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befriendtheshadow 's review for:
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
Philip Roth is a great writer. He builds these deep and intricate character portraits, and reading his books often feels like staring at this grand painting that's hung on a wall, as the painter slowly explains the painting, the characters in it, the wider setting, zooming in on seemingly-invisible brush strokes to tell a magnificent story. In many ways, reading Roth is a privilege.
Keeping all of the above in mind, this book did not impress me. Yes, he did an amazing character portrait of the Swede (and to a lesser degree the women...to a much lesser degree), yes he painted this beautiful painting of a man realizing that everything he once thought about life and the world was just that: his own thoughts about life and the world; thoughts that could be contested and rejected and transformed. But there's also an uncomfortable rage there and that scared me, because it's that straight white man rage that fuels misogyny and war, and maintains the patriarchy. It was angry and every page seemed to get angrier, and the anger was understood in the context of the character, but it seemed to end there. Anger. That was all. No understanding, just anger.
And then there was the repetition. The repetition, the repetition, the repetition. Oh dear. Merry killed someone, we are told over and over again. She killed someone. In italics, in CAPS, in screams and in whispers, over and over again. She was raped, she was raped, she was raped. This inability to grasp things is a great insight into the main character. Being born a straight white man in America you tend to assume that things are just the way you think they are, there's a truth and that's it, and your truth can never be false. And so when you are confronted with something that begins to crack this truth, the denial begins. Hence the disbelief, the repetition, the lack of understanding, the inability to see things from a wider perspective, to grasp power and the power and privilege of your own narrative. Roth does this brilliantly, but after 400+ pages I just want to leave the Swede to wallow in his incomprehension.
And that's the problem. I just couldn't care for the character, so I couldn't give a shit what happened to him. I had so little sympathy for this angry man who didn't seem to be close to understanding that his way is not the highway. Perhaps it's because I stopped this book halfway through and left it for a year until, after seeing how many of my friends raved about it, I decided to finish it off. And I desperately hoped for something, some redemption, some indication that he might change, but other than the final few 40 pages, which were interesting but did not provide this redemption I was looking for, I was left feeling that I inhabited this world of a man I would never like without actually seeing him redeem himself. Instead it was uncomfortable and unsympathetic. And despite Roth's brilliant writing, if I'm left not giving a shit about the character and not sympathizing with him, then that is a failure of the writing in my eyes.
There's a telling line towards the end of the book where the Swede pleads with his wife Dawn to cut his father some slack. "The man had been brought up a certain way, and that's the way he was, and there was nothing anybody could do about it so why stir him up?"
That seemed to be the general feeling-- this poor patriarch who suddenly realizes he can't control the women in his life and has a breakdown. Why can't we just leave him alone? Why, why, why? She was raped, she killed someone, the leather gloves, etc.
I will read Roth again. The Human Stain is a brilliant book (though perhaps I did read it at a different point in my life), but I'm a bit Roth-ed out after this beast.
Keeping all of the above in mind, this book did not impress me. Yes, he did an amazing character portrait of the Swede (and to a lesser degree the women...to a much lesser degree), yes he painted this beautiful painting of a man realizing that everything he once thought about life and the world was just that: his own thoughts about life and the world; thoughts that could be contested and rejected and transformed. But there's also an uncomfortable rage there and that scared me, because it's that straight white man rage that fuels misogyny and war, and maintains the patriarchy. It was angry and every page seemed to get angrier, and the anger was understood in the context of the character, but it seemed to end there. Anger. That was all. No understanding, just anger.
And then there was the repetition. The repetition, the repetition, the repetition. Oh dear. Merry killed someone, we are told over and over again. She killed someone. In italics, in CAPS, in screams and in whispers, over and over again. She was raped, she was raped, she was raped. This inability to grasp things is a great insight into the main character. Being born a straight white man in America you tend to assume that things are just the way you think they are, there's a truth and that's it, and your truth can never be false. And so when you are confronted with something that begins to crack this truth, the denial begins. Hence the disbelief, the repetition, the lack of understanding, the inability to see things from a wider perspective, to grasp power and the power and privilege of your own narrative. Roth does this brilliantly, but after 400+ pages I just want to leave the Swede to wallow in his incomprehension.
And that's the problem. I just couldn't care for the character, so I couldn't give a shit what happened to him. I had so little sympathy for this angry man who didn't seem to be close to understanding that his way is not the highway. Perhaps it's because I stopped this book halfway through and left it for a year until, after seeing how many of my friends raved about it, I decided to finish it off. And I desperately hoped for something, some redemption, some indication that he might change, but other than the final few 40 pages, which were interesting but did not provide this redemption I was looking for, I was left feeling that I inhabited this world of a man I would never like without actually seeing him redeem himself. Instead it was uncomfortable and unsympathetic. And despite Roth's brilliant writing, if I'm left not giving a shit about the character and not sympathizing with him, then that is a failure of the writing in my eyes.
There's a telling line towards the end of the book where the Swede pleads with his wife Dawn to cut his father some slack. "The man had been brought up a certain way, and that's the way he was, and there was nothing anybody could do about it so why stir him up?"
That seemed to be the general feeling-- this poor patriarch who suddenly realizes he can't control the women in his life and has a breakdown. Why can't we just leave him alone? Why, why, why? She was raped, she killed someone, the leather gloves, etc.
I will read Roth again. The Human Stain is a brilliant book (though perhaps I did read it at a different point in my life), but I'm a bit Roth-ed out after this beast.