American Pastoral

American Pastoral is a novel in which you know the gist of the story from the very beginning. The protagonist, Seymour (Swede) Levov, is of our grandparent's generation, his perfect life is suddenly shattered when his boomer daughter bombs a post office to protest Vietnam and goes into hiding. Paradise Lost. That's basically it, but the book goes round-n-round exploring the life and mind of the...more

American Pastoral is a novel in which you know the gist of the story from the very beginning. The protagonist, Seymour (Swede) Levov, is of our grandparent's generation, his perfect life is suddenly shattered when his boomer daughter bombs a post office to protest Vietnam and goes into hiding. Paradise Lost. That's basically it, but the book goes round-n-round exploring the life and mind of the Swede and how life can become so different than you intend. There are many excellent theme's here, but it's strongest suit is probably introducing us GenX/Yers to the motivations and beliefs of the immigrant generation, the greatest generation, and the baby boomers.   hide

Well, it took more than a day to read it. It's very dense- thought provoking... informative about what the middle class went through in the 60s, BUT- the ending was not really good, just that artsy fartsy brush in the air mid stream, not rolling to a "conclusion" thing...

Although slow and quite long, I found this Pulitzer prize winning novel, quietly horrifying as it shatters the idyllic illusion of America that its inhabitants once harbored. A commentary on the human incapacity to truly see beneath the surfaces of apparent well-being in other people and the pain that can lie beneath the public face of a person we admire and respect, who struggles to keep his...more

Although slow and quite long, I found this Pulitzer prize winning novel, quietly horrifying as it shatters the idyllic illusion of America that its inhabitants once harbored. A commentary on the human incapacity to truly see beneath the surfaces of apparent well-being in other people and the pain that can lie beneath the public face of a person we admire and respect, who struggles to keep his worthiness, vitality and dignity while everything crumbles around him.   hide

this book is--predictably enough--a sentimental journey through the bowels of bourgeois post-war suburban aspirations. yes, it aims for a certain degree of self-conscious "use" of the all-american archetypes embedded therein--the insipid high school all-star athlete turned noble daddy, the insipid beauty queen turned rugged earth-woman mummy--but the contextualization it uses to justify these...more

this book is--predictably enough--a sentimental journey through the bowels of bourgeois post-war suburban aspirations. yes, it aims for a certain degree of self-conscious "use" of the all-american archetypes embedded therein--the insipid high school all-star athlete turned noble daddy, the insipid beauty queen turned rugged earth-woman mummy--but the contextualization it uses to justify these images as "more than what they seem" feels even more frustratingly impenetrable than the pastoral images themselves. apparently, the only alternative to the american beauty tunnel-dream is to become a willess automaton terrorist or a bratty psuedo-intellectual who champions the terrorist mentality...ignorantly tearing at the "facade" of an american pastoral with all the trifling bitterness of an overweight pigtailed band-nerd whose hopes at homecoming queen have been dashed with a tear-chilling finality. i don't buy it, phillip roth. once again, the endearing jew card fails to salvage this tripe, this overwrought american CRAPstoral. this, as they say, is some ol' BULLshit.   hide

Roth will always have his fans and detractors, and I guess I'll always be in the former camp. There's a lot of Roth I haven't read, and, to be honest, a lot for which I can't summon much interest. But whatever your grievances with the man - his overreaching, his seeming and much-talked-about preoccupation with his own penis - it's hard not to be won over by a book as sensitive as Goodbye...more

Roth will always have his fans and detractors, and I guess I'll always be in the former camp. There's a lot of Roth I haven't read, and, to be honest, a lot for which I can't summon much interest. But whatever your grievances with the man - his overreaching, his seeming and much-talked-about preoccupation with his own penis - it's hard not to be won over by a book as sensitive as Goodbye Columbus. Richard Yates said of Portnoy's Complaint that, before he read it, he thought Roth was overrated; afterward he forgave him everything, "including his millions of dollars." My own favorite is probably The Ghost Writer. People disagree about American Pastoral. Apart from a go-nowhere hundred-page introduction, the book's meat is just speculation on the part of its fictional author. It's hard to get interested in ideas and events and dialogue that are self-referentially taking place wholly in the writer's mind. It's like one of those stories you read, or maybe authored, in school that ends with the words "then I woke up" - only the reader is in on the secret from the beginning. After that, who cares? And even if you manage to forget that stuff, a lot of the book just isn't interesting. Zuckerman binds every simple idea he has in page after page of tautological knots, like he's afraid it's going to get away. Tens of pages routinely go by before something actually happens. And maybe glove-making is kind of romantic, with its smell of leather and industry, and maybe it's emblematic of the American dream, but I didn't need to learn everything about its mechanics to understand why. But then the author is Philip Roth, so there are passages of great beauty and stylistic flourish. And maybe the book creaks under the weight of so much repetition, the endless pages of introspection over the same events (to the extent that I actually began to dread events, knowing I'd later be subjected to a dozen airless page-long paragraphs in which I relived them), but when you're laying it on so thick, and when you're Philip Roth, some of it is bound to be good. I'll probably take a long break on Philip Roth and then read Sabbath's Theater, which I've been avoiding and which is supposed to be good.   hide

I simply don't understand how anyone can say that this book is overrated. There were times in this book that I had to stop in disbelief at Roth's prose--a master at the top of his game (Sorry, I know that sounds really snobby). Anyway, beautiful story centering around "the Swede", a legend during the pastoral '50s, crushed by 60s and the breakdown of the American order, signified in the...more

I simply don't understand how anyone can say that this book is overrated. There were times in this book that I had to stop in disbelief at Roth's prose--a master at the top of his game (Sorry, I know that sounds really snobby). Anyway, beautiful story centering around "the Swede", a legend during the pastoral '50s, crushed by 60s and the breakdown of the American order, signified in the character of his daughter (who is the complete opposite of her father), a physical and mental mutant. I think this is Roth at his best--followed by Portnoy's Complaint (hilarious) and the Human Stain (The opposite of hilarious). If you don't like this book, then I recommend you go read Divinci Code or something.   hide

Otra gran novela estadounidense que retrata las realidades de la segunda mitad del Siglo XX. Más intimista, un enfoque más familiar que "Underworld". El paraíso perdido de posguerra, el fracaso del "melting pot", la "forma de vida americana", del "sueño americano" tejido en tres generaciones; una sociedad hipócrita que asocia el éxito con la conformidad convencional a patrones religiosos...more

Otra gran novela estadounidense que retrata las realidades de la segunda mitad del Siglo XX. Más intimista, un enfoque más familiar que "Underworld". El paraíso perdido de posguerra, el fracaso del "melting pot", la "forma de vida americana", del "sueño americano" tejido en tres generaciones; una sociedad hipócrita que asocia el éxito con la conformidad convencional a patrones religiosos discriminatorios, carentes de valores, a la normalidad insulsa e indecisa, hasta que lo inusual, lo anormal, las desviaciones naturales de esas vidas perfectas - que se hallan a la vuelta de la esquina - los obligan a entender que no todo es previsible, ni está bajo control, ni la ausencia de pensamiento y de decisión es la forma de alcanzar el paraíso; por el contrario, nos acerca al infierno.   hide

Interetsingly, maybe because I'm not american and therefore I haven't read it from american historical point of view...I have found in it some reminiscences to a great classic, The Buddenbrooks, from Thomas Mann, which I read just before American Pastoral. They both explore and compare the individual real self in front of the "masked" self and on how social constrictions act...more

Interetsingly, maybe because I'm not american and therefore I haven't read it from american historical point of view...I have found in it some reminiscences to a great classic, The Buddenbrooks, from Thomas Mann, which I read just before American Pastoral. They both explore and compare the individual real self in front of the "masked" self and on how social constrictions act (or not?) on the natural and free development of such self...the good and the bad, what is character and what is just not being yourself, being a slave of social acceptance...   hide

Some will love this book others will hate it.Afficiandos will love the writing and historical commentary on the Vietnam era and the decline of American industry through the example of the city of Newark. Others will find that the book slow in plot and character development. Plot shifts sometimes slipped by requiring a re-read of pages.At other times the plot shift was advertised well in...more

Some will love this book others will hate it.Afficiandos will love the writing and historical commentary on the Vietnam era and the decline of American industry through the example of the city of Newark. Others will find that the book slow in plot and character development. Plot shifts sometimes slipped by requiring a re-read of pages.At other times the plot shift was advertised well in advance. The slow character development and psychological guesswork by the narrator, Skip Zuckerman, can be absolutely tedious. Yet at other times Roth speaks strongly through the Seymour Levov or the "Swede."It's a difficult book to read at bedtime as shifts in narrators require closer scrutiny to internal dialogue. To find out if you're going to love it or hate it, you have to read it. It's worth the time to find out.   hide