arphaxad's review
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
arphaxad's review
rating:
recommended for: David Koresh, Roger Clemens, my asshole neighbor
status: Read in January, 2008
rating:
recommended for: David Koresh, Roger Clemens, my asshole neighbor
status: Read in January, 2008
** spoiler alert **
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
"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
oh man, I so want to read this book now... but not really.
i would put this book on one of those lists like "wrestle a tiger" or "try crack."It's like, you'd like to say you've done it because it sounds cool, but then you actually have to do it, and that's just masochistic/stupid.
I don't think I understand why you hated this book so much. Because of Roth's writing style? Because the plot is simple? You say you like The Road but the plot there is even simpler. What is it that you hate about literature that is exemplified by this book? Or what is it that you like about literature that isn't here.
I ask because I am interested.
I'd argue The Road is as close to the exact opposite of American Pastoral as one can possibly get while still dealing with the concept of family.Anyway, I had a long-winded reply earlier, but instead I'll just say I read for two reasons: to be entertained and to be enlightened. The best books do both; most halfway decent books can do at least one.
When a book does neither and is among the most arduous reads I've ever endured, what other opinion could I possibly form?
