Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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121 of 133 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Despair and Failure Beautifully Wrought, June 26, 2000
"American Pastoral" is indeed a special book. It displays none of the often unsettling preoccupation with sex that some of Roth's other books do. This novel examines the rise and fall of a man with a life that all his acquaintances thought was blessed--a start athlete and war hero, who goes on successfully to run his father's glove factory. A non-religious Jew, he marries a pretty Catholic girl (the former Miss New Jersey!), lives in a nice house, and has a pretty daughter, Merry--slips comfortably, in other words, into mainstream America.Merry grows up, though, to be a sociopath, a fanatic, who as part of the general 60's counterculture movement, commits a terrible act of violence, and has to go into hiding...for the rest of her life. Her act destroys the foundations of Swede's world. We watch him and those close to him slowly disintegrate, emotionally and spiritually. Their decline is not a decline in material fortunes, but it is slow and gruelling nevertheless. Roth writes like an angel. Much of this book is expository, written in precise, evocative, sometimes Faulkneresque, sometimes academic prose. The characters are vivid, immediate, and believable. This is also an idea book, though, and often the ideas are left abstract...which isn't bad. Roth doesn't try to force answers where perhaps none exist. This book is truly a treat.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sixties at their worst, May 20, 2002
One of the knocks on this book, even from reviewers who have liked it, is that it trivializes the rebellious spirit of the 1960s through the screeching lunacy of Merry Levov. There were countless examples of logical, righteous protest, they argue, and by showing only the thoughtless Merry and her equally deranged companion, Rita Cohen, and the ingratitude of black rioters in Newark, Philip Roth comes off as someone who missed the decade altogether, perhaps in seclusion doing research for Portnoy's Complaint.I think, however, that Roth's one-maybe-two-dimensional portrayal of Merry and the other revolutionary forces of the '60s was precisely the point. This novel was not so much about the turbulent '60s as it was about the disintegration of the '50s. The story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman and told through the (imagined) eyes of Swede Levov, both of whom graduated high school before 1950. Roth is not only concerned with the collapse of the Swede's American dream, but also with his assimilation into American society, his pursuit and eventual attainment of the American dream -- all typical characterstics of the '50s. The Swede had no concept of the attributes which we typically ascribe to the '60s. He was too busy worrying about how to make the perfect lady's dress glove. The reason Roth did so much research and wrote in such painstaking detail about the glove industry was to tell the reader precisely what Lou and Swede Levov's lives revolved around. Since the Swede is the only character whom we see others through, of course he isn't going to question himself for being concerned with such things as D rings and piece rates. It's up to the readers to draw the inference that maybe, just maybe, the Swede is out of touch and too concerned with materialism and achieving the perfect life. This is not necessarily a terrible thing by itself. What Roth aims to do is not to paint a 100 percent historically accurate portrait of the '60s, but instead to illustrate what a horror the '60s looked like to someone who was not a participant in the counterculture movement -- to someone who had something to lose. The best way to do that was to take the worst of that counterculture movement -- self-absorbed adolescents who raged against their successful upbringing in order to conform to the growing popularity of the rebellion -- and spill it onto the page, to show how berserk this decade was to someone who was in no way trained for it. To show how justified, cool-headed and rational some parts of the '60s revolution were would have detracted from an integral theme of the book, as imagined by the Swede: He learned "the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense." Also, keep in mind that Zuckerman is the book's narrator, and he is imagining nearly all of the story. He is trying, somehow, to make sense of the Swede's tragedy. It's possible that Merry really had a few more redeeming characteristics than is written, and than Jerry Levov says she did. The best way to make sense of tragedy sometimes is to say the whole world is crazy, and maybe that's what Zuckerman did, turning Merry into a raving lunatic in order to show that there was nothing the Swede could do to save her or himself. What Roth has done, with Zuckerman's help, is something along the lines Tim O'Brien talked about in his novel The Things They Carried -- to create a story that is emotionally true, if not entirely factually true. At its core, this novel is an allegory, with the Swede representing the all-too-perfect 1950s and Merry the tumultuous, unexplainable '60s. In order to get across the full effect of this gulf, Roth had to show the '60s at their worst.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully written and important book., April 28, 1997
By A Customer
"American Pastoral" is a remarkable novel which canbe read and enjoyed on a variety of "levels."^M Stylistically, Philip Roth's prose glides effortlessly between passages of sheer lyricism and Hemmingway-like reality. The characters of Swede Levov, his wife, Dawn, and their daughter Merry, --as well as other characters in the novel---are sharply etched and observed. The dialogue each of the characters speak is right on target and delineates their character without the author imposing his own "voice" upon the words they speak.^M However, Roth's novel achieves the level of "art" in terms of social commentary and his view that America has somehow lost its soul and sense of direction. A decent, hardworking family--a family that has done its absolute best to raise their daughter to become the kind of person who reflects the best values our country represents---is totally destroyed when their daughter, Merry, becomes a terrorist and eventually lapses into madness. Roth's vision of the world is an extremely depressing if not a totally pessimistic one. Nothing that happens by way of historical or social events seems to make any sense. All is simply "chaos." What happens, simply "happens" and there is nothing one can do to stop the descent into a hell where nothing makes sense---where events totally overwhelm decent parents and their family's attempts to control them. ALL parents and families are not, of course, as Philip Roth describes them. But the trend away from traditional "values" and values which, apart from religion per se or political "correctness" have heretofore given our nation a sense of purpose and unity, are swiftly disappearing--as any, daily reading of contemporary headlines indicate.^M There are a few minor "flaws" in Roth's novel. The scene in which Merry's friend, Rita Cohen, tries to seduce Swede Levov after visiting his factory, is a bit overdone and the crassness of the sexual encounter and the language spoken by Rita is out of keeping with the rest of the dialogue spoken by the character in the novel. One feels that the author has momentarily "lost control" of the scene and situation and sunk to a level that is out of proportion to the action which is taking place. ^M The ending of the novel is a bit anti-climactic and does not leave the reader with a satisfying sense of plot resolution and fulfillment. But these are minor flaws indeed!^M ^M "American Pastoral" is a deeply moving, often humorous, but most of all extremely disturbing novel. The author's descriptions of buildings, neighborhoods, and the effects which the riots of the sixties had on Newark and elsewhere throughout the country are graphically described. He captures the sights, sounds, and meanings of social upheaval and the people involved in the political events that take place as only a journalist and literary artist can.^M ^M One may question the blackness of Roth's vision of an American gone astray---but one cannot question the humanity of his doomed family or the author's sense of compassion for the characters he has created and described. Never preachy or dogmatic, Philip Roth simply lets his characters speak as their destructive, nihilistic natures dictate.^M The result is a novel that is, by turns, both immensely sad, often humorous, ferociously angry, but always intelligently written and conceived. It deserves to be widely read.
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