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lizziekam 's review for:
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth, Philip Roth
I think there is a distinction between pleasant books and pleasurable books. I have found unpleasant books to be a pleasurable reading experience, and often find pleasant books to be unpleasurable for me in the reading. American Pastoral for me was both unpleasant and unpleasurable so I ended up skimming the last 100 or so pages.
American Pastoral won the Pulitzer in 1998 but this same book could be written in 2017. It was for this reason that I struggled with this book, as many of the themes are resonant today. This book deals with the period from the late 1960s to early 1970s which were riled with leftist political violence that destroyed our country's sense of innocence and righteousness. That era has now set the stage for the next chapter of the "indigenous American berserk," this time from the right.
The plot of the novel centers around Swede Levov, a high school hero, good looking, successful businessman who marries Dawn, a former Miss New Jersey and moves from Newark out to the countryside. His life seems perfect, until his only child, the teenaged Merry, sets off a bomb at their local post office, killing one person and becoming a fugitive. This character thus has a distinct "before" and "after," and as the book proceeds, Swede struggles to integrate the life he knew, the good life that he felt he earned, with the life he has now.
The book has a particular style that ultimately, I found frustrating. As the plot slowly unfolds, the narrator spins out page after page of digression about the glove industry (so. many. gloves.), the inscrutability of the people around you, religion, sex, the New Jersey of the past and the destruction of Newark, all the usual Rothian preoccupations. The plot really grabbed at the beginning, but by the end, the discursive ranting was draining. I understand and admire how this mirrors Swede's mental breakdown, but 150 pages of political rants were just too much for me.
American Pastoral won the Pulitzer in 1998 but this same book could be written in 2017. It was for this reason that I struggled with this book, as many of the themes are resonant today. This book deals with the period from the late 1960s to early 1970s which were riled with leftist political violence that destroyed our country's sense of innocence and righteousness. That era has now set the stage for the next chapter of the "indigenous American berserk," this time from the right.
The plot of the novel centers around Swede Levov, a high school hero, good looking, successful businessman who marries Dawn, a former Miss New Jersey and moves from Newark out to the countryside. His life seems perfect, until his only child, the teenaged Merry, sets off a bomb at their local post office, killing one person and becoming a fugitive. This character thus has a distinct "before" and "after," and as the book proceeds, Swede struggles to integrate the life he knew, the good life that he felt he earned, with the life he has now.
The book has a particular style that ultimately, I found frustrating. As the plot slowly unfolds, the narrator spins out page after page of digression about the glove industry (so. many. gloves.), the inscrutability of the people around you, religion, sex, the New Jersey of the past and the destruction of Newark, all the usual Rothian preoccupations. The plot really grabbed at the beginning, but by the end, the discursive ranting was draining. I understand and admire how this mirrors Swede's mental breakdown, but 150 pages of political rants were just too much for me.