The philosophical message imparted is exaggerated and totally unnecessary. For me, the book as a whole was merely OK. I discovered Philip Roth last summer, when I picked up a used copy of "The Human Stain" and proceeded to have my mind completely blown by both the story and Roth's incredible writing.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I decided to dive into "American Pastoral": when you fall in love with a book and pursue the author's other works, you always run the risk of being severely disapointed - and people seem to either love or hate this book with a suprising passion… I'm happy to report that I was not di I discovered Philip Roth last summer, when I picked up a used copy of "The Human Stain" and proceeded to have my mind completely blown by both the story and Roth's incredible writing.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I decided to dive into "American Pastoral": when you fall in love with a book and pursue the author's other works, you always run the risk of being severely disapointed - and people seem to either love or hate this book with a suprising passion… I'm happy to report that I was not disapointed in the least: a quarter of the way in and I already felt like I had been kicked in the teeth in the best possible way by the story of Seymour "The Swede" Levov.
Roth's ability to create vivid characters and put their thoughts and feelings on the page never ceases to impress me: I really feel like I am in their heads, and when said characters have a story as devastating as that of the Levov family, it is an incredible reading experience. I put the book down dizzy, my head reeling with images and ideas, and I love when that happens. Roth explores the idea that people are never what they appear to be on the surface: with great compassion, he digs at an All-American family man, his former beauty queen wife and their stuttering daughter, turning them inside out to show us that nothing is as it seems, that the American Dream might have been an optical illusion all along, that perfection is an unbearable burden that can't be kept up indefinitely.
The literal explosion of the Swede's ideals, when his out-of-control daughter commits a horrific act of violence, and his disillusionment are detailed with heartbreaking precision. What do you do when everything you have ever hold sacred and believed to be good and true disintergrates around you, no matter what you do?
How do you pick up the pieces and go on, how do you make sense of the surreal failure that your dream world has so unexpectedly turned into? Roth explores the power of choices, how we can trace back so many things to that one fork in the road where were decided to turn right instead of left, the moment in time from which a huge series of events cascaded.
The Swede's compulsion to always be what other people want him to be and to live a life he feels to be the highest ideal of American lives can seem naive, but it also comes from a truly earnest place: there is not an ounce of malicious intent in this upright man, and he cannot understand it in others. His incapacity to conceive that the rest of the world doesn't mean as well as he does is his Achilles' heel, and his daughter - who is nuts, but more lucid than him - uses it to make him aware of his blindness.
I found myself wondering how I would have reacted, had I been Merry's age, sitting in front of the television and watching a monk set himself on fire because nothing else he could do would carry the weight of his protest against the powerlessness imposed on his people.
It is only too realistic to suppose that a sensitive and intelligent child can look at this horrific image of a gentle monk burning himself to death and be forever changed by that event. I abhor violence, and I don't think I would have been pushed into the kind of radical revolutionary tactics that attracted Merry, but I know the home-life disatisfaction, and I know how the anger and frustration that comes from that can burn inside someone until they don't know how to react except by lashing out.
Obviously, Merry's reaction to her father's denial and passivity is compeltely disproportionate, but it is not impossible to imagine. I can see how Roth's writing is not for everyone: he is long-winded, and just as I had experienced with "The Human Stain", his rhythm took a few pages to get used to. But once my brain got in the right gear, I breezed through the pages maniacally. When the narrative becomes the rambling stream-of-consciousness of the character he is exploring, it can be hard to follow, especially if you were never perticularly interested in the glove manufacturing business or Miss America pageants.
Believe me, those are things that are as far from my reality as one can imagine, but I was completely enthralled despite my not giving a hoot about high school football culture.
I think the only thing I can hold against this book was that it ended too soon for me: I wanted to know more about how the Swede decided to rebuild himself, which we know he did, but Roth skips over that part of the story entirely. But overall, it is a moving and hard-hitting read that I enthusiastically recommend to everyone. That being said, I can't really recommend the movie, which tries very hard to incorporate every important aspect of the story, but fails to convey the emotional weight of Roth's writing.
I'm beginning to think his work might be un-adaptable for the silver screen, as I was just as disapointed with the movie version of "The Human Stain"… Aug 11, Wynne rated it did not like it. This is the most self-indulgent, pointless book I have ever read.
I would string together a series of poorly crafted run-on sentences to attempt to describe this terrible work, but then I would be simply imitating Roth. I wish that I had the hours that it took me to read this book back. An utterly pointless story coupled with, as aforementioned, ridiculously self-indulgent and dense prose, made t This is the most self-indulgent, pointless book I have ever read. An utterly pointless story coupled with, as aforementioned, ridiculously self-indulgent and dense prose, made this one of my least favorite books of all time.
My second, after Nemesis, book by Roth. The Swede, our Golden Boy is undone first by his daughter and then by his wife. But then he remarries and has three sons and life is good and wholesome again. I was ready to get all angry at Roth as I had this preconceived notion he was misogynistic but then I thought deeper of this book, and an alternative interpretation occurred to me.
Maybe all these angry, imbalanced, violent women just had it up to here with patriarchy, oppression, capitalism. But the basic instruction is clear — the laureate should be on the side of the angels.
It also explains why, lest some bombshell is dropped later, the committee usually aim to get in just ahead of the undertaker the two of them practically got jammed in the door with poor Harold Pinter, the honoree. Even the lengthy passages devoted to describing in painstaking detail the process of glove making are somehow endearing. Other passages, especially the scene and the aftermath of the almost-incest incident were very powerful. A quick note on the proposed film cast — Ewan McGregor?
He looks nothing like the Swede. You know who looks like the Swede? Tom Hardy. Also, Reese would be an excellent choice, she has exactly that short, tiny lady charisma I imagined Dawn to have. Oct 20, Tom LA rated it really liked it. I knew who he was, I knew the size of his name in the pantheon of American contemporary authors, and I imagined him just like one of those immense Egyptian pharaoh statues.
American Pastoral is a grandiose novel: what the book encompasses in terms of historical, psychological and social depth is breathtaking and shockingly ambitious. The internal spaces are endless. I understand this is typical of Roth.
I rarely found so much power before in any other book. If your average novelist shoots with a rifle, Roth uses bazookas and mortars, but still managing to be precise and subtle. Overall, my personal experience of this novel was of great delight. I loved the writing and there is such beauty in so many pages and paragraphs.
What I can't do, though, is place the book together with my 5-stars favorites ever, only because of how fiercely pessimistic it is at its central core, and as a Christian, I do have a strong opinion about Roth's pessimism and nihilism. Yes, horrific. Ok, but why did you like it? Did you try to listen to what he's actually saying?
This is obviously not "just-for-the-plot" fiction. So, what did the book convey to you, for your own life? What did the author tell you, in essence? The essence of this book seems to be an extremely bleak and desperate view of life.
In summary, Roth takes a man who, like the biblical Job, has been gifted with a wonderful life of happiness and success, and then - after the first pages - he relentlessly tortures him for about pages, until the end of the book, when, instead of meeting with God and being saved, things get EVEN WORSE for him.
In short, this is like the biblical story of Job, but without any trace of God. The plot concerns a Jew who does not look or behave like a Jew, a man who comes to be known as "the Swede" in his Newark, New Jersey, high school in the s because of his magically "anomalous face": " Of the few fair-complexioned Jewish students in our preponderantly Jewish public high school, none possessed anything remotely like the steep-jawed, insentient Viking mask of this blue-eyed blond born into our tribe as Seymour Irving Levov.
His achievements on the playing field seem to be the sole element of legend and self-transcendence in the insular world around him. Zuckerman, as he freely admits, concocts most of it, merging with the beautiful, un-Jewish, unknowable Swede by inventing the story of his life. The novel's most memorable episode occurs early, and is also one of the most directly dramatized: Zuckerman's forty-fifth high school reunion, where he meets his old friend Jerry Levov, the Swede's younger brother.
Jerry has just attended the Swede's funeral; the Swede died of the same disease that Zuckerman has lately survived. Jerry reveals a traumatic, decades-old event in the Swede's personal life, but not much else: "Anything more I wanted to know, I'd have to make up," Zuckerman says, announcing his intention to "dream" the Swede's surprisingly unhappy life.
The Swede goes into his father's leather-glove business. He then defies his father by marrying a shiksa an Irish Catholic and a former Miss New Jersey , and further breaks with his origins by leaving his ancestral immigrant metropolis for an old fieldstone house in rural New Jersey.
He and his wife have a daughter, "Merry," who seems not to have inherited the great beauty of either parent, though Merry's face is left oddly unportrayed. Her flaw, however, is that she suffers from a severe stutter. And though her childhood is otherwise idyllic, around the age of fifteen she is suddenly transformed - "almost overnight" becoming fat, contemptuous of her family, and committed to extreme leftist politics.
By sixteen, in , at the height of the Vietnam War, she has become so radicalized as to bomb the general store in her rural village of Old Rimrock killing a local physician , and goes into hiding, vanishing from her parents' lives. This idea is, I find, one of the strongest features of this novel. From here on, however, Roth unleashes his sadism on his main character with no mercy. Roth wanted his suffering to be not only of the highest order, but also completely senseless.
The Swede is at the mercy of tremendous and meaningless suffering. In short, a black mass of nihilism. Too bad for him. When you write a book as powerful and profound as this, you necessarily are saying something to your readers, something that stands out as the overarching message.
The overarching message of American Pastoral is that life is cruel, that it has no meaning and that, no matter how hard you try to delude yourself, in the end the world is a rotten place and that everyone is a piece of shit.
I found the novel deeply affecting and terribly disturbing - for all the wrong reasons. Nothing good, nothing healthy, nothing constructive, nothing gratifying. Nothing but anger and despair. Perhaps the whole thing has to do with Roth's issues with his own Jewish identity? In the end, the Swede's charmed escape from Jewishness -- his simple possession of his own DNA -- seems to be American Pastoral's essential subject and the explanation for the terrible punishment that Philip Roth, god of this chaotic fictive world, inflicts upon his latter-day Job.
View all 9 comments. Jul 05, robin friedman rated it it was amazing. American Pastoral Philip Roth's Pulitzer-Prize winning novel "American Pastoral" tells the story of Seymour "Swede" Levov and his life of tragedy beneath every outward sign of success. I thought it might be painful to read this book, with its twin focus on the decade of the s and the War in Vietnam and on the much-visited preoccupation, novelistic and otherwise, with the nature of Jewish identity.
Both subjects can still be raw for me. Roth handles them in this novel with thought, refl American Pastoral Philip Roth's Pulitzer-Prize winning novel "American Pastoral" tells the story of Seymour "Swede" Levov and his life of tragedy beneath every outward sign of success. Roth handles them in this novel with thought, reflection, and a substantial degree of compassion.
Although I have had mixed feelings regarding other books of Roth, "American Pastoral" held my interest and emotion. It is a masterful, nuanced work. The book is set in Newark, the New Jersey suburbs, and in the relatively isolated, rural, western part of the state in a town called Old Rimrock.
The story is written by Roth's frequently-used "Zuckerman" personna. Zuckerman has a large role in the first third of the book as the readers sees his relationship to Swede and to Swede's irascible younger brother who has become a much-divorced successful cardiac surgeon in Florida.
Zuckerman recounts in the body of the book Swede's life, or what the reader is given to understand Zuckerman has learned of it. Zuckerman does not appear in his own person after the first section of the novel.
Swede Levov is the third generation of the family that has gradually built a flourishing business in the manufacture of gloves in Newark. As a high school student, Swede is an extraordinary athlete who letters in three sports, an anomaly in the New Jersey Jewish community of the 's "whose elders, largely undereducated and overburdened, venerated academic achievement above all else. An obedient son to his father, Swede acts with true independence on only one occasion of his life: his marriage to Dawn Dyer, a Catholic and a former Miss New Jersey and participant in the Miss America pageant.
While in the marines, Swede had, at his father's urging, terminated an earlier engagement to a non-Jewish woman. Swede and Dawn move to Old Rimrock, a change from their earlier urban life, to life in a large old stone house while Dawn pursues her dream of independence in becoming a successful cattle farmer.
The couple have a difficult daughter, Merry, who stutters and tends to go her own way. With the trauma of the Vietnam years and the violence of American cities, including Newark, the adolescent Merry becomes violent and a radical. She bombs a store in Old Rimrock, killing an esteemed local physician. Then, she runs off and winds up in Oregon where she engages in more bombing and kills three people.
When Swede finds his daughter after five years, she is thin, emaciated, living in filth and announces that she has become a Jain.
The denouement of the book takes place during a long, tense, dinner party, described in detail, that Swede and Dawn host for Swede's parents and various family friends with whom they share relationships, sexual and otherwise.
For all the violence and the disruption of the s, Roth offers a fondly nostalgic portrayal of American life. The Jewish community of New Jersey is shown is hardworking, family-oriented and patriotic, in contrast to some less complimentary portrayals in Roth's earlier books which emphasize difficulties with sex. They want what is best for their families and try to behave with dignity and probity. The glove and tanning industries are described in detail, emphasizing the hard-working character of the Levovs as well as their limitations.
Of the people shown in the book, none have any attachment to the religious aspects of Judaism. Yet the community is close-knit with strong ethnic Jewish identification. Swede Levov's own personal tragedies, focusing on the murders committed by his daughter, followed by the depression and unfaithfulness of Dawn, mirror the disintegration of American life during the s.
The book deplores the Vietnam War and the violence of the cities but there it offers the sense that America has lost its moorings by forgetting some of the earlier values that the Levovs, as well as Dawn Dyer's family, had held dear. Roth shows great sympathy with the work ethic even while he continues to develop themes of his earlier books on matters pertaining to sexuality and its repression. The book offers no answers for the way Merry behaves.
Neither Dawn nor Swede are criticized for abandoning their religions or for their marriage, although this subject gets examined and discussed in detail. The book evidences a pessimism for the America of the s with perhaps a hope of a recapture of some of the strengths of an earlier generation. The book moves back and forth between Swede's life in the s and his earlier life as athletic hero, clean-cut young man, and obedient son. Many of the other characters in the book, as it unfolds, are developed with a great deal of insight.
Although it includes much of Roth's sardonic humor and satire, "American Pastoral" is a disturbing, serious novel which struggles valiantly and sympathetically with questions about the nature and modern continuation of the American dream. Robin Friedman Back in late I had a lot of things happening: I had just gone through a significant break-up in October of that year, I had a bit of an uncomfortable situation with a not-so-secret-admirer sniffing around where I worked at the time, and I was in the early stages of a new relationship that I wasn't sure I wanted to even be a relationship.
That December I was having a hard enough time reading one page, let alone finishing any actual books. I picked up Philip Roth's The Plot Against America tha Back in late I had a lot of things happening: I had just gone through a significant break-up in October of that year, I had a bit of an uncomfortable situation with a not-so-secret-admirer sniffing around where I worked at the time, and I was in the early stages of a new relationship that I wasn't sure I wanted to even be a relationship.
I remember sitting in the backroom on my lunch break at the bookstore where I worked at the time, wearing a super heavy hooded sweatshirt hood up, covering as much of my head as possible , listening to music with the biggest, thickest headphones you can imagine and just trying to hide.
I think my fingernails were painted black, or at least they should have been if they weren't in actuality. Those were dark, sad, angsty days. Um, more so than usual. I had this book to shove my face in, and in a lot of ways, it saved my reading juju during that time. I consider it to be the book that helped me remember why I love so much to read, a magic novel. It was the first book I had picked up in a long while that I wanted to read almost cover to cover; I found Roth's writing to be addictive and mesmerizing.
I swore I would read other books by Roth. And here we are, about ten years after I finished The Plot Against America, and I hadn't read anything else by Roth in the interim until I picked this one up. And I'll be honest that I wouldn't have likely picked it up right now on my own if it wasn't this month's book club winner. Over the past ten years I've sort of gotten to that point of being disillusioned by all those big-name white author-guys, of which I consider Roth.
Yes, you're white, and male, and privileged, and America, blah blah blah. There's a whole other world out there, dontcha know, and I've gotten in the habit of really enjoying those other perspectives on life. Just like The Plot Against America, I found myself getting mesmerized by Roth's writing, his way with words, the world he built, and the characters in it. I'm a bit less excited by the framing narrative here - or should I say half-framing narrative?
Because we never go back to that in the end. It starts out with Nathan Zuckerman reflecting on former high school hero Seymour "The Swede" Levov, and then how Levov wants to meet up with Zuckerman as older men to talk about his life. This section was a fine enough read, though I learned one very important fact: Men of a certain age only talk about their prostates.
I did not know this previously, being non-male and all. It makes me wonder if, at a certain age, my girlfriends and I will only talk about our ovaries - how they do or don't work, the tests we have to have to make sure they're working, how they have to come out.
I mean, I suppose it's inevitable. But then we fall directly into the Swede's life and all the good and bad that came with it.
This is the truly fascinating part. We all remember the kings and queens of our own high school years - some of you might actually have been the king or queen of your high school, which, whatever, good for you.
But now where are you? Are you still the king or queen of your office? Of your world? Of your life? Probably not. You've packed on a few pounds, or you've had a kid or two and now they're the ones calling the shots. You probably feel your life is pretty complete, but there's probably a hole there somewhere too, one that you don't recognize yet necessarily, but it will rear its head at some point.
What reared its head in the Swede's life is a year-old daughter, Merry, who blew up a building in their town in revolt against the Vietnam War.
The story is about the people in Merry's life, dealing with this new hole blown in their world, contemplating how they are or are not directly or indirectly involved in Merry's ultimate decision. Life is all about choices - the company we keep, the homes we create for ourselves, how we live day-by-day. We always wonder at some point if we've made the right choices: how would things be different if I had chosen x instead of y? Some of us drive ourselves slightly mad playing that game.
This entire book is something like that. The Swede wondering if something that happened on the beach years ago affected Merry's outcome; if she hadn't had a stutter, would things have been different? There are so many questions and Roth covers them all. He also talks a lot, that Roth. There are many tangents in this book, some which work and others that sort of over-complicate things and seem unnecessary.
You know the whaling sections in Moby Dick? You either love it or you don't. In this book, there are whole sections dedicated to the discussion of how to make leather gloves - just without the diagrams. I found this all somewhat irritating because I was all "OMG, prostates and leather gloves, can we be more white " but then after a while it started to make sense: This is the America of Roth's world.
This world is the s and s in New Jersey, the world is in turmoil, and everyone is scurrying to keep up with the changes. This is just one family out of millions all trying to make the right choices for themselves, to remain an independent in the land of the free when it was becoming apparent to so many that this country was really anything but.
My life is significantly better than it was in December I have a different job, for one, and that guy I didn't know if I wanted to be anything more than just a cuddle buddy? We're still together. Reading this book, however, makes me think about all the choices I've made, all the choices you've made, and I wonder if any of us are better or worse off for them.
But, again, that is Life. Readers also enjoyed. Videos About This Book. More videos Literary Fiction. The United States Of America. About Philip Roth. Philip Roth. Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the collection Goodbye, Columbus winner of 's National Book Award , cemented it with his bestseller Portnoy's Complaint , and has continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman.
Other books in the series. Complete Nathan Zuckerman 9 books. Books by Philip Roth. Related Articles. When it comes to writing, Jocelyn Johnson is about that life. The Virginia native—born, bred, and wed—has had aspirations of being a Read more Trivia About American Pastoral Quotes from American Pastoral. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again.
Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again.
That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.
Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Goodreads Librari Non sapevo come c Reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth. Down and Out in Paris and London. Add 3 Items to Cart. Rate Product. If you have a taste and patience for postmodern literature, Philip Roth could be a satiating literary chef for you. His works are not to be eaten and swallowed. They must be chomped and digested and assimilated into the understanding by the reader.
Shyam Choithani Certified Buyer. I like Roth's style- a lot. Also by Philip Roth. Praise for American Pastoral. Angea Nagle, Irish Times Marvellous Raging and elegaic Guardian A tragedy of classical proportions It's one of the greatest modern American novels Tatler Wonderful, rich A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years Financial Times Brilliantly written Related titles.
The Promise. Great Circle. The Overstory. The Giver of Stars. The Inseparables. America Amuck! And on this occasion, Roth's narrative tricksiness serves to hold our sympathies for these attitudes in perfect uneasy balance.
Few writers are capable of raising themselves to the technical heights achieved in the climactic scene here, a page account of a dinner party; hardly any are able with such authority to measure what America has become against what it once seemed capable of. Only this writer, however, would dare to do these things in the voice of a sentimental old Jew, smooching with a high-school sweetheart and reminiscing about his Boy's-Own hero. As a result this momentous novel ends impossibly unresolved, ends in fact with the question pages have been spent exploring: 'And what is wrong with their life?
What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs? For a day. Miss America turns bomber.
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