American Pastoral

This should have been a five-star book. With a good editor, it might have achieved that status.

As it is, Roth's self-indulgent digressions and his overly pedantic cataloging of every little sideshow detail really spoiled the experience for me.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a brilliant achievement. Roth's writing is undeniably talented. But there were moments when I found myself longing for the kind of narrative control and depth that Saul Bellow might have brought to the story.

Perhaps if the book had been more tightly edited, those distractions could have been minimized, and I could have fully immersed myself in the story without being pulled out by the author's excesses.

Nonetheless, it's still a work that has its merits and is worth reading, even if it didn't quite live up to its full potential in my eyes.

**“Life is just a brief period of time in which we are alive”**

Read out of vice, out of habit, to fill a void. Read one book after another for days that turn into months, years, decades. Read dozens of authors, read seeking something you will never find. Read and then you stumble upon Nathan Zuckerman having dinner with the Swede in Manhattan, in an Italian restaurant, and you understand that you will not forget it. You are in the presence of a piece that you would not have been able to assemble, especially when later you witness the way it is pesticided, overturned, plowed. That dinner is a piece of land and Roth is the farmer who has sown in it the contradictory germ of humanity. Before Nathan and the Swede go to dinner, about twenty pages pass and they are not as memorable. Roth is not my favorite writer. I believe that in his life he has never seriously gotten drunk (not even for fun), he doesn't bluster, he is never vainly sentimental, he is always unbearably lucid, present to himself. Maybe it's because of his Jewish extraction. After having dinner with the Swede, Nathan is invited by his former classmates to celebrate forty-five years since graduation and he takes advantage of it for a funny and bitter description of them and of himself. I wondered, but have I already read this? By a completely fortunate coincidence, at the end of the reading I stumbled upon its resonance. It is a story by John Updike titled “The Walk with Elizanne”. Go to dinner with the Swede but for a walk choose Elizanne. In that story, John overflows with the cheesy sentimentalism that Philip must never have expressed on the electronic page, not even for the pleasure of destroying it immediately afterwards with the Backspace key.

It is the Swede's brother who addresses Nathan Zuckerman. I find that it is an excellent description that Roth makes of himself, a passage from autobiography, something that Updike would not have put in the mouth of any of his characters, let alone his alter ego. Zuckerman is not Angstrom and American Pastoral aspires to be the novel of the American dream that breaks on the rocks of the 1968 protests. Everything that is personal and family reverberates on what is social and national. The Judaism with which Roth has always had a simultaneous relationship of deference and rebellion does not escape the echo. The Swede in the 1940s is the boy to whom everything comes easily with elegance. He is what one would call a predestined. The Swede is America, the nation favored by God. The Swede is the bright future that at the end of the 1960s becomes a dark present. Roth has managed to represent the relationship with parents and that with children, showing its mutability due to economic well-being and cultural influences. He has talked about the torment of a man by making it first that of a nation, then that of humanity.

Roth will never be my favorite writer, but this is an essential novel. Whether you like the author or not, read it.

The soundtrack chosen by Roth:
>And maybe because of that damned song, Dream, to the sound of which we then danced with the lights low in this or that basement when the Pied Pipers still had Jo Stafford and sang it as it should be sung..<


And that perfect one from the film based on the book:

First work by Philip Roth I’ve ever read. I was well aware of who he was, and the significance of his name among the pantheon of American contemporary authors. I envisioned him as one of those colossal Egyptian pharaoh statues. The bookstore clerk recommended that I begin with American Pastoral, and I'm truly grateful for that advice.

American Pastoral is a magnificent novel. The historical, psychological, and social depth it encompasses is both breathtaking and astonishingly ambitious. The internal spaces seem endless, which I understand is typical of Roth. I was also astounded by the power on each page. I don't know how to express it better than to say it has power, raw energy, and crackling electricity. I've rarely encountered such power in any other book. If the average novelist shoots with a rifle, Roth uses bazookas and mortars, yet still manages to be precise and subtle.

Overall, my personal experience with this novel was one of great delight. I adored the writing, and there is such beauty in so many pages and paragraphs. However, I can't place this book among my all-time 5-star favorites, solely because of its extremely pessimistic core. As a Christian, I have a strong opinion about Roth's pessimism and nihilism.

If American Pastoral were a painting, it might resemble “Saturn devours his son” by Francisco Goya. That's how horrific it reveals to be once you penetrate the transparent film of its beautiful prose. Yes, horrific. I've read many other reviews here that don't even hint at how horrific the entire work is, some simply stating how great and incredible a masterpiece it is. But why did they like it? Did they attempt to listen to what Roth is actually saying? This is clearly not just-for-the-plot fiction. So, what did the book convey to them for their own lives? What did the author tell them, in essence?

The essence of this book appears to be an extremely bleak and desperate view of life. In summary, Roth takes a man who, like the biblical Job, has been blessed with a wonderful life of happiness and success. Then, after the first 100 pages, he mercilessly tortures him for about 300 pages until the end of the book, when, instead of meeting with God and being saved, things get even worse for him.

The end. In short, this is like the biblical story of Job, but without any trace of God. The plot centers around a Jew who doesn't look or act like a Jew, a man who comes to be known as “the Swede” in his Newark, New Jersey, high school in the 1940s due to his magically “anomalous face.” And the magic extends beyond his appearance: the Swede is endowed with an extraordinary athlete's body and talent. His achievements on the playing field seem to be the sole element of legend and self-transcendence in the insular world around him.

The book is narrated by Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman in the present day. Zuckerman, as he freely admits, fabricates 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 on 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 recently survived. Jerry reveals a traumatic, decades-old event in the Swede's personal life, but not much else.

The Swede enters his father's leather-glove business. He then defies his father by marrying a shiksa 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 doesn't seem to have inherited the great beauty of either parent, though Merry's face is left curiously unportrayed. Her flaw is that she suffers from a severe stutter. And although her childhood is otherwise idyllic, around the age of fifteen, she is suddenly transformed, becoming fat, contemptuous of her family, and committed to extreme leftist politics. By sixteen, in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, she has become so radicalized that she bombs the general store in her rural village of Old Rimrock, killing a local physician, and goes into hiding, disappearing from her parents' lives.

It’s easy to see the allegorical significance of the rebellious daughter who bombs a store and what the explosive social turmoil of 1968 meant for American society. This idea is, I believe, one of the strongest features of this novel. That's what I mean when I say this book has grandiosity in its various layers. From here on, however, Roth unleashes his sadism on his main character without mercy. His writing seems almost energized every time the Swede endures another blow or cries in despair, unable to find any explanation for what his daughter did and for the horror that his life has become.

In fact, as Philip Roth said in an interview, in writing this book, he wanted to make the point that, even if the Swede keeps trying to find a reason for the horror happening to his life, by blaming his own past behavior with his daughter or by blaming others, the truth is that there isn't a reason for the tragedies that befall him. 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, it's a black mass of nihilism.

Obviously, God did not exist in Philip Roth’s real-life universe. The author, in his own words, “didn’t have one religious bone in his body.” Too bad for him. RIP. But God’s absence is not the reason why I didn't love the book. The reason I didn't love it is that it's truly a chalice full of poison. It's brimming with negative energy, with contempt for life and misanthropic feelings. When you write a book as powerful and profound as this, you're necessarily saying something to your readers, something that stands out as the overarching message. You're putting out what's in your heart and soul to reach other people's souls, aren't you?

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 everyone is a piece of shit. As a Christian who sees his life as full of blessings, I can't look at this car-crash of a philosophy and just nod away, saying, “Well, gosh, that’s just another way to look at things!” I found the novel deeply affecting and terribly disturbing – for all the wrong reasons. What I’m saying is that the type of energy that traveled from Roth’s heart to mine is not something that I liked to be in the presence of. There's nothing good, nothing healthy, nothing constructive, nothing gratifying. Just anger and despair.

Perhaps the whole thing has to do with Roth's issues with his own Jewish identity? Quoting from a great review in “The Atlantic”: “If one steps back to see the book whole, it seems that one should indeed regard the Swede as a very good man -- a very good man who perhaps must be destroyed because he is not a very good Jew. “By virtue of his isomorphism to the Wasp world,” Seymour “Swede” Levov escapes the pain and self-consciousness of being a Jew in America; he passes for WASP, and he apparently cannot be allowed to get away with that. 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.” So – beware of a superficial reading of this novel, because your enthusiastic and unqualified “great book!” comment might point to an unhealthy relativism.

My awareness of this book stemmed from my wife and several of her college friends. They described it as the most atrocious experience during their first four years of higher education, which was quite legendary. One would assume that such a description would deter me. However, after procrastinating for several years, I finally decided to take on the challenge and said, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!"

To be honest, it wasn't the worst book I've ever read, nor was it the greatest. I've witnessed some people praise it with as much intensity as my wife and her friends loathed it. I can easily understand both perspectives.

I would rate this book around 3 to 3.5 stars. It was definitely one of the most melodramatic stories I've ever come across. Every scene and discussion was exaggerated to the extreme. This, in part, led to highly descriptive prose. The best way I can describe it is that it's like a hyper-realistic painting in literary form. (Click here for a hyper-realistic painting of Homer Simpson to see what I mean.)

Overall, I found the book interesting. It's essentially the story of a seemingly perfect life spiraling out of control in mid-1900s America due to various factors such as social expectations, religion, war, politics, and family. At times, it felt a bit repetitive and dragged on. I believe it would have had the same impact if it was more concise and toned down.

I can recommend this book to those who want to explore the classics. For instance, I'm part of a reading list completist book club, and this book appears on several lists. If you enjoy historical fiction, there's a good chance you'll like it. However, if you're not in the mood for a lengthy, wordy, and intense read, this might not be the right book for you.

"Where I am, there is Germany" declared T. Mann without any moderation during his exile. The same can be said - to a certain extent depending on the era - also for the America of P. Roth.

The Jewish-American writer in his rich work digs into the foundations of the country to talk about the theme of identity, being a descendant of immigrants, the offspring of a unique experiment (that of the USA) in human history. However, the excavation that the writer undertakes has nothing heroic, if not for the fact that human societies are far from the ideal that even the most inspired (such as the American Founding Fathers) had grasped in their vision of global significance.

What the pen of the great writer uncovers in "American Pastoral" is the human drama, the revenge that reality takes on dreams, the inability of meaningful communication, the unbridgeable otherness, and its terrifying consequences on souls and bodies. But also how the mills of History grind people, how the personal drama turns into a historical-political one, continuing to shape the lives of those involved who are unable to understand themselves and each other.

Roth in the said book successfully harmonizes the individual with the historical, baptizes the personal drama in the collective, dissecting with great ability - sometimes sadistic - the evil at its root. And, then, to cauterize it, he simply throws handfuls of salt on the gaping wound: on the family and its innate cannibalism, on its ritually anthropophagous character, on its carefully hidden paranoia, on its "comme il faut" schizophrenia, on its factory of producing sinners.

If there is any pastoral in this book, it surely functions negatively, making the preordained descent into hell even more unbearable. The fall is much more poignant for the one who retains a memory of paradise, a nostalgic past - even if idealized - as the promise of happiness dissolves before him into the elements from which it was composed.

And this is also my only - completely subjective - objection. This Roth that I love, the one obsessed with his Jewish, masculine, sexual identity, with his psychological compulsions, his abyssal egotism and his shadowy repressed, does not have such a great presence (as much as I would like) in this series of historical novels, as the writer vacillates between the socio-historical and the personal, wanting to record the loss of innocence of the post-war American.

I remain, therefore, a fan of "The Theater of the Snapshot", "Zuckerman Unbound" (that dreamy first part of the visit to the writer's mentor - probably Bellow - and their conversation...), "My Life as a Man", "Patrimony", etc. In these works he is left unassailable, far from any political-social disturbances, to create the Holy Family and its rituals, plunging the dusty dentition of this discourse into the decaying body of post-war America (i.e. the whole of the Western world), with a Chekhovian whirlwind and penetration.

In conclusion, "American Pastoral" is by no means lacking, nor is it inferior to anything, having secured the place that belongs to it beside the Classics, being a Classic itself.

American Pastoral is a profound and thought-provoking book that shatters preconceptions in multiple aspects. It challenges our ideas about self, family, morality, dreams, life, and nation.

What this book reveals is truly eye-opening. Firstly, it shows that no matter what parents do, children have a significant say in shaping who they become. Secondly, it demonstrates that even "good people" are capable of doing bad, sick, and unspeakable things. Thirdly, it exposes the reality that rich and beautiful couples who have been in a 30-year monogamous relationship can cheat on each other without the other's knowledge, feeling little guilt and even enjoying the power trip. Fourthly, it highlights that in America, the horrors of life can run rampant and destroy hard-working, god-fearing patriots with unprovoked ruthlessness. Fifthly, it emphasizes that the American dream is not an end in itself and can fatally disappoint even those who once thought it was realized. Sixthly, it points out that a strong self cannot be built on denial and requires strategic use of it. Seventhly, it reveals that security in various aspects such as self-awareness, trust in family, dreams, being able to distinguish propagandists, belief in the "social contract", the principle of forgiveness, and security itself are all illusions. Finally, it shows that life is elusive to understanding and flagrant in pain.

The main character, the Swede, is a prime example of someone who fails to see into those around him and perhaps even himself. This book is not an uplifting one, but it is a worthwhile read nonetheless. It contains several powerful quotes that capture the essence of its themes. For example, "And since we don't just forget things because they don't matter but also forget things because they matter too much - because each of us forget in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint - it's no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, can be a willful excursion into mythomania (55)". Another quote that stands out is "The tragedy of man not set up for tragedy - that is every man's tragedy."

I would appreciate it if anyone who reads this could let me know if I have understood Roth correctly or if I am completely off base. Your honesty is greatly valued. PS: I would like to give this book 2 and a half stars, but since I can't, I will leave it at 3 for now.

Here's what I hope is true: Philip Roth penned this book, with 'Nathan Zuckerman' as the narrator, aiming to critique the hero-worship that Zuckerman/Roth is prone to at times, as seen in the first of the Zuckerman novels. He wrote it to expose the stupidity, self-satisfaction, and arrogance of baby-boomer generation Americans. They believe everything was wonderful when they were children, think everything is worthless now, and blame everyone else for it. He specifically intended to show how extremely wealthy white men of a certain age treat women and non-white people, often including other rich white men.

Here's what I'm fairly certain is true: Philip Roth wrote this book because he's truly disappointed that The American Dream didn't turn out to be so flawless. This imperfection can be attributed to women (for example, the women in this novel are, successively: adulterers, 'cold,' overly intellectual, terrorists, mentally unstable, or, in very rare cases, fortunate enough to be the mothers of rich white men; wives, on the other hand, are all adulterers). It can also be blamed on black people.

Other reviewers have managed to express their anger towards this book by highlighting an individual passage, and indeed, they are all infuriating. My most enraging passage involves the main character regretting that the U.S. dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki... because, as a result, he never got to fight in World War II. Yes. To put this into perspective, remember that 9/11 had 3,000 casualties. That's 20 times fewer than the smallest estimated number of casualties in the *less* deadly Nagasaki bombing. This shows just how self-absorbed Nathan Zuckerman/The Swede/Philip Roth is.

Fortunately, all of this is presented within a very witty narrative framework: none of this actually occurs even in the novel. It's just a narrative fabricated by the narrator, the aforementioned Mr. Zuckerman. He's explicitly making it up. And thus, nothing is sincere and everything is open to doubt. Eye roll.

On the other hand, what's interesting is the way Roth combines his 'James-lite' style with his 'Portnoy-rant' style here. That would have made the book worth reading, except that he manages to eliminate both the Portnoy humor and the James self-awareness. So it kind of ends up reading like an emo song composed by a forty-year-old man who hasn't listened to any music since 1943.

Despite all this, and despite the fact that the last 100 pages are completely unnecessary (why not add another 100 about how - after his daughter turned out to be nothing like him and his wife cheated on him and he dies of cancer - well, also, his dog died?), the book is still worth reading for a couple of striking scenes.

But the best American novel of the last 25 years? Not even on the long list. Someone needs to conduct a study on how Roth became the great American novelist of the late nineties. Is it just because the former candidate for this position started writing drivel (Updike)? Was it just the self-serving conservatism of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years? That's an essay I'd like to read.

In the course of this enjoyable reading of the book, you may wonder why everything turned out so badly, so unexpectedly negatively, when the bases and the assumptions only led to positive results and ideal outcomes.

This story is a nightmare, an unexpected hell of wrong decisions, reversed contradictions, false dreams, and countless misfortunes that collide with events and situations that have marked families, societies, cities, and countries.

Like a domino, the American plastic dream magazine starts, and each piece that falls with such skill and harmony drags everything else, but completely changes everything.

Wars, political scandals, social revolutions, economic games bring absolute chaos while ostensibly they should have offered development to happiness.

Neithan Zuckerman is an aging, sick, and tired writer who, after telling us about his personal life full of turmoil, invites us to a reunion of his former classmates where the dreamed past meets the old and realistic present in a tragic demythologization.

Zuckerman presents us with his idol, the famous "Swede", the embodiment of success, the living legend.

Throughout his life, he admired and praised this golden personality. He was his hero, the one he would like to replace his own mediocre self with. He was the protagonist who walked on the path of great achievements, an ascending journey to the paradise of dreams. He was the perfect, the unique, the god of the existing utopia.

When he accidentally learns at this reunion of his classmates that the "Swede" failed miserably in his life, he refuses to accept it and the narration of the tragic irony begins.

Now Zuckerman opens the door of the narration with the key of entropy and leads us to the chaos of the life of the protagonist "Swede" and the whole America of expectations.

We start with the nickname "Swede" which is given to a Jewish boy because of his characteristics.

Simour Libov, the so-called "Swede", is blonde, blue-eyed, with perfectly white skin, handsome, tall, and mature.

He has excellent performances in the three American sports.

Intelligent, charming, humble, ethical, noble,

flawless.

The pride of the family. The example of morality and virtue.

He was born with the cap of happiness.

Therefore, he deserves and has every happiness and success. Tirelessly. Unhindered. Naturally.

Later, as an adult, he is a rich and successful entrepreneur who continues the family tradition in the glove manufacturing industry.

Everything was auspicious. An excellent present and a bright future ahead of him without obstacles and setbacks.

There was, of course, a condition - rather - for all this in the purely American dreamed life, that he would never question his right to the one-way street of success. That he would never wonder about the structure and the order of the situations and the events.

It is like this because he deserves it. Whatever happens will be good. If it is bad, it will not happen or will pass quickly.

SO GOOD TO BE TRUE...

However, the Swede is not afraid. He lives his dream. He thanks it mentally, physically, and intellectually.

The changes that bring the post-war developments do not interest him. They do not touch his American paradise. He is willfully blind. He is indifferent. He remains calm when everything around him changes chaotically. He lives in the utopia of joy and vanity. He has everything arranged. Everything is in order inside the drawer of his longing.

The mistake is everywhere. No willingness to correct it.

And then comes the climax.

Disorder. Chaos. Destruction. Total and definitely tragedy.

It doesn't make sense. There is no logic. Paranoia. Nightmare. Blood. Lies.

What went wrong in the dreamed paradise of illusions?

What happened and the absolute order turned into chaos?

How did the completely ecstatic beauty of life give birth to the defiled and wild ugliness?

No one can answer.

The writer shouts silently: The tragedy of the void makes no sense. There is no explanation.

There is only the "lesson" of life that is taught continuously until the finale.

Happy reading!!