American Pastoral in Constant Reader

Aug 19, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: around-the-usa, own, location-usa-nj, read2014

It was part of my 2014 Reading Goals to read more of Philip Roth but I didn't get through as many as I would have liked. A friend whose reading life I respect said this was the best book and I should stop wasting my time with his others. Well, I've checked out a few shorter novels of Roth's from the library that I might still read.

But he was right, this one is far more intricate than some I'd dipped into. Just like Infinite Jest isn't about tennis (but it is) and The Brothers K isn't about baseb It was part of my 2014 Reading Goals to read more of Philip Roth but I didn't get through as many as I would have liked. A friend whose reading life I respect said this was the best book and I should stop wasting my time with his others. Well, I've checked out a few shorter novels of Roth's from the library that I might still read.

But he was right, this one is far more intricate than some I'd dipped into. Just like Infinite Jest isn't about tennis (but it is) and The Brothers K isn't about baseball (but it is), this novel is not really about glovemaking, but it is. A man who was a star in highschool takes over his father's glove factory in an era of decline, loses the reigns on his family when his stuttering daughter becomes a revolutionary, and Newark is destroyed by riots.

"Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them."

The novel starts but doesn't end with Nathan Zuckerman, a classmate of the Swede's little brother, who was contacted by the Swede to write a novel about his father, but then that framework of the story kind of just... dissipates. There are some other unfinished plot lines that I was left wondering about - Rita, the daughter, the brother, the marriage. I know this is part of a trilogy, but I don't get the impression the following two books are about the same characters. So what does it mean that there are some unfinished parts? It does seem like Roth is demonstrating the imperfection of actual life, reflecting on the American Dream, eternal loneliness, and the accidental failures of relationships, especially parent-child.

I've read some Roth that is all dialogue, while this one is far more focused on individual thoughts of the characters, and they even circle back to conversations in their minds the way so many of us do.

"Getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong."

Other little tidbits:

"The philosopher-king of ordinary life."

"This is how successful people live. They're good citizens. They feel lucky. They feel grateful. God is smiling down on them. There are problems, they adjust. And then everything changes and it becomes impossible. ... Who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy - that is every man's tragedy."

"That is the outer life. .. But now it is accompanied by an inner life, a gruesome inner life of tyrannical obsessions, stifled inclinations, superstitious expectations, horrible imaginings, fantasy conversations, unanswerable questions. Sleeplessness and self-castigation night after night. Enormous loneliness. Unflagging remorse. .. And in the every day world, nothing to be done but respectably carry on the huge pretense of living as himself, with all the shame of masquerading as the ideal man."

"No you didn't make the war. You made the angriest kid in America. Ever since he was a kid, every word she spoke was a bomb." ...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Yulia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I found this an impossible read because the central character, Swede Levov, was utterly implausible. He was too handsome, too kind, too modest, too tortured, too innocent(!), but what he was not was real. He was a fantasy. And to all who say they've known a Swede in their lives I'd guess they didn't know that person very well at all. They were too busy gazing from afar at their gorgeous marble idol with its beautiful tears.

Should I blame the fictional Nathan Zuckerman and not the actual Philip ...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Kecia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, pulitzer_prize, times_100_best, usa

Fascinating story! It gets off to a clunky start and finishes less than satisfying but sandwiched in between is a gripping story. I think we are all guilty of assuming that the high school sports hero who grows up to be a successful businessperson and marries the beauty queen, who is a successful businessperson herself, and lives in the big white house in the quaint small town has a perfect life. American Pastoral blows those assumptions in a million little peices. Roth gets long-winded at times ...more

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Nov 12, 2008 Gail rated it it was amazing

Shelves: jewish-themes, 2008, constant-reader

Swede Levov is that rarity in American life, a Jewish high school athletic hero. He works his way up in his father's company and becomes the very successful owner of a glove-making business. Along the way he marries a Miss New Jersey, buys a marvelous old stone house, and generally lives the American dream. His complacent bubble is rippled and then shattered by his daughter, a rebellious teen who eventually sets off a bomb in their hometown, inadvertantly killing a physician.

Roth's novel is an o ...more

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