Wow. I vividly remember reading Underworld and wondering, “why didn't it win more awards?” Perhaps, it's simply due to the fact that it was published in the same year as “American Pastoral”. The concept of two remarkable American novels, one Jewish and the other WASP, both released in 1997, is truly astonishing. Order clashes with chaos, civilization is unravelled, and the family center fails to hold. I believe I liked Underworld a bit better, but I'd need to carefully review the film tape to be certain. This close, this soon, it's almost too close to call.

“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

On 10/22/16, I just completed the movie. It was choppy, yet it reminded me of how much I adored this book and how strongly it gripped me. I'm still unsure whether I think “AP” or “U” is better, and it has been over 5 years. I seldom re-read novels, but I'm considering delving back into this one.

Jeffery Pugh's Tree Huggers

Pastorale americana by Philip Roth was written in 1997 and won him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998.

The story begins with Nathan Zuckerman, a familiar character to Roth's readers as he is the writer's alter ego who appears in several of his novels. Zuckerman casually meets Seymour Levov, nicknamed "the Swede", whom he greatly admired in high school. After that encounter, Zuckerman receives a letter from the man asking for a meeting. However, the meeting leads to nothing and Zuckerman is quite disappointed.

We could say that the story really gets going thanks to the reunion of the alumni of a high school. Among the former students is also Zuckerman. Here, the writer will meet Seymour Levov's brother, Jerry, from whom he will not only discover that the man has recently died but also that he has lived through a family disaster caused by the Vietnam War and involving his beloved daughter, Merry.

Seymour was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. His father is of Jewish origin and owns a glove factory that expands rapidly, becoming his fortune. Seymour is a handsome boy who excels in three sports (baseball, basketball, and football), making him a sort of hero to his schoolmates. Once grown up, he will abandon his sports career to take over the reins of his father's glove company, marry Dawn Dwyer, a Catholic and former Miss New Jersey, and have a single daughter, Merry.

What unfolds in Pastorale americana is the seemingly perfect life of a successful American. A happy little family, good business, a beautiful house immersed in nature. Seymour Levov embodies the American dream. The only discordant note is Merry's stutter. At least this is the only problem until Merry turns sixteen or seventeen. At that point, the girl becomes increasingly rebellious and politicized, to the extent of joining a far-left political organization and committing a terrorist act from which there is no turning back.

One interesting aspect of Pastorale americana is that we actually don't know how much of what we read is true and really happened. Zuckerman indeed constructs an imaginary biography of Seymour, based on some memories, Jerry's account, and some newspaper articles.

And here another fascinating aspect of the novel intertwines: the three narrators (Roth, Zuckerman, Levov) merge, in the most literal sense of the term: they blend together. If at the beginning, reading Pastorale americana, it seems that Roth is narrating the story, after a few chapters it will seem that Zuckerman has taken the reins of the narration, only to then read a story narrated by the protagonist himself: Seymour Levov. And the fusion is so well done that at the end, at least at first, we forget that what we have read is an imaginary story, we don't know how much of what we have read is true, we don't know if the facts involving Merry, Seymour Levov, and his family are really as such.

The novel revolves around a question that at the same time tries to offer an explanation for the tragic event: how could such a perfect American family have given birth to a murderer? As I said: try to offer an explanation, because there is no true explanation. Of course, the reader can lean towards one or the other motivation, but the truth we will never know.

Pastorale americana was to my liking, but it is not a book for everyone. It requires a certain degree of attention and concentration to be read and understood and although Philip Roth's style is impeccable from a certain point of view, from another, at least in my opinion, it is too redundant, risking boring the reader with its countless digressions.

And this is how we know we are alive: by making mistakes. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and simply enjoy the ride. But if you can do that... Well, you're lucky.

With incisive writing and a critical eye, the author describes the American myth that belongs to entire generations of men who have believed in the possibility of individual affirmation, the achievement of well-being, social and family success through work and commitment, convinced of living in the country of welcome and opportunities for all. More specifically, it describes the three-generation life of immigrant Jews who have believed in that myth to the end, making it a reason for satisfaction and pride, happy to be part of the great America of rights, rich and morally impeccable. The Swede and his family embody this myth and lead a life without turmoil, with a lot of work and great faith in the future. The Swede, a young man who perfectly embodies the myth of the successful young man: he is beautiful, very beautiful, from a good family, rich, enterprising, admired by all (as we expect from a young man of good family). Very young, he marries a beautiful woman (as per the manual), takes over the family business and devotes himself body and soul to building his future, the prototype of the perfect life. And yet something eventually gets stuck, the dream turns into a nightmare because of the rebellious, restless and countercurrent teenage daughter, animated by a pacifist spirit who engages against the Vietnam War and ends up in a dead-end tunnel. The Swede does not resign himself to losing her and witnessing the failure of his myth but is forced, through a long and painful introspective investigation, to review his dream and his certainties, to reveal an America full of contradictions and injustices: the Vietnam War that divides the country, the youth protest, the revolt of the black communities that demand integration and rights. In this novel, the author proposes a sharp and merciless sociological analysis of America, highlighting its dark sides, made up of prosperity and hypocrisy.

The title American Pastoral refers to Thanksgiving Day, which probably represents the only occasion on which American citizens meet "moreover on neutral and unconsecrated ground, when everyone eats the same things... a colossal turkey that satisfies everyone...". Only on days like this do people find themselves in conditions of substantial equality.

Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la gita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati.

Philip Roth è entrato di gran carriera nella schiera degli scrittori americani che rispetto a di fronte al quale non posso che tacere e ascoltare. Manco a farlo apposta un altro ebreo!

Come nel caso di Nemesi anche in questo nella mia mente il collegamento è corso subito ai Greci a Teocrito nello specifico. Poiché la parola "pastorale" legata alla letteratura è nata proprio con lui: "Il termine pastorale in arte (letteratura, arti visive e musica, principalmente) si riferisce alla rappresentazione di un soggetto campestre in cui villaggi di campagna, pastori, animali e il paesaggio stesso vengono raffigurati in maniera idealizzata, spesso alludendo ad atmosfere idilliache e mitiche."

In Pastorale Americana questi elementi si ritrovano tutti, soprattutto nelle ultime pagine. Ci sono dei pezzi che descrivono in maniera lirica il paesaggio che circonda il nostro protagonista incontrastato: lo "Svedese". Un paesaggio assolutamente idilliaco...

Mentre seduti intorno al desco per il pranzo del ringraziamento fra i nostri personaggi, che abbiamo seguito per quattrocento pagine, si sta consumando una guerra intestina. O almeno si sta consumando nel cervello del nostro protagonista che si vede crollare tutto intorno: "Ed era solo una volta l'anno che si trovavano tutti insieme, e per giunta sul terreno neutrale e sconsacrato della festa del Ringraziamento, quando tutti mangiano le stesse cose e nessuno si allontana per andare a rimpinzarsi di nascosto di qualche cibo stravagante: né Kugel, né pesce gefilte, né insalata di rafano e lattuga romana, ma solo un tacchino colossale per duecentocinquanta milioni di persone; un tacchino colossale che le sazia tutte. Una moratoria sui cibi stravaganti e sulle curiose abitudini e sulle esclusività religiose, una moratoria sulla nostalgia trimillenaria degli ebrei, una moratoria su Cristo e la croce e la crocifissione per i cristiani, quando tutti, nel New Jersey come altrove, possono essere, quanto alla propria irrazionalità, più passivi che nel resto dell'anno. Una moratoria su ogni doglianza e su ogni risentimento, e non soltanto per i Dwyer e i Levov, ma per tutti coloro che, in America, diffidano uno dell'altro. È la pastorale americana per eccellenza e dura ventiquattr'ore."

Lui, la figura più mitica e idilliaca dell'intero romanzo, il nostro eroe americano, Giovannino Semedimela, sta iniziando inesorabilmente la sua capitolazione, che avremo poi modo di conoscere all'inizio del romanzo prima ancora che la sua storia ci venga raccontata.

Seymour Levov cerca in tutti i modi di far si che la sua vita sia perfetta, ma purtroppo non possiede la capacità di comprendere fino in fondo chi gli sta intorno: "Come penetrare nell'intimo della gente? Era una dote o una capacità che non possedeva. Non aveva semplicemente la combinazione di quella serratura." E soprattutto commette l'errore più naturale che ogni genitore possa fare, quello di amare sua figlia, una figlia che gli porterà la guerra in casa fino alle estreme conseguenze...

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, and 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.

I was sharing about this book today with a friend.

It's truly an extraordinary and extremely powerful wrenching novel.

It stands out as one of the very best among the bests!!!

This book has the ability to deeply touch the hearts and souls of its readers.

The story is so captivating that it keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

The characters are well-developed and come to life on the pages.

You can't help but become emotionally invested in their lives and experiences.

The author's writing style is masterful, painting vivid pictures in your mind and making you feel as if you are right there in the story.

If you haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend it.

It's a must-read for any book lover.

You won't be disappointed.

Yes, we are truly alone. We are deeply alone, and this state of aloneness persists always. There is always a layer of loneliness that awaits us, growing ever deeper. There is absolutely nothing that we can do to get rid of this loneliness. It is an inescapable part of our existence. No, loneliness should not come as a surprise to us. Even though experiencing it can be astonishing, it is a natural part of our human condition. You can attempt to turn yourself inside out, but all that will happen is that you will be in a different state of being, still alone. Instead of being lonely while keeping your true self hidden inside, you will now be lonely with your inner self exposed.

Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness ever deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn’t surprise us, as astonishing to experience it as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely.

ITA
This is the first book by Philip Roth that I have read and it didn't excite me.

The plot unfolds around the story of a "typical American" family and the problems that lurk behind the beautiful appearances. I must say that the author writes well, but from my point of view, he often writes sentences that are too long, which makes it easy to lose the thread of the discourse. Moreover, the plot is already quite complicated as the author gets lost in a mountain of thoughts and temporal jumps with a narrator who changes continuously and it's not exactly clear who is telling the story.

I will delve deeper into the review of this book on my blog: https://nastasiafiorentino.com/it/boo...

ESP
The plot is a labyrinth of long thoughts and temporal jumps that make the story lose fluidity, also causing distraction at certain moments and little desire to continue reading. The beginning promises, but then the constant digressions and the father's obsession with trying to help his daughter lead to a more tortuous path that tests the patience of the reader.

I will tell more about this book on my blog: https://nastasiafiorentino.com/books/...

Yes, the breach had been pounded in their fortification, even out here in secure old Rimrock. And now that it was opened, it would not be closed again. All the voices from without, condemning and rejecting their life!

A reviewer, normal, long-winded, often boring. That reviewer's alter ego may think he's more interesting, but actually quite like the former. An author, Roth by name. A fictional author, Nathan Zuckerman, who has many apparent links to the latter.

The sixth (by publication date) of Roth's nine "Zuckerman" novels is American Pastoral. It tells the tale of Nathan Zuckerman's story of Seymour Irving "Swede" Levov. The Swede, a fair-complexioned, blue-eyed blond Jewish boy, was a few years older than Nathan. He was a three-sport hero of Weequahic High, and his athletic prowess provided relief from the dread of the forties' war years. Even though he enlisted in the Marines after graduating in 1945, he spent his tour as a recreation specialist/drill instructor/basketball-/baseball-player due to the effects of the atomic bombs on Japan.

The Swede's father, Lou, had to make a visit to Parris Island to break off a hasty engagement his son had made to marry an Irish Catholic girl. The Swede returned home in 1947, unencumbered by a Gentile wife and with the glamour of being a Jewish Marine. In 1949, the Swede married Dawn Dwyer, Miss New Jersey, a Catholic.

In 1995, Nathan received a letter from the Swede asking to meet and help him write a tribute to his father, who had died the previous year. They met at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. The Swede talked about his three sons and his business, Newark Maid, which had been offshore since the early seventies due to the decline of Newark.

The subject of the letter never came up, and Nathan thought the Swede was bland and all about being looked at. But then he realized he was wrong. Nathan used a chapter to describe his forty-fifth high school reunion, where he ran into Jerry, the Swede's brother. Jerry became the narrator of his own story about the Swede and his daughter Merry.

Most of the novel is told in the third person, and the author seems to be speculating about the Swede's story. The last chapter is a dinner party at the Swede's suburban Jersey stone house, where the American pastoral seems to be going up in smoke. The real author, Roth, takes over as the narrator and levels charges at the American pastoral.

American Pastoral is a magnificent novel that explores the human condition and the American dream. It is a complex and thought-provoking work that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

To begin with, I must say that this particular reading engages one due to its brutality and truth.

It is a book that presents the corruption, injustice, doubt, and betrayal that prevailed in 1960s America.

The Libov family, a Jewish family, decides to settle in New Jersey with the aim of living the American dream and seeking a better life. They are a prototype of happiness, success, and refinement as, having a glove manufacturing business, they manage to rise to the highest social strata of the era.

Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, upon meeting his old schoolmate, Seymour Libov, discovers that his life is not as idyllic as it seems.

Happiness gives way to misfortune, certainty to doubt, beauty to ugliness, and trust to betrayal. All moral values are cast aside.

The work has a political background, but the author does not focus on that. He exploits the pseudo-liberals and promotes the revolution with the ulterior motive of seeking the truth. Class and racial discrimination continue to prevail in the American city.

Roth did not want to give the reading public false images and illusions but to make known that life and fate are unjust and unappeasable and that anarchy and chaos run through societies.

A quick perusal of my 'in-by-about-America' shelf reveals a diverse range of titles. From Stephen King's popular fiction to Pynchon's post-modernist razzmatazz, there's a wide variety. However, none seem as American to me as American Pastoral. Forget the so-called Great American Novels that tackle 'Great American Issues' like the Depression, racism, and slavery. Even though classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, and others focus on significant events or socio-cultural issues, they don't capture the American spirit like Roth's creation.
American Pastoral delves deep into America's heart and soul, analyzing its multiculturalism, self-love, and self-hatred. It explores complex human relationships and weaves an intricate network of America's inner conflicts. Despite its self-absorbed tone, it comes off as a mockery of America's self-obsession. The book requires patience to uncover its hidden meanings, but it's not a difficult read.
Some criticize Roth for his portrayal of Jews and for being a misogynist. However, I disagree. The book is anti-heroic and challenges the rich white American's ideals. Roth's female characters are well-developed, and any sexist remarks seem to define a character's perspective rather than express contempt. In conclusion, American Pastoral is a hard book to review, but it's ingeniously written. Roth's rambling and side-tracking can be frustrating, but when he makes his point, it's impressive. His writing may seem schizophrenic, but it's the work of a true master.

"Da, we are alone, terribly alone, and there is always a deeper layer of loneliness waiting for us. We can do nothing to escape this. No, loneliness should not surprise us, no matter how surprising it may seem in the face of our experience. You can only throw yourself headlong if you want, but then you will be nothing other than on your back and alone, instead of being upright and alone."

Loneliness is an inescapable part of the human condition. It can creep up on us at any time, making us feel isolated and cut off from the world around us. But we should not let it surprise us. We should accept it as a natural part of life and learn to cope with it in our own way. Whether we choose to embrace it or fight against it, loneliness will always be there. So we might as well make the best of it and find ways to turn it into a source of strength and growth.

Sometimes, being alone can give us the space and time we need to reflect on our lives, to figure out what we really want and who we really are. It can be a time of self-discovery and self-improvement. So instead of fearing loneliness, we should see it as an opportunity to explore our inner selves and to become the best version of ourselves.