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American Pastoral

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Author: Philip Roth
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$15.00~~
Buy Used: $2.29
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New (57) Used (157) Collectible (4) from $2.29

Seller: Open Books
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

238 reviews
Sales Rank: 7,183

Media: Paperback
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.2

ISBN: 0375701427
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375701429
ASIN: 0375701427

Publication Date: February 3, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

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Features:

•	ISBN13: 9780375701429
•	Condition: NEW
•	Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the century's most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquillity. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip: His own daughter, Merry, commits an unpardonable act of "protest" against the Vietnam war that ultimately severs the Swede from any hope of happiness, family, or spiritual coherence.

Product Description
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 238

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...48 Next »

terrible smell March 8, 2010
Frances E. Peterman
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

I had to throw this book away as soon as I opened it. I t smelled of a mildewed, musty basement and was just awful to even touch. Sorry for the bad news. First time this has happened and I might not try used again. Fran P

1 out of 5 stars

The decline of the American Ethos, or the decline of American Literature? January 1, 2010
Book boy (France)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful

Having been made aware that this book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature, I was looking forward to a good weekend read. I typically prefer to read books that have received professional awards as I do not have much time to spare, and I am grateful that others can filter the 'chaf' from the 'wheat'.

What a disappointment this book was. Like so much that I find in modern 'literature', while there is definitely a 'kern' of a story here, the book would have benefitted greatly by a professional edit. It is present state, I would never have allowed it to be published. While I can understand, for example, the author's intention to create a particular atmosphere using relevent descriptions and jargon, we do not need to suffer 40 page long passages describing the production of leatherware... it deters our attention from the essence of the story rather than convince us of the intended atmosphere.

Also, another typical characteristic of moderen literature as exemplified in this book, after making a point #or creating a particular insight#, the author is constantly knocking us on the head with the same repedative point, thereby insulting our intelligence.

This book is not worth wasting one's time until it is edited down to roughly a 60 page novelette. It is worth noting that Mr. Roth's more recent litererary efforts have indeed observed such spatial limitations. I guess he is learning.

Want a better read? I am now reading Thomas Mann's 'Doctor Faustus'. What a masterpiece in comparison to the above work. While it has in excess of 550 pages, each page is rich in material #there is more to find in one chapter of this book than in the entire 'American Pastoral'# and we our intelligence is not repeatedly insulted.

In refection, there is very little 'meat on these bones', and if one were to remove all the useless digressions, the book would not be worth one's time. I think the fact that 'American Pastoral' has been grated the Pulitzer Prize exemplifies the present sad state of American literature, however I hope that I am wrong.

5 out of 5 stars

If the Glove Fits, Wear it! December 26, 2009
Stephen Schwartz (Ithaca, NY USA)
I learned more about the glove industry and glove making from this novel than I ever imagined I wanted to know. There's a tradition of American novels centered on a trade or industry. The most notable of which, of course, is Moby Dick. I also treasured Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (logging in Oregon). This is another great one. It is centered on glove-making.

The main theme of this difficult and brilliant novel by Roth is the debacle that can become of decent moral lives. All the other themes we expect from Roth novels are here as well: Sex, but less of it than usual for Roth; intense scrutiny of secular Jewish New York lives and families; Newark, New Jersey--its streets, history, and sociology; and Jewish boy-shiksa girl.

Jewish boy marries darling shiksa girl and therein seems to be the origin of the debacle of their lives. Jewish boy--Seymour Levov, aka The Swede--is the true blue opposite of the nerd. He's athletic, blond (thus Swede), kind, as square and straight ruled as a chess board. He's hard working, considerate, intelligent, a good father and husband, friend to the oppressed, and to the powerful. The Swede's wife Dawn was Miss New Jersey, although she is embarrassed about that. Catholic, pretty, sweet, a good mother and wife. (Roth uses a lot of sentence fragments also. This seems like a cheap trope to me--not worthy of Roth.) Their daughter Merry turns into a demon who ruins their settled, prosperous lives.

Merry is the enigma of this novel. She is not like other Roth characters. Merry seemed to me to emerge, rather, from a book by Ian McEwan or John Banville. She's a twisted and incomprehensible person. She's a fantasy, a nightmare. Her terror seems to come from nowhere to torment her fine American mother and father. Maybe the gods hate the goodness and well-being of The Swede and Dawn. They've got to be tested like Job. I think they failed the test.

Roth cleverly tells the story from different angles. The beginning is a first person recollection by Zuckerman of his childhood hero, The Swede. Then the narrative switches to fantasy or imaginative reconstruction of Swede's life. The transition is a bit jarring, but it enables Roth to get different angles on the main character. If this were Conrad at work, it would be a story within a story within a story told by gents sitting around a card table late one night.

The Swede's brother, Jerry, is the complete nerd--the direct opposite of Swede. He stumbles and lurches through life and seems to do OK. Indeed, he's a successful doctor with several divorces to his credit. Their father and mother, Lou and Sylvia Levov, are hard-working stolid second generation Newark Jews. Lou started the glove business in Newark. Made it very successful. Swede now runs the business. All but Jerry seem to be dismantled by Merry and her sinister ways.

5 out of 5 stars

Exceptional December 10, 2009
Ronald J. Sivitz (TUCSON, AZ, US)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

Everything was as advertised. Prompt service. Excellent condition. Good follow up.

My congrats for a great job.

5 out of 5 stars

I didn't understand it until I wrote this review November 26, 2009
Eric Huseby (El Paso, TX United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

The people giving this a negative review are missing the point. I don't blame them. I did too, until I thought about it enough. I'm a big Roth fan. I've read at least half his novels. I was initially disappointed with this one and set out to write a "the emperor has no clothes" type of review, but as I organized my thoughts, they slapped me upside the head. Roth was striving for, and achieved a fantastic irony. This is a tremendous literary novel if you're the type who likes to think, "So what was that REALLY all about?" but it will leave you cold if you're just looking for an engrossing story you don't have to think too hard about.

Here's a paragraph I started to write, before the light bulb went on:

Think of the Pulitzer for this book as more of a lifetime achievement award. It's a meaty book, about important themes. It makes you think. It looks back wisely on a pivotal time in America. The Swede is a memorable protagonist. There's a lot of really good stuff here that fits in great with Roth's body of work. But in the end, I couldn't shake the feeling that any decent editor would have sent any author not named Philip Roth back for a substantial rewrite. As many others have mentioned, Roth abandons the Zuckerman first person narration about a third the way in, telling you as he does that he'll be inventing all the parts he doesn't actually know. And it nagged in my head the rest of the way that the original narrator told me he's just making it up. Very unsatisfying. That confession kicked me out of the narrative dream, and I could never get back into it. I pondered for a long time over whether I was missing a greater point, and scoured other reviews just to be sure. Nah. Unless he's striving for ULTIMATE irony, cranking out "modern art" just for the grins of seeing it praised for all the things he knows it isn't

I stopped before putting a period on that last sentence, looked at what I had written, and started laughing out loud. There's a character in the book, Orcutt, who assumes a larger and larger role until he plays a pivotal part in the climax. Or anticlimax, if you prefer. Orcutt churns out highly praised, costly crap he calls modern art, unfinished-looking blurs that lend themselves to comic descriptions by intelligentsia too proud of their own reputations to admit they don't know what the hell they're looking at. Highly reminiscent of all the people who told the emperor how great his new threads look.

Can you say metaphor? Roth deliberately left this one unfinished just to crack up at the gushing reviews he knew would come for a work that wasn't everything the reviewers say it is.

One thing I haven't seen elsewhere, although I'm sure it's out there somewhere, is that once he switches to straight third person narration, he slips briefly - for a page or so - into first person narration as the Swede. You've got Zuckerman narrating in the first person, then it moves to third person, then the Swede briefly in first person, then back to third. As I read it, I felt like it was too cute, that Roth was saying, "I'm such a genius, I can pull this off and hardly anyone will notice." It detracted from the story and focused me on the writing. And all the while, I kept thinking, well, this is the great Philip Roth. It couldn't possibly be an accident, an editing error. Could it?

I kept waiting for Zuckerman to come back in in the first person and tie up all the loose ends and explain that inconsistency, and many others, but the book ends without that.

The emperor does have no clothes, but the emperor is not Roth, it's the book itself, and all the reviewers who missed the irony. Well done, sir.

Showing reviews 1-5 of 238

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