Selected Product:
| American Pastoral
Paperback
Author: Philip Roth
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1998-02-03
ISBN-10: 0375701427
ISBN-13: 9780375701429
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
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 longer-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.
Roth at his Finest
| Customer Rating: | Roth combines two things we look for in a great novelist. A thorough command of the English language and a human heart. He can execute literary pyrotechnics on par with DeLillo or Pynchon, but what elevates Roth to the status of a master is his empathy. He deep, immersive compassion for his characters.
The last sentence of American Pastoral reads, "What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?" It cuts through so much ephemera and filigree of lesser literature. |
An Indictment of Dreams
| Customer Rating: | This brilliant work of Art has many themes. It resonated with me as an examination of dreams because I am of the generation of the Swede's daughter, Merry, and because I knew the dream of his generation through my parents and the adults I knew growing up. So I can look at the dreams of two generations of Americans through Roth's eyes and through my own. My conclusion is that the emotional power of this novel for me is almost unprecedented.
Unlike some reviewers, I like the Swede very much. I don't know how I would have felt about him when I was young, and, like his daughter, intolerant of the love and dedication his generation had for what America had accomplished up to that time. But today, examining his values through the prism of my own life experience, I respect him greatly.
There were times when I hated Roth for what he put the Swede through. The Swede is almost like Job: a righteous man tested beyond the breaking point for no reason other than the examination of his values. Do his values stand the test? It seems to me that our dreams, like our hopes, are not to be carefully compared to the facts of our existence to determine their validity. If the Swede's dream is thus examined, it fails the test of reality dismally. On the other hand, as a dream, it is beautiful. The power of this novel for me is in Roth's even-handed and masterful portrayal of the Swede's love of his prosaic life. There is incredible beauty in a life well lived as portrayed with great respect by the normally irreverent Philip Roth. Whatever else this novel is, it is a great work of Art.
The greatest criticism this novel makes of the Swede is that he does not stop to examine and dissect life. He just lives it. He always tries to make the best of it. The novel could be read as an indictment of the philosophy of trying to make the best of everything and everyone we ecounter in life. On a personal level, this idea would resonate with me. But the Swede is such an attractive, archetypal representative of this philosophy that I found myself rooting for him. For me, the book does ultimately vindicate the Swede's approach to life. Certainly the representatives of the alternative point of view are much less attractively protrayed than the Swede. So maybe the lesson is that we all lose to life in the end. The test of how well we have lived is not in the ending but in the living itself. This test the Swede passes. A lovely, sad, powerful novel. |
Scrupulous Account of a Pivotal Point in America
| Customer Rating: | I recently finished an outstandingly beautiful novel (The Master Planets), and immediately went into one of those "I'll-Never-Find-Anything-As-Good-Again" funks. Then I found this book, which is not only a brilliant piece of literature (it's by Roth, after all), but also deals with some fascinating issues similar to those in Planets--issues I wanted to read more about.
As just one example: I am not Jewish, but have noticed in certain writings something uniquely poignant in the Jewish love for America immediately after World War II. This was the country that had taken in many Jews' parents and grandparents in a way never before experienced, I believe. For the first time they were not outsiders, but simply immigrants in a land full of immigrants. And for the first time, every opportunity--in this nation of bounteous opportunities--was open to them. It is not surprising that the name "America" would become almost a hymn on the lips of many American Jews in this period, that they would develop an unparalleled love for their country. As all of America basked in a cornucopian economy and the righteous sense that our own good works had entitled us to it, American Jews were, perhaps, "Ultimate Americans." So it is also not surprising that, like everyone else, they also gave little thought to the idea that the richness of life here might be too well fed by our military industrial complex and exploitation of Third World nations.
The protagonist, Seymour "Swede" Levov, certainly does not think about these things, and therein lies his downfall. As Amazon reviewer Ian Muldoon (above) so aptly notes, the central question of the book is whether it is acceptable for Levov to to accept that he is one of the lucky ones and simply enjoy his place in time and history, or whether his good luck also carries an obligation. An inherently decent man, Levov does not look beyond his own life to wonder if it impinges on the lives of others. But his daughter cannot feel so sanguine. Merry has not had the good fortune of Seymour and his wife to be thought "perfect": She grew up with a terrible stutter, over which her beautiful parents agonized. Is this what gave her the ability (willingness? determination?) to see the fissures in the edifice they revere? In any event, she sees the fissures yawning, and her answer is to place sticks of dynamite in them -- and later to withdraw so far from the world that she scarcely eats so as not to "destroy plant life," and will not even wash for fear of "harming the water." She has started by demolishing the world around her, and is now obliterating herself. Miraculously, the stutter that at one time "terrified" Levov is gone... as she herself soon will be.
American Pastoral is the story of a beautiful nation that, about 40 years ago, let some part of its best self slip away. As the "Ultimate American," Levov is the perfect symbol. As he thinks, so thought we. |
Recovery impossible
| Customer Rating: | | From reading through various reviews on here, I imagine my opinion on this book is shared by the majority but there are still many who disliked it very various reasons. I was born after all the events of the 40's, 50's, 60's, and seventies took place. This book was a giant eye-opener for me and taught me more than any textbook or college course. This was one of those books that so touched me personally, and helped me conceive of how my grandparent's moralistic generation warped into the mess of today, that I feel I will never recover from reading this book. For better or worse it has changed me. It may be the heaviest book I've ever read. |
Horror Story
| Customer Rating: | | As an analysis of Weather Underground types, or homegrown violent terrorists the story fails completely. The book says almost zip about the 60's. This is yet another book by Philip Roth about the mindset of Philip Roth. Basically the US is a horror story for Philip Roth. Roth sees a littleness in the United States and for Roth terrorism is a natural response. This is more a horror story than a work of literature. |
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