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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
Beautiful writing but I just couldn't finish. The story just didn't do it for me.
got about halfway through, why is your book 400 pages long for no reason? Very very compelling at first but then he meanders for like 100 straight pages.
"I was a biography in perpetual motion, memory in the marrow of my bones."
Narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth's oft used alter-ego, American Pastoral is the story of Seymour "The Swede" Levov - a man who, on the surface, seems to be a glimmering example of The American Dream. Levov is handsome, athletically gifted, married to a former Miss New Jersey, and lives in a big stone house in the suburbs of Newark, comfortably removed from the crime, decay and racial turmoil consuming his blighted hometown. But when Levov's teenager daughter decides to protest the Vietnam War by setting off a bomb that kills an innocent bystander and sends her into hiding, there so goes "The Swede's" charmed life.
Something nagged at me while I read American Pastoral, a brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning story of how the idyllic American Dream turned in the the "American berserk" thanks to the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. It's been a few years, but I recalled feeling something similar while reading Roth's The Human Stain - like I knew I was reading something pretty profound, something beautifully written by an incredibly skilled artist. So, why wasn't I enjoying it more?
Allow me a brief, tangental analogy: I do not like steak. There are people who revere steak above most other things, people who would pay through the nose for a nice filet mignon or a piece of kobe beef. I am not one of those people. I will eat steak if that's what you make me for dinner, however I won't enjoy it nearly as much as I probably should, and would probably have preferred to have been served something else. For me, Philip Roth is like filet mignon: he's a satisfying, high-end, beautiful meal...for someone else.
When it comes down to it, I suppose I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't like American Pastoral very much. It's a highly lauded work by a highly revered author, so to say that I just didn't like it makes me feel like a bit of a dolt - like the uncultured, backwater hick who shows up to the opera in jeans and then falls asleep during the first act. (Yee haw, ya'll!)
And so though I may not have liked it, American Pastoral is a excellent novel by a gifted writer, so perhaps you should just take my thoughts with a generous grain of salt. After all, this is all coming from the lady who'd rather eat mac and cheese than filet mignon.
Narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth's oft used alter-ego, American Pastoral is the story of Seymour "The Swede" Levov - a man who, on the surface, seems to be a glimmering example of The American Dream. Levov is handsome, athletically gifted, married to a former Miss New Jersey, and lives in a big stone house in the suburbs of Newark, comfortably removed from the crime, decay and racial turmoil consuming his blighted hometown. But when Levov's teenager daughter decides to protest the Vietnam War by setting off a bomb that kills an innocent bystander and sends her into hiding, there so goes "The Swede's" charmed life.
Something nagged at me while I read American Pastoral, a brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning story of how the idyllic American Dream turned in the the "American berserk" thanks to the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. It's been a few years, but I recalled feeling something similar while reading Roth's The Human Stain - like I knew I was reading something pretty profound, something beautifully written by an incredibly skilled artist. So, why wasn't I enjoying it more?
Allow me a brief, tangental analogy: I do not like steak. There are people who revere steak above most other things, people who would pay through the nose for a nice filet mignon or a piece of kobe beef. I am not one of those people. I will eat steak if that's what you make me for dinner, however I won't enjoy it nearly as much as I probably should, and would probably have preferred to have been served something else. For me, Philip Roth is like filet mignon: he's a satisfying, high-end, beautiful meal...for someone else.
When it comes down to it, I suppose I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't like American Pastoral very much. It's a highly lauded work by a highly revered author, so to say that I just didn't like it makes me feel like a bit of a dolt - like the uncultured, backwater hick who shows up to the opera in jeans and then falls asleep during the first act. (Yee haw, ya'll!)
And so though I may not have liked it, American Pastoral is a excellent novel by a gifted writer, so perhaps you should just take my thoughts with a generous grain of salt. After all, this is all coming from the lady who'd rather eat mac and cheese than filet mignon.
dark
slow-paced
For starters, every character in American Pastoral is an (hypocritical) (self-absorbed) asshole.
I love how the pristine picture of the most American of American families gets torn to shreds over the course of the book. I also love Roth's approach to telling the multigenerational immigrant story. There are parts where I was so bored - usually historical background - I wanted to skip ahead to the "contemporary" storyline. But I think those boring bits play an important role in the overall affect.
American Pastoral opens through the perspective of a writer. He tells us that he has essentially created the story out of snatches of historical facts. But then we never hear from him again. The rest of the book is through the eyes of the lead character, "the Swede". Only once in a while we get a subtle reminder that the story is mostly fiction, being crafted as it goes.
American Pastoral is quite an indictment of the American family.
Lines I loved:
Everyone's narcissism is strong at a reunion.
One day life started laughing at him and it never let up.
The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy; into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral - into the indigenous American berserk.
... the ritual postimmigrant struggle for success turning pathological ...
People think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing.
Without transgression there is no knowledge.
We all have homes. That's where everything always goes wrong.
They raised a child who was neither Catholic nor Jew, who instead was first a stutterer, then a killer, then a Jain.
... at the heart of everyone's marriage was there something irrational and unworthy and odd?
He had thought most of it was order and only a little of it was disorder. He'd had it backwards.
The old system that made order doesnt work anymore.
Opposing the father is no picnic and not opposing the father is no picnic ...
I love how the pristine picture of the most American of American families gets torn to shreds over the course of the book. I also love Roth's approach to telling the multigenerational immigrant story. There are parts where I was so bored - usually historical background - I wanted to skip ahead to the "contemporary" storyline. But I think those boring bits play an important role in the overall affect.
American Pastoral opens through the perspective of a writer. He tells us that he has essentially created the story out of snatches of historical facts. But then we never hear from him again. The rest of the book is through the eyes of the lead character, "the Swede". Only once in a while we get a subtle reminder that the story is mostly fiction, being crafted as it goes.
American Pastoral is quite an indictment of the American family.
Lines I loved:
Everyone's narcissism is strong at a reunion.
One day life started laughing at him and it never let up.
The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy; into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral - into the indigenous American berserk.
... the ritual postimmigrant struggle for success turning pathological ...
People think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing.
Without transgression there is no knowledge.
We all have homes. That's where everything always goes wrong.
They raised a child who was neither Catholic nor Jew, who instead was first a stutterer, then a killer, then a Jain.
... at the heart of everyone's marriage was there something irrational and unworthy and odd?
He had thought most of it was order and only a little of it was disorder. He'd had it backwards.
The old system that made order doesnt work anymore.
Opposing the father is no picnic and not opposing the father is no picnic ...
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think I will shoot myself in the foot before I read another Phllip Roth book. He's so dark and hateful--but not in a good way. I've read plenty of dark, twisted novels, but there's something about Phillip Roth that really gets me: He hates women, for one thing. Also, he's just a big hater.
ugh.
ugh.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
That was awesome lowkey. The American Pastoral is a lie.