American Pastoral : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: One of Roth's best
Review: This is one of Roth's best novels. The story is told with great narrative power, the characters are drawn with great sympathy and understanding. The question the moral question of the novel is how the All- American boy who does everything right , and seems to make it all work has his life turned upside down and his daughter become a political radical completely estranged from what her parents stand for. The novel is long and I could have done without the prolonged description of the glovemaking industry. Its good to know that a twentieth century novelist can write a nineteenth century novel, but it does not seem to me of vital necessity. All these writers filling their books with factual descriptions of some particular industry seem to be imitating Melville's whale industry stuff, and seeking a kind of grand status as chroniclers of the whole society .Balzac in Bayonne, and Tolstoy in Teaneck are just not necessary. So I found the whole thing a bit long but there was much compensation. I will point to what for me is the best part of the novel and it seems to me one of the funniest and best pieces of American writing I know. Roth's description of his high- school reunion was for me the most poignant and funny part of this work. And here I would just say that despite all my reservations about so many different sides of Roth, political religious etc. I still find him to be the funniest writer I have ever read and as his best unbeatable. This work contains some of that Roth very best stuff, and I could not more highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: American Pastoral- Book on tape
Review: While the novel is extremely well written, it drones on and on and in the end is very disappointing. We have to sift through many ideas and counter ideas but never learn what happens! Who was Rita Cohen? He goes on and on about her- yet we stay mistified. What happens to Merry? Does she die of starvation? Does she go to jail? We don't know. What about his life after Dawn? The plot is very thin and the commentary about american life is very thick. I didn't disagree with any of his ideas but instead thought, "so what"? In this story it seemed that the problems of the United States caused the problems of the hero. Not believable. Here is what we come away with: Mr. Roth is very bitter about the United States. Voila. Dull!

Rating:
Summary: The dark side of the American Dream
Review: Like no other country, America's greatest writers periodically produce wide scope, zeitgeist state of the nation novels that attempt to encapsulate an entire social commentary in one novel. For me, the best of these is Tom Wolfe's 'Bonfire of the Vanities'. But American Pastoral comes a close second. In this novel, Roth lavishly rips apart all that is wrong with orthodox, prosperous, middle class American life by telling the story of Seymour Levov 'The Swede', a Jewish, blonde, handsome high school athletic hero who marries Miss New Jersey, inherits his father's glove factory and settles down to domestic idyll in Old Rimrock, New Jersey.

What goes wrong? Everything. The Swede's daughter commits an atrocious act of political terrorism and the Swede's comfortable life is savagely blasted apart. How can this happen? The novel concludes with a rhetorical question- 'And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?'. What indeed? Roth goes into great depth into answering this question over the course of the preceeding chapters. He draws out the snobbery, narrow mindedness, peer pressure and teenage rebellions of affluent Americans with characteristic rich, subtle prose. The characters are portrated realistically and sympathetically. By the end of the novel, one is left in no doubt as to why The Swede's life went so catastrophically wrong. This probably is Roth's masterpiece and probably deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it was subsequently awarded.

Is it flawless? No, it could do with some judicious editing at times as sometimes the luscious, hard hitting prose is over verbose. But what editor would have the balls to go through the manuscript of such an established Writer as Roth and suggest swingeing cuts? And I am not an unconditional fan of the way Roth portrays the Jewish dimension in the novel. This is an important part of the plot, as the Levovs are a Jewish family, envious of WASP goyism. But at times I sense that Roth has somewhat of an axe to grind and his attempts to portray the anti semitism prevalent in East Coast America slightly distort this aspect of what is otherwise a brilliantly drawn and executed novel.

Rating:
Summary: The moral boomerang...
Review: In "American Pastoral", Philip Roth chooses the cultural paroxym of the late sixties to tell the story of a personal tragedy, but we're left feeling not so sure if the tragedy's genesis is the reprehensible actions of Merry Levov--the protagonist Seymour "the Swede" Levov's daughter--or the Swede's early near-deification in his small town, which leads to his cushy life spent on moral cruise control. In the end, this book is a gut-wrenching screed against both sides of the generational divide, one side seduced into an illusory American dream and the other, just as deluded, bent on destroying that dream. Inexplicably, Merry discovers the injustices of the world at fourteen and becomes obsessed with the Vietnam war. Quickly she comes to despise everything America and her father stand for and goes the distance in proving her convictions by becoming a terrorist. The Swede doesn't understand it all: the ingratitude, the blind hatred. But when the Swede encounters loathing for his way of life from his own brother...the answers he has used to explain Merry's violence just aren't that easy, and cannot be put down to transpersonal forces of a society in upheaval. Somehow he is responsible..."American Pastoral" is the first Philip Roth novel I've ever read, and on freshly encountering his style of narrative it put me off at times, because it seems wholly constructed on violating the cardinal rule (show, don't tell) of fiction writers. It's a book of telling, at times a discursive and self-flagellating monologue. The flashbacks and asides are just ladled on too thickly, and run on far too long, slowing down the thrust of the story. But perhaps this is to show how the Swede's life has ground to a spiritual and emotional halt. In all, it's an occasionally insightful and complex book, but loses its power as it comes to a middling end.