Take a photo of a barcode or cover
drdreuh 's review for:
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
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 ...