American Pastoral

published	February 21st 2005 by Vintage Books
first published	1997
binding	Paperback
isbn	0099771810 (isbn13: 9780099771814)
pages	423
literary awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998); 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
description	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 explosiv...more [close] 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. [close]
date added	12-18-06 edit book

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arphaxad rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

01/20/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: David Koresh, Roger Clemens, my asshole neighbor

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Representative sentence, from the book's non-conclusion:

"However, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hill roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's an n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-colored wild mustard sturdily spilling over the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlasting wind."...more Representative sentence, from the book's non-conclusion:

"However, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hill roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's an n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-colored wild mustard sturdily spilling over the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlasting wind."

I see that I now only have a little over 2200 characters left to finish this review. I once wrote in a paper in college something like, "Dostoyevsky never hesitates to say in fifty words what could be said in fifteen." Roth, apparently, never hesitates to say in 400 leaden pages what could be said in 50. Here, then, is the plot of the book. I went ahead and lopped off the superfluous 113-page first act (think frame story with no end frame).
Swede Levov is a Jewish kid in New Jersey in the 40s and he is good at football. He becomes a marine, eventually marries Miss New Jersey (a Catholic), inherits his father's glove factory, becomes rich. Swede has a daughter who stutters and eventually blows up a general store as a means of protesting the Viet Nam war, killing one person and later killing three others in a separate explosion. The daughter then becomes a Jain and wears a mask over her face and lives in filth. Later on, some new characters are introduced into the story and we find out Swede's wife is cheating on him, that he had an affair, et cetera. Therefore, the concept of the American Pastoral is a myth. The end.

Seriously, fuck this book. It's everything I hate about literature and nothing I like about it. That this book won the Pulitzer prize boggles the mind. That it won the Pulitzer prize when contemporary winners include works such as The Hours, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Empire Falls, and most recently, The Road makes me wonder just who Philip Roth has nude photos of....less

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4 comments

James rated it:

03/09/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Gerald Floman

American Pastoral:

This book is a rock that shatters, obliterates, pulverizes preconceptions of self, family, morality, dreams, life, and nation - many simultaneously - and some individually.

What I felt this book had to say:

(1) No matter what a parent does, a child will have more say in who they become than anyone else.

(2) "Good people" do bad things, sick things, unspeakable things.

(3) Rich and beautiful wife's & husbands of 30 years of monogamy cheat on each o...more

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Maya rated it:

07/17/07

Read in January, 2001

Hmm. Well Matt and I had one of our more heated discussions about this book.

I basically don't like anything by Philip Roth.

What prompted the argument...I mean heated discussion...was one of my primary reasons for disliking the book. I will sum that up now and then give the example that led to the heated discussion.

I don't like this book because Philip Roth romanticizes the past in a particular white middle-aged man way that is kind of grating because that past was of course built o...more Hmm. Well Matt and I had one of our more heated discussions about this book.

I basically don't like anything by Philip Roth.

What prompted the argument...I mean heated discussion...was one of my primary reasons for disliking the book. I will sum that up now and then give the example that led to the heated discussion.

I don't like this book because Philip Roth romanticizes the past in a particular white middle-aged man way that is kind of grating because that past was of course built on the backs of others.

Aaron read this book during the time he lived in Newark and he lived quite close to many of the places described in the book. And now that I recall this was actually Aaron's complaint that must have slipped into my own head. So there's this whole part of the book about how after the riots people started stealing these cornices on buildings. A cornice is: the molded and projecting horizontal member that crowns an architectural composition. And as I recall there is one building Philip Roth describes as having its cornice stolen that actually still does have a cornice. And I just found that irksome. I guess I just felt in the whole cornice-being-stolen argument there was this underlying, god, [poor black] people just don't respect aesthetic beauty, their thoughts are mired in the mud.

The cornice is purely decorative, and just seems like one of those little things that people who appreciate them are probably going to be somewhat snooty about appreciating because not many people notice them.

God, they even took our cornices! Wasn't it enough that they did blah blah blah, but even the cornices.

So I didn't mean that Philip Roth has a duty to tell the truth about Newark; I just think whenever you do have some familiarity with a place and it is fictionalized you become very aware of these gaps between fiction and reality and question why would it be so important to the story to change a small detail like that. For me though the whole book is tinged with too much nostalgia and I would have this feeling with or without any knowledge of Newark. Nostalgia is retarded, a made up paradise and is only interesting in that it reveals what the person thinks they need at the present. Which they probably don't need anyway. They need to meditate.

Anyway this should all come with a caveat that I don't remember the intricacies of the plot that well and I do dislike Philip Roth very much.

So I do think this is my last goodreads update of the day. Yes, I do have work....less

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24 comments

Eric rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

06/19/07

Read in September, 2006

Seymour "Swede" Levov has it made--a beautiful wife, the family glove business in his capable hands, wealth, a house in suburbia. He was his high school's football star in Newark, New Jersey, makes friends wherever he goes, and spent a brief yet heralded stint in the armed forces, his unit set to ship out only days before World War II came to an end. He enjoys success beyond anything his Russian Jewish immigrant grandparents could ever have even dared hope. By any and all measures, ...more

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Chak rated it:

06/14/08

Read in May, 2007

recommended to Chak by: Lorrie Kwest?

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I disliked this book so much that I got mad at the author.

I found this book in a cab in 2007. It was in this little pink bag, like it was specifically left for someone to find. It had a card in it that said something about it being the person's (who wrote the card) favorite book of some past year and she signed it "Lorrie Kwest." I asked the driver if he wanted to keep it to turn into lost and found, but he told me to just take it. I felt like I could find this Lorrie Kwest and...more I disliked this book so much that I got mad at the author.

I found this book in a cab in 2007. It was in this little pink bag, like it was specifically left for someone to find. It had a card in it that said something about it being the person's (who wrote the card) favorite book of some past year and she signed it "Lorrie Kwest." I asked the driver if he wanted to keep it to turn into lost and found, but he told me to just take it. I felt like I could find this Lorrie Kwest and at least ask her who she just gave the book to. That name seemed so googleable to me. Nothing, not even a white pages search, turned up anything.

After I told a good friend this story, she convinced me that "Lorrie Kwest" was not a real person and it was some sort of karmic code to get the book into my hands, so I ended up reading the book, with the internal promise made to return the book from whence it came.

Here is an excerpt from what I wrote to friends shortly after finishing the book:

"...the book went into so much detail about this one, mysterious character. She appeared over and over again and was constantly on the main guy's mind because he felt she was trying to destroy his life. He questioned himself so many
times about her. Then, the book just ended on a stupid, unsatisfying note and nothing was ever said about this mystery woman. And, no more was said about the guy's daughter who was a very pivotal person in the story. Nothing. It was just chopped off senselessly at the end. Oh, I can't believe I got so into the book and then just totally disappointed at the end. I mean, I know he was trying to say
there were no answers, but c'mon - maybe there were no answers as to why his daughter turned out so bad and how that paralleled Newark/America turning out so bad, but that mystery girl - Rita Cohen - he should have given answers on that. The reader deserved that much!!! Now, I HATE Philip Roth. I'll probably never read another one of his books. Bastard."

I did leave the book (with the original card in it) in the same pink bag in a taxi for some other unsuspecting New Yorker to find. However, I did add a little post-it note explaining that I meant to do that, so that the next person wouldn't go crazy trying to find the owner like I did.
...less

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Brian rated it:

06/16/08

Read in June, 2008

America is its ideals. This is the point Philip Roth steps around and returns to throughout the layered meander of American Pastoral. The author lays out this message by invoking a series of narrative dialectics about American life: country versus city, past versus present, private versus public, peace versus war, order versus chaos, and, on a most basic level, serenity versus insanity. Swede Levov has an American dream—to rise through the ranks of society by contending and winning, to wo...more America is its ideals. This is the point Philip Roth steps around and returns to throughout the layered meander of American Pastoral. The author lays out this message by invoking a series of narrative dialectics about American life: country versus city, past versus present, private versus public, peace versus war, order versus chaos, and, on a most basic level, serenity versus insanity. Swede Levov has an American dream—to rise through the ranks of society by contending and winning, to work hard at his father’s glove factory, to marry a beautiful wife and raise their only daughter in the good life of an idyllic rural landscape. And, confronted with the country’s personal and political injustices, his daughter, Merry, also has an American dream, one that she delves so far into she is driven to commit an unforgivable act of violent extremism.
The novel is anchored as the late sixties fade into the seventies, as the sense that something new, violent, and revolutionary was happening that could destroy America shifts into the realization that what seemed new and jarring was a part of America all along. And it is told from a perspective a quarter century later, a point when this turbulent moment has become another wound of history. Terrible, unimaginable horrors happen, and America goes on. It is not another story of the perversity that lurks beneath suburban privilege. Rather, it is a story of how one family is affected by, and affects, the world around it. The madness is not subterranean; it is all around.
The narrative is problematic: thanks to a framing device that disappears before the hundredth page, the audience can never be quite sure how much is truth within the story’s world and how much is imagined. As in a dream, certain characters remain mysterious and certain puzzles remain unsolved; like the real world, the novel promises some payoffs it refuses to deliver. But for all that is left unknown, the ending somehow fits. And in a story about the American experience, the dream matters as much as the reality.
...less

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3 comments

CK rated it:

10/08/07

Read in September, 2007

OK let me just say that I am so. excited. about this book. My friend Cal recommended it to me a while back, and I finally got around to it. OH MY GOSH I've been missing out on Philip Roth! He is now my new favorite author. I know that's a rash judgment to make based on one book, but it's just that good.

Cal and I love a lot of the same books for entirely different reasons, which is fun. To put it simplistically (which I hate to do), Cal gets more excited about story / character development an...more

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Seth rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

07/10/07

Clearly a lot of research went into this book. I only wish Roth hadn’t been so compelled to show off every single trinket of minutiae, arcania, and esoterica (yes, I invent words when necessary) that he could acquire relating to the glove-making industry in New Jersey.

The book is unquestionably too long, and the political allegory can feel a bit oppressive as one strives to believe in characters that remain just short of plausible (excepting a few bit players, such as the bullying heart s...more

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Ajay rated it:

02/03/08

Read in January, 2008

I suppose the criticisms leveled at Roth are true. He can be long winded, with long passages of detail that essentially turn into swaths of blah, but the book itself makes up for these moments of strange indulgence or unnecessary intricacy. The characters are wonderfully formed, and the narrative structure is crafted in such a way that there are a number of surrogates. We are reading Roth writing about writing; we are reading Zuckerman writing about "the Big Swede"; we are hearing t...more

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Chris rated it:

02/03/08

Read in February, 2008

Roth's technical writing skill and the depth of the characters, story, and themes are all masterful. No wonder this won the Pulitzer. It's about high school all-star "the Swede" Levov, who marries the former Ms. New Jersey, inherits his father's glove business, lives in a big beautiful house and starts a family. Sounds like the perfect American life. Then, during the Vietnam war, his daughter commits an act of political terrorism, and things start to go downhill.

The Swede is a grea...more

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Faye rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

06/18/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2007

This was my first Philip Roth novel. The title "American Pastoral" hints at the surface of the story, the idealic setting of the New Jersey countryside. The main character seeks an explanation at a personal level for why his daughter whose priveledged childhood some how leads to committing violent acts to protest the Vietnam War that result in the deaths of four innocent people and her subsequent life hiding from the authorities. His conclusion is that he was not aware enough o...more

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Pat/rick rated it:

08/21/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: fans of "In the Lake of the Woods"

In Richard III, Shakespeare teases out refractions and reflections through the metaphor of the mirror, throwing his protagonist, the king himself, into a spiral of doubt and confusion. Illusion, reality, appearance – malleable concepts all. In American Pastoral, Philip Roth plays a similar tune, a fugue on the American Dream, memory, and aging. Roth’s protagonist, Seymour Levov, is both 20th century Everyman and mythic god, known adoringly as the Swede even 50 years after his high school ...more

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Jenni rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

07/27/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: ?

Holy toledo, it was an engaging, masterfully-written, and downright impressive book! I *loved* the main character, The Swede. His story was completely captivating. I appreciated the way in which two wars - World War II and the Vietnam War - were connected through both history and relationships. This book made the events and climate of mid-century America interesting while telling a fascinating tale of the human condition, family ties, and parental love. And through it all, the level of qual...more

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Michael rated it:

05/15/08

Read in February, 2007

I have never much liked Philip Roth. I remember reading PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT in college and thinking that it was the most obscene, self-indulgent, and pointless book I had read in my life to date. With the exception of two of the stories in GOODBYE COLUMBS, I felt the same about all of his early works.

BUT, American Pastoral blew me away. This is not only Roth at his best; it is Roth at anyone's best. The narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, who narrated several annoying earlier books like THE GHOST WR...more

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Danuta rated it:

07/01/07

Masterpiece. Excrutiatingly ,deeply felt emotions.Several generations of immigrants to US , later, with the third generation great achiever: family glove business success story;sports hero; loving marriage to a (beauty queen - who is also brainy) pleasant house in the calm of the countryside.
(American Pastoral)

Then BANG : the daughter joins a militant anti-war group,while still a young teenager and she blows up the local bank and kills somebody.

Wonderfully written : very expressive. T...more

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Madhuri rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

02/23/08

bookshelves: america, american, pulitzer

Read in February, 2008

The only thing I have read from Philip Roth before this was Goodbye Columbus. That was one book that I had liked for its genuineness and for its stories that depicted the life of a community, its place in the rest of the world, the fears and the anxiety and a need for assertion.
American Pastoral came heavily recommended from all Critics lists, and I read it with some amount of expectation. Sadly, I was a little disappointed in it. I found it slow, replete with inconsistent characters, and fin...more

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leighcia rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

08/06/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in August, 2007

It’s very hard for me to rate this book. There were so many times while reading the book that I just wanted to put it down and give up on it, because it got long-winded. Roth is a brilliantly talented prose writer and can go on for pages and pages for just one thought, one idea or one scene, which can be delightful or a total a drag that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. I’m not sure whether that was a failure of the novel itself or just the situations where I was reading it (a.k.a. Philadelphi...more

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Joe rated it:

(review of isbn 0375701427)

06/18/07

bookshelves: american, fiction, jewish, new-jersey

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: Those who just want to live their American Dream

American Pastoral is my ninth Roth book and I found this one to be sad, compassionate, and horrifying. I am used to a Rothian character who grew up in North Jersey, is Jewish, and does some things he regrets with women. The Swede is almost Anti-Rothian in this regard. He tries to please all and self-sacrifices almost pathetical, escapes most of his Jewish roots as he mimics the upper echelon of WASPery, and whose sole focus becomes the horrific acts of his only daugther. Zuckerman (Roth's aging,...more

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Sarah rated it:

07/24/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2007

American Pastoral means "a story about America's Golden Age." And so I guess it is, in some ways, the story of the early 20th century American Jewish immigrant family and in its romantic interpretation they're rich, they're whiter than the white folk and they still fall prey to the adultery, lawlessness and immorality that embraces American culture.

I'm completely flumoxed by this book. I started out enjoying it enormously, especially Roth's editorials about high school reunions...more