellion -- and spill it onto the page, to show how berserk this decade was to someone who was in no way trained for it. To show how justified, cool-headed and rational some parts of the '60s revolution were would have detracted from an integral theme of the book, as imagined by the Swede: He learned "the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense."
Also, keep in mind that Zuckerman is the book's narrator, and he is imagining nearly all of the story. He is trying, somehow, to make sense of the Swede's tragedy. It's possible that Merry really had a few more redeeming characteristics than is written, and than Jerry Levov says she did. The best way to make sense of tragedy sometimes is to say the whole world is crazy, and maybe that's what Zuckerman did, turning Merry into a raving lunatic in order to show that there was nothing the Swede could do to save her or himself. What Roth has done, with Zuckerman's help, is something along the lines Tim O'Brien talked about in his novel The Things They Carried -- to create a story that is emotionally true, if not entirely factually true.
At its core, this novel is an allegory, with the Swede representing the all-too-perfect 1950s and Merry the tumultuous, unexplainable '60s. In order to get across the full effect of this gulf, Roth had to show the '60s at their worst.
EDIT: I hadn't really looked at this review in a long time, then noticed a comment from a year and a half ago that (rightly) called me out for racist phrasing that made it sound like I was saying the black population of Newark was being ungrateful. I've edited it to reflect that I thought that Swede is the one who was thinking this, not me. It was very poor phrasing, but that phrasing was due to me not being nearly racially aware enough to realize it was poor phrasing, so I'm not going to blame a glitch in the writing. It came from me, and I'm sorry.
195 of 220 people found the following review helpful.
Despair and Failure Beautifully Wrought
By John Noodles
"American Pastoral" is indeed a special book. It displays none of the often unsettling preoccupation with sex that some of Roth's other books do. This novel examines the rise and fall of a man with a life that all his acquaintances thought was blessed--a start athlete and war hero, who goes on successfully to run his father's glove factory. A non-religious Jew, he marries a pretty Catholic girl (the former Miss New Jersey!), lives in a nice house, and has a pretty daughter, Merry--slips comfortably, in other words, into mainstream America.
Merry grows up, though, to be a sociopath, a fanatic, who as part of the general 60's counterculture movement, commits a terrible act of violence, and has to go into hiding...for the rest of her life. Her act destroys the foundations of Swede's world. We watch him and those close to him slowly disintegrate, emotionally and spiritually. Their decline is not a decline in material fortunes, but it is slow and gruelling nevertheless.
Roth writes like an angel. Much of this book is expository, written in precise, evocative, sometimes Faulkneresque, sometimes academic prose. The characters are vivid, immediate, and believable. This is also an idea book, though, and often the ideas are left abstract...which isn't bad. Roth doesn't try to force answers where perhaps none exist.
This book is truly a treat.
66 of 73 people found the following review helpful.
Tremendous character analysis; deflated us with weak ending.
By A Customer
I started this book with very high hopes - I'd only read one other Roth, the short and highly sarcastic "The Breast," and I had heard that in recent years he'd turned more sober and objective. To me this meant Roth was coming of age, a voice expressing a fuller range of our hopes, fears, loves and angers.
Much of "American Pastoral" satisfied this desire. Book one (of three) is a 100-or-so page, somewhat tedious prologue, where Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman intruduces the main character and creates a setting to present his secret story. With book two, it settles into a wonderful exploration of inner and outer lives. This central section, and most of book three, is beautifully written and reads effortlessly, making the first part feel worthwhile. By combining real world places (hint - it helps a lot to know New Jersey) and politics, with fictional characters whose lives embody the times and themes, Roth puts us directly into the drama of the story.
This sounds like a cliché; but through lengthy description, we learn by stages about the conflicts inside the main character. Seymour "Swede" Levov, a handsome, Jewish industrialist and high school athletic hero who marries Dawn Dwyer, Miss New Jersey of 1949, and whose vigor and generosity of spirit bring him success in business and to a life in the affluent (and WASPish) Jersey countryside, suffers a tragic fall when his radical daughter Merry goes berserk with one murderous bombing, and then others. As she begins a life on the run, he and Dawn endure recrimination and only-partial recovery. We watch Swede in a journey through his past and his present, an apparently peaceful man who learns to accommodate the real world by devising his own reality. This seems the central theme, just how we are to construct a world that we want to live in. His traditional, Jewish father, and his angry brother, are respectively full of shame and hatred for the daughter, but Swede, who still wants to know what went wrong, is frozen - first in denial, later in incomprehension.
In the reading, we come to identify the people and the many facets of their predicament. Yet in the end, the plot is dropped, and that's where it failed as a narrative. American Pastoral ends symbolically and inconclusively. We never learned Merry's ultimate fate, what happened to Swede's marriage, or even the real identity of Rita Cohen, the vicious young woman who may or may not have been Merry's accomplice. I know it's a novel of ideas, but a book that goes to such trouble to develop characters and establish plot, should keep its promise and resolve the plot. It made me wonder Why Roth went on at such length, in so many sections. Why tell us the whole background to Swede and his family, and their latest heartbreaks, and then not finish the story? If the point was simply to illustrate clashing symbols and themes, it could have been done much more economically.
American Pastoral won the Pulitzer Prize, I think largely on the strength of its exposition. Much of it reads like an essay we'd want to write ourselves, from our very heart and soul, exploring our own tensions, flowing and unfolding with nervous honesty. I wish those Pulitzer people cared more about story-telling, since this is how the greatest writers, Dickens, Melville, Twain, Nabokov, and others, truly touch our lives.
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