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The American Trilogy #1
American Pastoral
Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)
In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. 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 longed-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.
In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. 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 longed-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.
432 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 1997
About the author
Philip Roth
259 books6,731 followersPhilip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,972 reviews
April 28, 2018
I was not a fan.
December 1, 2022
LA VITA È SOLO UN BREVE PERIODO DI TEMPO NEL QUALE SIAMO VIVI
Ecco un Grande Romanzo Americano.
Moderno e classico, come si conviene ai grandi, un affresco formidabile.
Il libro che contiene tutto, e che contiene il Tutto.
Pieno zeppo di temi argomenti cose e spunti di riflessione e discussione da straripare.
Un sogno infranto.
Così pieno e fecondo che io ho preso la mia strada sicuro di ritrovare alla fine quella maestra.
Quella che riconduce al Grande Romanzo Americano, al Sogno Americano, al sogno del figlio di emigrati, per giunta ebrei, di essere parte del collettivo Sogno Americano, sogno di successo – ma in mezzo scorre la Vita, e quindi facilmente una Tragedia, quasi sicuramente in Famiglia – e la storia personale si riflette nella Storia generale, quella del paese America, nello specifico con la guerra del Vietnam – gloria e poi fallimento, felicità e poi dolore, ascesa e caduta, come indicato anche dai titoli dei capitoli (‘paradiso ricordato’, e poi ‘paradiso perduto’, e infine ‘la caduta’) – il vecchio ordine, quello dei padri, e il nuovo disordine, quello dei figli – il velo, che è illusione, e poi alzato il sipario, l’innocenza perduta – in ultima analisi, il fallimento include padri e figli (in questo caso il padre e la figlia)…
Il film, con lo stesso titolo, è del 2016, diretto da Ewan McGregor, che interpreta il protagonista.
E sulla mia strada di lettore in sollucchero si segnala il piacere e la meraviglia di essere dentro la storia del libro sin dal principio, immerso nella sua narrazione senza che mi sia richiesto tempo o pazienza per entrarci dentro, un flusso di racconto che parte dall’incipit, e mi trascina via con sé.
Subito dopo si segnala l’ironia di Roth, resa ancora più brillante dall’espediente di affidare il racconto al suo alter ego letterario Nathan Zucherman, lo stesso di Ho sposato un comunista, La macchia umana, ma che compare anche in My life as a man, Lo scrittore fantasma, Zuckerman scatenato, La lezione di anatomia, L’orgia di Praga, La controvita, Il fantasma esce di scena.
La bellissima Jennifer Connelly è una perfetta ex Miss New Jersey, Dawn, la moglie dello Svedese.
Procedendo nella lettura, mi sono accorto di come la struttura meta-letteraria è tutto meno che una gabbia, perché col procedere delle pagine scompare l’autore Philip Roth, e poi sparisce anche il suo alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, per lasciare che il racconto sgorghi da solo, fino a deflagrare, al punto che sono sparito anch’io come lettore, consapevole e non.
Uno snodo cruciale (sempre sulla mia personale strada di lettore) è l’incontro con la compassione che Roth prova e ispira per il suo protagonista, secondo me eroico nel senso vero del termine.
Il fatto che lo Svedese sia anche bello come un Apollo, lo rende semidio, possente nella sua fragilità molto umana.
Sarà forse per questo che lo Svedese si chiama Levov, che fa rima con love?
Nello Svedese ritrovo un po’ di Giobbe e un po’ di Giona, ma anche in un certo qualche modo un po’ di Stoner, e del serious man dei fratelli Cohen, ma anche di Icaro e altre figure mitologiche.
La figlia che diventa terrorista è interpretata da Dakota Fanning, che io trovo insopportabile, per cui ho scelto questa immagine dove la si vede relativamente.
È forte la sensazione che Roth mi trasmette: il momento perfetto della vita è uno e uno solo, assolutamente unico e irripetibile.
Ed è forte la sensazione che si collochi sempre nel primo periodo della vita, (felice, immaginò, come poteva esserlo un bambino), quando è ancora possibile guardare avanti come un bambino che contempla la vetrina di una pasticceria.
Dopo ci si adopra per ricrearlo, ritrovarlo, riviverlo, ri qualsiasi cosa: ma non torna, non si ripete. È perso per sempre.
Alla riunione degli studenti che decenni prima hanno frequentato la stessa scuola, dove Zuckerman rivede il fratello minore dello Svedese, qualcuno ha avuto successo, qualcuno sembra aver migliorato la posizione di partenza: ma non è questo il punto. Hanno perso tutti.
Hanno perso la gioventù, hanno perso l’innocenza, hanno perso il Tempo.
Sembra che l’unica cosa che rimanga da fare sia:
Riportare l’orologio a un tempo in cui il passare del tempo era un fenomeno irrilevante
Quale figlio non vorrebbe essere amato da un padre come lo Svedese, che quando Merry aveva due anni appese l’altalena all’acero più grande vicino a casa?
Amato così tanto, con un amore incondizionato e senza confine, così resistente e temprato, così adamantino e incrollabile.
Un padre il cui motto sembra essere:
La cosa più importante della sua vita era questa: risparmiare sofferenze ai propri cari, essere buono con tutti, fino al midollo.
Ed ecco la vera Patty Hearst in azione con l’esercito di Liberazione Simbionese, che l’aveva rapita poco più di due mesi prima e subito trasformata in una terrorista. Qui è ripresa dalla telecamera di sorveglianza durante una rapina in banca.
Un padre cresciuto alla scuola di un altro padre, che gli diceva con pragmatismo cristallino:
Essere innamorato che significa? E a che cosa ti servirà essere innamorato quando avrai un figlio?.
Chissà, forse proprio perché lo Svedese insegue il suo sogno d’amore, la bellissima Dawn ex miss New Jersey, che conquista e sposa, forse da qui inizia la sua caduta, il suo fallimento?
Se avesse seguito le istruzioni paterne, si sarebbe evitato la caduta?
Certo che no. Il dubbio mi ha accompagnato solo per poche righe.
Patty Hearst in manette. Patty partecipò a più rapine e attentati dinamitardi, durante i quali alcune persone morirono e altre furono ferite. Fu condannata a 35 anni, ridotti poi a 7, poi a 22 mesi: poi arrivò la grazia del presidente Carter, l’indulto di Reagan e anche quello di Clinton.
Mai, in tutta la sua vita, aveva avuto occasione di chiedersi: ”Perché le cose sono come sono?” Perché avrebbe dovuto farlo se per lui erano sempre state perfette? Perché le cose sono come sono? Una domanda senza risposta, e fino a quel momento era stato così fortunato da ignorare addirittura che esistesse la domanda.
Natasha Richardson interpreta Patty Hearst nel film dedicato alla sua vicenda diretto da Paul Schrader, uno dei registi americani che preferisco. Il film uscì nel 1988.
Ecco un Grande Romanzo Americano.
Moderno e classico, come si conviene ai grandi, un affresco formidabile.
Il libro che contiene tutto, e che contiene il Tutto.
Pieno zeppo di temi argomenti cose e spunti di riflessione e discussione da straripare.
Un sogno infranto.
Così pieno e fecondo che io ho preso la mia strada sicuro di ritrovare alla fine quella maestra.
Quella che riconduce al Grande Romanzo Americano, al Sogno Americano, al sogno del figlio di emigrati, per giunta ebrei, di essere parte del collettivo Sogno Americano, sogno di successo – ma in mezzo scorre la Vita, e quindi facilmente una Tragedia, quasi sicuramente in Famiglia – e la storia personale si riflette nella Storia generale, quella del paese America, nello specifico con la guerra del Vietnam – gloria e poi fallimento, felicità e poi dolore, ascesa e caduta, come indicato anche dai titoli dei capitoli (‘paradiso ricordato’, e poi ‘paradiso perduto’, e infine ‘la caduta’) – il vecchio ordine, quello dei padri, e il nuovo disordine, quello dei figli – il velo, che è illusione, e poi alzato il sipario, l’innocenza perduta – in ultima analisi, il fallimento include padri e figli (in questo caso il padre e la figlia)…
Il film, con lo stesso titolo, è del 2016, diretto da Ewan McGregor, che interpreta il protagonista.
E sulla mia strada di lettore in sollucchero si segnala il piacere e la meraviglia di essere dentro la storia del libro sin dal principio, immerso nella sua narrazione senza che mi sia richiesto tempo o pazienza per entrarci dentro, un flusso di racconto che parte dall’incipit, e mi trascina via con sé.
Subito dopo si segnala l’ironia di Roth, resa ancora più brillante dall’espediente di affidare il racconto al suo alter ego letterario Nathan Zucherman, lo stesso di Ho sposato un comunista, La macchia umana, ma che compare anche in My life as a man, Lo scrittore fantasma, Zuckerman scatenato, La lezione di anatomia, L’orgia di Praga, La controvita, Il fantasma esce di scena.
La bellissima Jennifer Connelly è una perfetta ex Miss New Jersey, Dawn, la moglie dello Svedese.
Procedendo nella lettura, mi sono accorto di come la struttura meta-letteraria è tutto meno che una gabbia, perché col procedere delle pagine scompare l’autore Philip Roth, e poi sparisce anche il suo alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, per lasciare che il racconto sgorghi da solo, fino a deflagrare, al punto che sono sparito anch’io come lettore, consapevole e non.
Uno snodo cruciale (sempre sulla mia personale strada di lettore) è l’incontro con la compassione che Roth prova e ispira per il suo protagonista, secondo me eroico nel senso vero del termine.
Il fatto che lo Svedese sia anche bello come un Apollo, lo rende semidio, possente nella sua fragilità molto umana.
Sarà forse per questo che lo Svedese si chiama Levov, che fa rima con love?
Nello Svedese ritrovo un po’ di Giobbe e un po’ di Giona, ma anche in un certo qualche modo un po’ di Stoner, e del serious man dei fratelli Cohen, ma anche di Icaro e altre figure mitologiche.
La figlia che diventa terrorista è interpretata da Dakota Fanning, che io trovo insopportabile, per cui ho scelto questa immagine dove la si vede relativamente.
È forte la sensazione che Roth mi trasmette: il momento perfetto della vita è uno e uno solo, assolutamente unico e irripetibile.
Ed è forte la sensazione che si collochi sempre nel primo periodo della vita, (felice, immaginò, come poteva esserlo un bambino), quando è ancora possibile guardare avanti come un bambino che contempla la vetrina di una pasticceria.
Dopo ci si adopra per ricrearlo, ritrovarlo, riviverlo, ri qualsiasi cosa: ma non torna, non si ripete. È perso per sempre.
Alla riunione degli studenti che decenni prima hanno frequentato la stessa scuola, dove Zuckerman rivede il fratello minore dello Svedese, qualcuno ha avuto successo, qualcuno sembra aver migliorato la posizione di partenza: ma non è questo il punto. Hanno perso tutti.
Hanno perso la gioventù, hanno perso l’innocenza, hanno perso il Tempo.
Sembra che l’unica cosa che rimanga da fare sia:
Riportare l’orologio a un tempo in cui il passare del tempo era un fenomeno irrilevante
Quale figlio non vorrebbe essere amato da un padre come lo Svedese, che quando Merry aveva due anni appese l’altalena all’acero più grande vicino a casa?
Amato così tanto, con un amore incondizionato e senza confine, così resistente e temprato, così adamantino e incrollabile.
Un padre il cui motto sembra essere:
La cosa più importante della sua vita era questa: risparmiare sofferenze ai propri cari, essere buono con tutti, fino al midollo.
Ed ecco la vera Patty Hearst in azione con l’esercito di Liberazione Simbionese, che l’aveva rapita poco più di due mesi prima e subito trasformata in una terrorista. Qui è ripresa dalla telecamera di sorveglianza durante una rapina in banca.
Un padre cresciuto alla scuola di un altro padre, che gli diceva con pragmatismo cristallino:
Essere innamorato che significa? E a che cosa ti servirà essere innamorato quando avrai un figlio?.
Chissà, forse proprio perché lo Svedese insegue il suo sogno d’amore, la bellissima Dawn ex miss New Jersey, che conquista e sposa, forse da qui inizia la sua caduta, il suo fallimento?
Se avesse seguito le istruzioni paterne, si sarebbe evitato la caduta?
Certo che no. Il dubbio mi ha accompagnato solo per poche righe.
Patty Hearst in manette. Patty partecipò a più rapine e attentati dinamitardi, durante i quali alcune persone morirono e altre furono ferite. Fu condannata a 35 anni, ridotti poi a 7, poi a 22 mesi: poi arrivò la grazia del presidente Carter, l’indulto di Reagan e anche quello di Clinton.
Mai, in tutta la sua vita, aveva avuto occasione di chiedersi: ”Perché le cose sono come sono?” Perché avrebbe dovuto farlo se per lui erano sempre state perfette? Perché le cose sono come sono? Una domanda senza risposta, e fino a quel momento era stato così fortunato da ignorare addirittura che esistesse la domanda.
Natasha Richardson interpreta Patty Hearst nel film dedicato alla sua vicenda diretto da Paul Schrader, uno dei registi americani che preferisco. Il film uscì nel 1988.
February 1, 2021
It is getting exceedingly rare to find books that are well-written and yet hard-hitting and surprising at nearly every turn. Usually, you get just one (like the nearly unreadable Infinite Jest that I can still not get through) or the other (like The Outfit or, say, Game of Thrones). So, when my movie producer friend mentioned that his employer Lakeshore Entertainment would be releasing a film version of Roth’s American Pastoral, I picked the book up (my first by Roth) and I was blown away. It is no wonder that the book stole the 1997 Pulitzer and was a runner-up on the NYT list of best books of the last 25 years from 2006. (Side note: on that list, I agree with the choice of Beloved by Toni Morrison as well as Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and am now curious to read some of the other ones there that I haven’t read by Updike and DeLillo).
According to wikipedia, a pastoral is typically about life on a countryside and requires a cow in the story. Some currents of pastoral literature have – in modern times – denounced the urban sprawl of cities and their encroachment into to “pastoral lifestyle”. While it is difficult to put Roth into a specific category, the fact that the Lvov family owns a large property – and a bull named Count and herd of cows at one point – and the revolt of Merry against not just the idyllic image of America are some ways that the title could be interpreted as being applicable. I saw it as an epic look behind the scenes at a seemingly perfect family that is piece-by-piece revealed to be “reprehensible” as the last sentence of the book states. The various façades of 20th C life in American and the questions that are raised – prosperity, but at what cost? global dominance and warfare, but for what ideal? -are dealt with via the vivid character portraits and their interactions with each other.
If we look at the principal character, Seymour “Swede” Lvov from the outside, we see a man that was always good at everything – triple letterman in sports, beautiful physique, gorgeous ex-model wife, successful business man. But we also learn of his emotional detachment from everything – he has set up an American pastoral idea in his head and is torn apart by Merry’s act of terrorism just as the small store was blown up along with a neighbor. The way in which the various facts are revealed and the psychosis of each of the characters in the book was riveting reading. I appreciated how we start with a first-person narrator who fades away as the Swede is revealed and unraveled by the cascade of events. Roth never spoon-feeds us details – we need to put up with the screaming Merry and her neurotic mother as well as a slew of other characters to figure out what actually happened and how each character was affected. We are as unwitting participants in the devolution of the Lvov family as the characters themselves. Even the end of the book is ambiguous – did Rita Cohen really exist at the end or is the Swede losing it? Do we just leave Merry the Jain in that sordid appartment in Newark? Does the Swede evolve into a more self-realized human being or does he just repress all the anguish (to protect his unfaithful wife Dawn and his acrimonious father Lou Lvov) as he has always done? The is perhaps the most compelling part of this book, you are left to draw your own conclusions. To fill in the colors you wish into this particularly explosive American pastoral portrait.
Still, after reading 20 of Roth's books, Pastoral stands out as one of my favorites with its evil doppelgänger (according to Roth), Sabbath's Theater.
To be read urgently…I hope (although I am fairly confident) that Lakeshore Entertainment does it justice.
Apparently, the film was pretty bad, so stick with the excellent book!
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
According to wikipedia, a pastoral is typically about life on a countryside and requires a cow in the story. Some currents of pastoral literature have – in modern times – denounced the urban sprawl of cities and their encroachment into to “pastoral lifestyle”. While it is difficult to put Roth into a specific category, the fact that the Lvov family owns a large property – and a bull named Count and herd of cows at one point – and the revolt of Merry against not just the idyllic image of America are some ways that the title could be interpreted as being applicable. I saw it as an epic look behind the scenes at a seemingly perfect family that is piece-by-piece revealed to be “reprehensible” as the last sentence of the book states. The various façades of 20th C life in American and the questions that are raised – prosperity, but at what cost? global dominance and warfare, but for what ideal? -are dealt with via the vivid character portraits and their interactions with each other.
If we look at the principal character, Seymour “Swede” Lvov from the outside, we see a man that was always good at everything – triple letterman in sports, beautiful physique, gorgeous ex-model wife, successful business man. But we also learn of his emotional detachment from everything – he has set up an American pastoral idea in his head and is torn apart by Merry’s act of terrorism just as the small store was blown up along with a neighbor. The way in which the various facts are revealed and the psychosis of each of the characters in the book was riveting reading. I appreciated how we start with a first-person narrator who fades away as the Swede is revealed and unraveled by the cascade of events. Roth never spoon-feeds us details – we need to put up with the screaming Merry and her neurotic mother as well as a slew of other characters to figure out what actually happened and how each character was affected. We are as unwitting participants in the devolution of the Lvov family as the characters themselves. Even the end of the book is ambiguous – did Rita Cohen really exist at the end or is the Swede losing it? Do we just leave Merry the Jain in that sordid appartment in Newark? Does the Swede evolve into a more self-realized human being or does he just repress all the anguish (to protect his unfaithful wife Dawn and his acrimonious father Lou Lvov) as he has always done? The is perhaps the most compelling part of this book, you are left to draw your own conclusions. To fill in the colors you wish into this particularly explosive American pastoral portrait.
Still, after reading 20 of Roth's books, Pastoral stands out as one of my favorites with its evil doppelgänger (according to Roth), Sabbath's Theater.
To be read urgently…I hope (although I am fairly confident) that Lakeshore Entertainment does it justice.
Apparently, the film was pretty bad, so stick with the excellent book!
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
September 28, 2022
Third reading. The book starts off as an homage to a man the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, looked up to as a child because of his athletic achievements in local sports: Seymour Levov, the "Swede." It also presents itself in the early going as an homage to the so-called "greatest generation." But this opening is deceptive. For the closer we come to the Swede and his family the more we see his tragic flaws of character. Perhaps his most pervasive flaw is to be a nonthinker, a man for the most part without a deep intellectual life, or any intellectual life, who functioned by the many rules and prohibitions set forth by his elders which ill prepared him for a socially volatile future.
The Swede is a Jew but a "viking" in appearance. Blonde, fair-skinned, about as far away from the Der Stürmer parodies then being published in Nazi Germany as it was possible to get. The wartime stateside era is one depicted as laden with parental prohibitions but also one of astonishing possibility. The Swede is his father's son. A young man with his talent could have had a shot at the major leagues, but the Swede listens to his old man and learns the glove trade.
American Pastoral, it occurs to me, is a ruminative novel. It considers matters, say, the Swede's innocence, and then reconsiders them multiple times in light of new evidence or conclusions. One is very much in Nathan Zuckerman's head going over and over matters, thus his obsessions become our obsessions. After several readings it finally occurred to me what Roth's model was for the very detailed glove manufacturing sequences: Moby Dick; or The Whale.
I could find nothing superfluous in the story. I live twenty miles from Newark, New Jersey. I used to work near New York's garment district, long after its heydey but nevertheless. I was alive, though quite young, during the late Civil Rights Era. This was an insane and very angry time and let me tell you, Roth captures its essence beautifully. For me, on this third reading, the book really didn't start to grip until the Swede's daughter Merry's independence sets in and she begins to travel to New York City to stay with her Communist friends.
Then there's Rita Cohen's absolutely--wait, here's how Roth puts it: "What was this whole sick enterprise other than angry, infantile egoism thinly disguised as identification with the oppressed." (This section reminds me very much of the decription Nein Cheng gives of the Red Guards in her Life and Death in Shanghai.) There are so many beautifully written scenes here. The Swede's reunion with Merry who, five years later, has become a devout Jain, will set your hair on fire. American Pastoral is a spellbinder. An astonishing novel. One of the essential books of life.
The Swede is a Jew but a "viking" in appearance. Blonde, fair-skinned, about as far away from the Der Stürmer parodies then being published in Nazi Germany as it was possible to get. The wartime stateside era is one depicted as laden with parental prohibitions but also one of astonishing possibility. The Swede is his father's son. A young man with his talent could have had a shot at the major leagues, but the Swede listens to his old man and learns the glove trade.
American Pastoral, it occurs to me, is a ruminative novel. It considers matters, say, the Swede's innocence, and then reconsiders them multiple times in light of new evidence or conclusions. One is very much in Nathan Zuckerman's head going over and over matters, thus his obsessions become our obsessions. After several readings it finally occurred to me what Roth's model was for the very detailed glove manufacturing sequences: Moby Dick; or The Whale.
I could find nothing superfluous in the story. I live twenty miles from Newark, New Jersey. I used to work near New York's garment district, long after its heydey but nevertheless. I was alive, though quite young, during the late Civil Rights Era. This was an insane and very angry time and let me tell you, Roth captures its essence beautifully. For me, on this third reading, the book really didn't start to grip until the Swede's daughter Merry's independence sets in and she begins to travel to New York City to stay with her Communist friends.
Then there's Rita Cohen's absolutely--wait, here's how Roth puts it: "What was this whole sick enterprise other than angry, infantile egoism thinly disguised as identification with the oppressed." (This section reminds me very much of the decription Nein Cheng gives of the Red Guards in her Life and Death in Shanghai.) There are so many beautifully written scenes here. The Swede's reunion with Merry who, five years later, has become a devout Jain, will set your hair on fire. American Pastoral is a spellbinder. An astonishing novel. One of the essential books of life.
September 19, 2020
I was not a fan.
August 22, 2014
A quick perusal of my 'in-by-about-America' shelf will reveal a wide variety of titles ranging from popular fiction by the likes of Stephen King to the brand of post-modernist razzmatazz by the wonderfully perplexing Pynchon. Yet none of those books seem as American to me as American Pastoral is. Forget all the Great American Novels which swoop down on some of the 'Great American Issues' (this term is my invention yes!) like the Great Depression, racism, slavery, brutal and merciless killing of the Native Americans in the US-Mexican borderlands. Forget the illustrious names like To kill a mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Beloved, The Great Gatsby, Blood Meridian and the other works which constitute the edifice of classic American literature. Even though every one of them focus either on watershed events in American history or relevant socio-cultural issues which form the basis of America's national identity, none of them are so glaringly American in spirit as this Philip Roth creation. I know my claims of being able to determine the degree of Americanness of any book are questionable at best since how can the internet and books supplant the experience of actually breathing American air. But I'll let Mr Roth speak on my behalf here -
American Pastoral takes a plunge into the depths of America's heart and soul and analyzes its curious multiculturalism, its unrestrained self-love and its misdirected self-hatred. And speaking of 'depths', please bear in mind that it does go really deep, probing unmapped territory like the complications at the root of every human relationship be it between husband and wife or between a father and daughter who feel a subtly obsessive, nearly incestuous love for each other. On one hand it recounts a series of tragic events which result in the slow disintegration of a rich Jewish businessman's inner world while on the other it rapidly moves back and forth between various American issues, from the postwar economic boom to the Newark Riots of '67 to the violent anti Vietnam War protests bordering on terrorist activity, thereby weaving an intricate network symbolizing the web of America's inner conflicts. It's like AP revels in its own Americanness and its unabashed disdain for anything that is considered outside America's sphere of influence. But the surprising thing is, despite the self-absorbed tone of the narrator's voice and his blatant apathy for anything unAmerican, none of it sounds remotely offensive. On the contrary, everything put together, it comes off as a mockery of America's self-obsession. Every sentence, every stream of thought, every conversation that Roth has painstakingly put together to construct this masterpiece is rife with underlying implications. So much so that in order to squeeze out every last drop of meaning from one passage or a long conversation, a literature student reading this for coursework may need to pore over one particular page for hours on end. This, however, does not mean it is a difficult read, it isn't by a long shot. It is simply a book which requires a tremendous amount of patience and an effort on the reader's part to remove all the layers of obfuscation.
I have come across people criticizing Roth for portraying Jews in an unflattering light here but I find myself nodding my head in disagreement with them. The book smacks of anti-heroism if anything and it looks down upon the rich white American's idea of familial bliss, material prosperity and his hankering after a squeaky clean reputation free of any incriminating smudges. Roth tramples on the idea of hero-worship and stomps on it until it is so bent out of shape that it is beyond recognition. I also beg to differ on the subject of Roth's widespread infamy among Goodreads intelligentsia as a misogynist. Any writer capable of rustling up such fleshed out female characters like the ones depicted here, cannot be accused of nurturing a conscious hatred of women. Sure, there is a sprinkling of barely noticeable sexist remarks but I suspect it is done with the purpose of defining a particular character's perspective rather than simply out of contemptuous indifference (or maybe I need to read more Roth before pronouncing judgement). Some of the scenes of a sexual nature are disturbing to the point of being slightly cringe-worthy, but none of them demean women as such. And it will be hardly fair to indict Roth for sexual vulgarity when women erotica writers of today can be accused of much worse (rape and stalker fantasies anyone?).
To wrap up, this is a hard book to review as it obdurately resists deconstruction. But it is an ingeniously written one with long drawn out sentences which are a delight to savour if you love your share of linguistic acrobatics. Roth rambles a lot and gets side-tracked often, like an old man suffering from an early onset of dementia, frustrating the reader with his abrupt jumps from one subject to another almost in a stream-of-consciousness like manner and his penchant for detailing something as maddeningly boring as the art of glove-making. But eventually, when he makes his point you can't help but marvel at his ability to accurately deduce the hidden motives at work behind seemingly unremarkable action. And as schizophrenic as his writing may seem, one can't deny that it is also the work of a true master.
"Around us nothing was lifeless. Sacrifice and constraint were over.The Depression had disappeared. Everything was in motion. The lid was off. Americans were to start over again, en masse, everyone in it together. If that wasn't sufficiently inspiring-the miraculous con-elusion of this towering event, the clock of history reset and a whole people's aims limited no longer by the past-there was the neighborhood, the communal determination that we, the children, should escape poverty, ignorance, disease, social injury and intimidation-escape, above all, insignificance!"
American Pastoral takes a plunge into the depths of America's heart and soul and analyzes its curious multiculturalism, its unrestrained self-love and its misdirected self-hatred. And speaking of 'depths', please bear in mind that it does go really deep, probing unmapped territory like the complications at the root of every human relationship be it between husband and wife or between a father and daughter who feel a subtly obsessive, nearly incestuous love for each other. On one hand it recounts a series of tragic events which result in the slow disintegration of a rich Jewish businessman's inner world while on the other it rapidly moves back and forth between various American issues, from the postwar economic boom to the Newark Riots of '67 to the violent anti Vietnam War protests bordering on terrorist activity, thereby weaving an intricate network symbolizing the web of America's inner conflicts. It's like AP revels in its own Americanness and its unabashed disdain for anything that is considered outside America's sphere of influence. But the surprising thing is, despite the self-absorbed tone of the narrator's voice and his blatant apathy for anything unAmerican, none of it sounds remotely offensive. On the contrary, everything put together, it comes off as a mockery of America's self-obsession. Every sentence, every stream of thought, every conversation that Roth has painstakingly put together to construct this masterpiece is rife with underlying implications. So much so that in order to squeeze out every last drop of meaning from one passage or a long conversation, a literature student reading this for coursework may need to pore over one particular page for hours on end. This, however, does not mean it is a difficult read, it isn't by a long shot. It is simply a book which requires a tremendous amount of patience and an effort on the reader's part to remove all the layers of obfuscation.
I have come across people criticizing Roth for portraying Jews in an unflattering light here but I find myself nodding my head in disagreement with them. The book smacks of anti-heroism if anything and it looks down upon the rich white American's idea of familial bliss, material prosperity and his hankering after a squeaky clean reputation free of any incriminating smudges. Roth tramples on the idea of hero-worship and stomps on it until it is so bent out of shape that it is beyond recognition. I also beg to differ on the subject of Roth's widespread infamy among Goodreads intelligentsia as a misogynist. Any writer capable of rustling up such fleshed out female characters like the ones depicted here, cannot be accused of nurturing a conscious hatred of women. Sure, there is a sprinkling of barely noticeable sexist remarks but I suspect it is done with the purpose of defining a particular character's perspective rather than simply out of contemptuous indifference (or maybe I need to read more Roth before pronouncing judgement). Some of the scenes of a sexual nature are disturbing to the point of being slightly cringe-worthy, but none of them demean women as such. And it will be hardly fair to indict Roth for sexual vulgarity when women erotica writers of today can be accused of much worse (rape and stalker fantasies anyone?).
To wrap up, this is a hard book to review as it obdurately resists deconstruction. But it is an ingeniously written one with long drawn out sentences which are a delight to savour if you love your share of linguistic acrobatics. Roth rambles a lot and gets side-tracked often, like an old man suffering from an early onset of dementia, frustrating the reader with his abrupt jumps from one subject to another almost in a stream-of-consciousness like manner and his penchant for detailing something as maddeningly boring as the art of glove-making. But eventually, when he makes his point you can't help but marvel at his ability to accurately deduce the hidden motives at work behind seemingly unremarkable action. And as schizophrenic as his writing may seem, one can't deny that it is also the work of a true master.
November 29, 2020
This is Roth's masterpiece, in case you want to read one or two of his books, now that he is gone. Apparently Philip Roth was a difficult man. He had a reputation, by his own admission, as a cad, a bounder, profligate. "Reputation," which doesn't mean it is true, though it may be. His ex-wife, the actress Claire Bloom, with whom he lived for something like 18 years, castigates him in a memoir that makes him look almost psychotically ruthless, I seem to recall from reviews (never read the book, heard it was awful and made HER look even more difficult than him; but I have no idea). I read his early works, such as Portnoy's Complaint (and reread it recently) and Goodbye, Columbus, in the early/mid seventies and loved them. Thought they were hilarious in my late teens and early twenties. He writes about "himself" in books such as My Life as a Man as not entirely admirable with respect to women.
I didn't read anything by him again for decades until fairly recently, when I read his memoir of his relationship to his dying father, Patrimony, and the two of them are not nice guys, not easy, but there's a kind of rendition of depth and love between them so that you get to see why it is one might want to hang around with Roth. Both are arrogant, brutal to each other in some ways, and yet they love each other. And why read about such people? Because Roth is an amazing writer, he creates wonderful sentences and is not a bullshitter. He's ruthlessly truthful, it seems to me.
Roth is known for writing autobiographical fiction. Is this actually true, that he actually is writing about himself? I don't know. This is part of the central conceit of most of his writing, that his narrators are Roth, or some version of Roth. His narrator Nathan Zuckerman (in Pastoral) is a writer, not a nice man, a womanizer. The endlessly debated question is the extent to which Zuckerman is Roth. And many Goodreads readers hate his novels because they see Zuckerman as Roth, and both (they suspect) may be assholes. My take on this is that Zuckerman is not Roth, and in this book that is important, and makes it all the more brilliant. The book begins with Zuckerman going to his 45th high school reunion and meeting a fellow asshole, Jerry Levov, whose brother Nathan looked up to, Seymour Levov, The Swede, who was a star athlete with blond hair and blue eyes, not typically "Jewish-looking," as are almost all the Jews of his high school. Swede married a goyish (i.e., not Jewish or "Jewish-looking") Miss New Jersey and took over his father's Newark glove-making factory. Zuckerman admires Swede, his high school hero, but finds that the perfect northeastern Jew turned American Dream had a daughter, Merry, who was not so merry, who at 16 had joined an organization much like Weatherman, an initially violent offshoot of the SDS, and who bombs a local post office, killing a local physician, then goes underground.
The first section of the novel, Paradise Remembered, is Zuckerman recalling how great high school was, and how great the Greatest Generation, the forties and fifties, were. Amazing back patting section about the Jews of the idyllic American Dream hamlet of suburban Old Rimrock, outside Newark, with pretty wealthy business owners and intellectuals and doctors, and so on. They made it, whoopee. Only one cautionary consideration: Zuckerman admits that being human, being a writer, is "getting it wrong," about human nature, and then tells us a story of the Swede and his messed-up life. Swede maintained "high standards" in the production of gloves, and a kind of order in the face of the sixties, and Nam, and the "American berserk," when people went crazy politically and spiritually. But it's still wonderful writing, without question.
Well, as to that "getting it wrong," the Second section of the novel is The Fall, and the third is Paradise Lost, so you know where this is heading. Away from Nirvana, right. We aren't going back to the garden as in Woodstock, no. Things are not what they seem, and we get confirmed all that we already know about happy rich people who have coveted greener grass.
I was initially uncomfortable with some of Zuckerman's early nostalgia (though I know it is a set-up for what comes later) and even more so with the radical-bashing (by Nathan, our narrator) that happens as Seymour trashes the lifestyle of his daughter Merry. And lefties like me (I count former Weatherman Bill Ayers as a friend and colleague, and attended SDS meetings in Ann Arbor in the sixties when I was myself only 16) hate the superficial rejection of all youthful sixties radicalism that goes on to this day. But my point is that this is Zuckerman, not Roth, and this is Zuckerman's--not necessarily Roth's--blind love for the Swede and his hatred of his radical murderer daughter, Merry . I do know that liberal peaceniks like me parted ways with Weatherman and other sixties counter-cultural groups when they began resorting to "any mean necessary" such as violence.
But this is Zuckerman, a nostalgic romantic, writing his pieced-together fiction of The Swede, and we know it is a fiction. It is a tale of rage and bewilderment and loss of the American Dream, one we can all mourn in our own ways. And it is romanticized, but it also has some breathlessly beautiful passages, much of it amazing dialogue, sometimes in talk between Merry and Swede, sometimes speeches from grandpa patriarch Lou, sometimes fights between Jerry and Swede, and it is overall, terrific writing, just wonderful. Some of the detailed descriptions of the careful craftsmanship of glove-making are like an elegy to a time when such attention to detail and quality of work by hand was more widespread, a more elemental time, maybe.
This book is in part about the shift from the protected, optimistic post-war period and the twenty five year shift to Hell that took us into the mid-seventies. It's a father-son story, it's a father-daughter story. It's a story of one Jewish version of the American Dream and assimilation. It's the story of the decline of cities like Newark, destroyed by racism and race riots and white flight and the abandonment of industry. It's about the myth of the American Pastoral dream escape from the urban to the rural, all those lovely flowers and trees as no real escape from "reality". The male characters, filled with rage and despair, are a little like Lear, raging at loss and decline, and they take center stage here, but the women portraits are also fully realized and impressive. In the ending sentences we are led to doubt Zuckerman's point of view, his romanticizing, and his bitterness. We are led to go back to his initial views about whether we can actually know other people, as writers, as people. Maybe this is Roth's realization that we can only "get it wrong" as we try to understand identity and culture. We are essentially unknowable. "Origins" are not fully explanatory. We are mysteries unto ourselves.
There's not much of Roth's trademark humor here (except in the story of the creation of a fur coat by high school soph Jerry for a prospective girlfriend, which is hilarious). This is Roth's masterpiece, taking seriously the art of fiction as it attempts to grapple with American landscape. Impressive accomplishment. And as to Roth vs. Zuckerman, as with other people you don't seem to like based on biographies and People magazine, set Roth aside and read Zuckerman; this is a work of fiction. And a damned good one, like the people in it or not. "Liking" is not really the issue with the quality of fiction, is it? These characters are fascinating, admirable, infuriating, annoying, heart-breaking.
I didn't read anything by him again for decades until fairly recently, when I read his memoir of his relationship to his dying father, Patrimony, and the two of them are not nice guys, not easy, but there's a kind of rendition of depth and love between them so that you get to see why it is one might want to hang around with Roth. Both are arrogant, brutal to each other in some ways, and yet they love each other. And why read about such people? Because Roth is an amazing writer, he creates wonderful sentences and is not a bullshitter. He's ruthlessly truthful, it seems to me.
Roth is known for writing autobiographical fiction. Is this actually true, that he actually is writing about himself? I don't know. This is part of the central conceit of most of his writing, that his narrators are Roth, or some version of Roth. His narrator Nathan Zuckerman (in Pastoral) is a writer, not a nice man, a womanizer. The endlessly debated question is the extent to which Zuckerman is Roth. And many Goodreads readers hate his novels because they see Zuckerman as Roth, and both (they suspect) may be assholes. My take on this is that Zuckerman is not Roth, and in this book that is important, and makes it all the more brilliant. The book begins with Zuckerman going to his 45th high school reunion and meeting a fellow asshole, Jerry Levov, whose brother Nathan looked up to, Seymour Levov, The Swede, who was a star athlete with blond hair and blue eyes, not typically "Jewish-looking," as are almost all the Jews of his high school. Swede married a goyish (i.e., not Jewish or "Jewish-looking") Miss New Jersey and took over his father's Newark glove-making factory. Zuckerman admires Swede, his high school hero, but finds that the perfect northeastern Jew turned American Dream had a daughter, Merry, who was not so merry, who at 16 had joined an organization much like Weatherman, an initially violent offshoot of the SDS, and who bombs a local post office, killing a local physician, then goes underground.
The first section of the novel, Paradise Remembered, is Zuckerman recalling how great high school was, and how great the Greatest Generation, the forties and fifties, were. Amazing back patting section about the Jews of the idyllic American Dream hamlet of suburban Old Rimrock, outside Newark, with pretty wealthy business owners and intellectuals and doctors, and so on. They made it, whoopee. Only one cautionary consideration: Zuckerman admits that being human, being a writer, is "getting it wrong," about human nature, and then tells us a story of the Swede and his messed-up life. Swede maintained "high standards" in the production of gloves, and a kind of order in the face of the sixties, and Nam, and the "American berserk," when people went crazy politically and spiritually. But it's still wonderful writing, without question.
Well, as to that "getting it wrong," the Second section of the novel is The Fall, and the third is Paradise Lost, so you know where this is heading. Away from Nirvana, right. We aren't going back to the garden as in Woodstock, no. Things are not what they seem, and we get confirmed all that we already know about happy rich people who have coveted greener grass.
I was initially uncomfortable with some of Zuckerman's early nostalgia (though I know it is a set-up for what comes later) and even more so with the radical-bashing (by Nathan, our narrator) that happens as Seymour trashes the lifestyle of his daughter Merry. And lefties like me (I count former Weatherman Bill Ayers as a friend and colleague, and attended SDS meetings in Ann Arbor in the sixties when I was myself only 16) hate the superficial rejection of all youthful sixties radicalism that goes on to this day. But my point is that this is Zuckerman, not Roth, and this is Zuckerman's--not necessarily Roth's--blind love for the Swede and his hatred of his radical murderer daughter, Merry . I do know that liberal peaceniks like me parted ways with Weatherman and other sixties counter-cultural groups when they began resorting to "any mean necessary" such as violence.
But this is Zuckerman, a nostalgic romantic, writing his pieced-together fiction of The Swede, and we know it is a fiction. It is a tale of rage and bewilderment and loss of the American Dream, one we can all mourn in our own ways. And it is romanticized, but it also has some breathlessly beautiful passages, much of it amazing dialogue, sometimes in talk between Merry and Swede, sometimes speeches from grandpa patriarch Lou, sometimes fights between Jerry and Swede, and it is overall, terrific writing, just wonderful. Some of the detailed descriptions of the careful craftsmanship of glove-making are like an elegy to a time when such attention to detail and quality of work by hand was more widespread, a more elemental time, maybe.
This book is in part about the shift from the protected, optimistic post-war period and the twenty five year shift to Hell that took us into the mid-seventies. It's a father-son story, it's a father-daughter story. It's a story of one Jewish version of the American Dream and assimilation. It's the story of the decline of cities like Newark, destroyed by racism and race riots and white flight and the abandonment of industry. It's about the myth of the American Pastoral dream escape from the urban to the rural, all those lovely flowers and trees as no real escape from "reality". The male characters, filled with rage and despair, are a little like Lear, raging at loss and decline, and they take center stage here, but the women portraits are also fully realized and impressive. In the ending sentences we are led to doubt Zuckerman's point of view, his romanticizing, and his bitterness. We are led to go back to his initial views about whether we can actually know other people, as writers, as people. Maybe this is Roth's realization that we can only "get it wrong" as we try to understand identity and culture. We are essentially unknowable. "Origins" are not fully explanatory. We are mysteries unto ourselves.
There's not much of Roth's trademark humor here (except in the story of the creation of a fur coat by high school soph Jerry for a prospective girlfriend, which is hilarious). This is Roth's masterpiece, taking seriously the art of fiction as it attempts to grapple with American landscape. Impressive accomplishment. And as to Roth vs. Zuckerman, as with other people you don't seem to like based on biographies and People magazine, set Roth aside and read Zuckerman; this is a work of fiction. And a damned good one, like the people in it or not. "Liking" is not really the issue with the quality of fiction, is it? These characters are fascinating, admirable, infuriating, annoying, heart-breaking.
October 6, 2017
"Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress - probably had never even begun to see into himself. What was he, stripped of all the signs he flashed? People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea of who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world."
This excerpt pretty much sums up the book on surface for me. This is the story of Swede, an obedient son, a successful businessman, and a devoted family man. Things were all going great until his only daughter at the age of 15 plant a bomb in the town post office, killing two people. Illusion of a perfect family shattered and what followed was an intense search of a father about where did he go wrong in the raising his daughter.
I wouldn't have read this book had I not pledged to read ten award winners at the start of the year as one of my reading resolution for 2017. I was not expecting much after the disappointment of "The Road." While "The Road" had minimal dialogues, this was incessant rant of protagonist. It was frustrating when Swede tells about a person at different occasions but what makes it engrossing that he present a different picture of same person everytime. It tested my limits as a reader but boy how beautifully author has created this maze where I kept wandering, walking same path again and again yet feeling that I was exploring this path for the very first time. It just left me mesmerised.
This book is brilliant in expressing emotions if a doting father, passion of a husband, devotion of a son, rage of a man who blames himself for what his daughter became, pain of a man when he stripped layers after layers of lies in which he believed all his life, and helplessness of a husband when his wife went into shock... So so many emotions I felt through Swede.
This is a disturbing, haunting yet absolutely stunning and fantastic at the same time. An amazing read but just make sure that you are ready to give it the attention which this story demands and deserves.
I am definitely reading this after few years.
This excerpt pretty much sums up the book on surface for me. This is the story of Swede, an obedient son, a successful businessman, and a devoted family man. Things were all going great until his only daughter at the age of 15 plant a bomb in the town post office, killing two people. Illusion of a perfect family shattered and what followed was an intense search of a father about where did he go wrong in the raising his daughter.
I wouldn't have read this book had I not pledged to read ten award winners at the start of the year as one of my reading resolution for 2017. I was not expecting much after the disappointment of "The Road." While "The Road" had minimal dialogues, this was incessant rant of protagonist. It was frustrating when Swede tells about a person at different occasions but what makes it engrossing that he present a different picture of same person everytime. It tested my limits as a reader but boy how beautifully author has created this maze where I kept wandering, walking same path again and again yet feeling that I was exploring this path for the very first time. It just left me mesmerised.
This book is brilliant in expressing emotions if a doting father, passion of a husband, devotion of a son, rage of a man who blames himself for what his daughter became, pain of a man when he stripped layers after layers of lies in which he believed all his life, and helplessness of a husband when his wife went into shock... So so many emotions I felt through Swede.
This is a disturbing, haunting yet absolutely stunning and fantastic at the same time. An amazing read but just make sure that you are ready to give it the attention which this story demands and deserves.
I am definitely reading this after few years.
May 23, 2018
1998 Pulitzer Prize
Time Magazines 100 best novels
I read my fair share of books and most of those are "classics", so usually, as a whole, they are highly rated, highly regarded books. But even with that, occasionally a book comes along that raises it's head above the rest. This is one of those books for me. It's difficult to explain this book to others, even difficult to completely understand myself, because it doesn't flow in a straight line like most books, non-linear I think they call it. But I can say this, it makes an impression, it's impactful, thought provoking, and yes, even depressing. Roth, like a fine surgeon, lays open the heart and soul of an American family, and it is writing and story telling at it's best.
RIP Philip Roth. May 23, 2018
Time Magazines 100 best novels
I read my fair share of books and most of those are "classics", so usually, as a whole, they are highly rated, highly regarded books. But even with that, occasionally a book comes along that raises it's head above the rest. This is one of those books for me. It's difficult to explain this book to others, even difficult to completely understand myself, because it doesn't flow in a straight line like most books, non-linear I think they call it. But I can say this, it makes an impression, it's impactful, thought provoking, and yes, even depressing. Roth, like a fine surgeon, lays open the heart and soul of an American family, and it is writing and story telling at it's best.
RIP Philip Roth. May 23, 2018
February 7, 2022
O capodoperă. O versiune modernă a tragediei lui Iov...
Seymour Irving Levov, numit și „Suedezul” de către colegii de liceu și admirat unanim pentru însușirile lui atletice ieșite din comun, nu e numaidecît un caz exemplar, un simbol al reușitei sociale, cum pare a-l prezenta la început naratorul, vechiul povestitor Nathan Zuckerman. Aș spune, fără nici un paradox, că Seymour Levov e cazul exemplar al omului ne-exemplar, al individului obișnuit.
Văzut prin ochii naratorului, Suedezul pare, firește, un uriaș intangibil, un zeu luminos, o izbîndă a forței fizice și a frumuseții. Văzut prin ochii cititorului, Seymour e doar o victimă inocentă a istoriei americane, a unei „nebunii lăuntrice, care a cuprins acest popor” în anii 60. Jerry Levov, fratele lui mai mic, viitorul chirurg vehement și ranchiunos (a trebuit să suporte „gloria” fratelui), îl acuză că nu a încercat niciodată să privească dincolo de aparențe, că a refuzat să se „analizeze”, să treacă de suprafața lucrurilor, că n-a înțeles nimic din viață. E o opinie lipsită de temei.
Seymour a văzut lumea exact așa cum o văd toți, fără excepție, așa cum o vede orice om normal. Ce propune această filosofie? Totul e guvernat de o rînduială fără surprize, nu există anomalii, intruziuni în succesiunea calmă a evenimentelor. Ceea ce nu înțelegem imediat își găsește pînă la urmă o explicație mulțumitoare. Istoria e predictibilă. Pentru individul obișnuit, nu există „lebede negre”.
Vina Suedezului (dacă are una) este că nu s-a gîndit niciodată că viziunea simțului comun (în care există doar reguli) e incompletă. Există hazard. Există incomprehensibil. Există excepții. Și există lovituri greu de prevăzut.
Cînd fiica de 16 ani a lui Seymour, Merry / Meredith, pune o bombă la oficiul poștal, pentru a „protesta” împotriva războiului din Vietnam, Seymour cel onest și naiv primește o lovitură care-i va da peste cap întreaga existență. Postulatul simțului comun „Mie nu mi se poate întîmpla asta, pentru că lumea nu acceptă asta” lasă brusc locul întrebărilor singulare: „De ce mie?”, „De ce am fost ales tocmai eu?”. În definitiv, ca să mai citez un postulat din aceeași specie, „moartea se întîmplă întotdeauna doar celorlalți”.
A gîndi altfel e o formă de nihilism. Pentru nihilist, nu există decît excepții. Nici un om n-ar putea rezista dacă ar gîndi altfel, în termeni de „catastrofă”, de răsturnare bruscă, așa cum ar vrea, poate, Jerry. Și-ar pierde mințile.
În fond, nimic nu e greșit în viziunea lui Seymour. Omul e obligat să se amăgească. Seymour Levov nu se deosebește prin nimic de ceilalți. E firesc să fie covîrșit de vinovăție. Dar acest sentiment nu are, în cazul lui, nici o justificare. El nu a greșit cu nimic. Nimeni nu poate anticipa o psihoză. Nu poți fi răspunzător de faptul că, uneori, viața se lovește de hazard.
Putem sesiza în romanul lui Philip Roth (și) o variantă a poveștii lui Iov...
Seymour Irving Levov, numit și „Suedezul” de către colegii de liceu și admirat unanim pentru însușirile lui atletice ieșite din comun, nu e numaidecît un caz exemplar, un simbol al reușitei sociale, cum pare a-l prezenta la început naratorul, vechiul povestitor Nathan Zuckerman. Aș spune, fără nici un paradox, că Seymour Levov e cazul exemplar al omului ne-exemplar, al individului obișnuit.
Văzut prin ochii naratorului, Suedezul pare, firește, un uriaș intangibil, un zeu luminos, o izbîndă a forței fizice și a frumuseții. Văzut prin ochii cititorului, Seymour e doar o victimă inocentă a istoriei americane, a unei „nebunii lăuntrice, care a cuprins acest popor” în anii 60. Jerry Levov, fratele lui mai mic, viitorul chirurg vehement și ranchiunos (a trebuit să suporte „gloria” fratelui), îl acuză că nu a încercat niciodată să privească dincolo de aparențe, că a refuzat să se „analizeze”, să treacă de suprafața lucrurilor, că n-a înțeles nimic din viață. E o opinie lipsită de temei.
Seymour a văzut lumea exact așa cum o văd toți, fără excepție, așa cum o vede orice om normal. Ce propune această filosofie? Totul e guvernat de o rînduială fără surprize, nu există anomalii, intruziuni în succesiunea calmă a evenimentelor. Ceea ce nu înțelegem imediat își găsește pînă la urmă o explicație mulțumitoare. Istoria e predictibilă. Pentru individul obișnuit, nu există „lebede negre”.
Vina Suedezului (dacă are una) este că nu s-a gîndit niciodată că viziunea simțului comun (în care există doar reguli) e incompletă. Există hazard. Există incomprehensibil. Există excepții. Și există lovituri greu de prevăzut.
Cînd fiica de 16 ani a lui Seymour, Merry / Meredith, pune o bombă la oficiul poștal, pentru a „protesta” împotriva războiului din Vietnam, Seymour cel onest și naiv primește o lovitură care-i va da peste cap întreaga existență. Postulatul simțului comun „Mie nu mi se poate întîmpla asta, pentru că lumea nu acceptă asta” lasă brusc locul întrebărilor singulare: „De ce mie?”, „De ce am fost ales tocmai eu?”. În definitiv, ca să mai citez un postulat din aceeași specie, „moartea se întîmplă întotdeauna doar celorlalți”.
A gîndi altfel e o formă de nihilism. Pentru nihilist, nu există decît excepții. Nici un om n-ar putea rezista dacă ar gîndi altfel, în termeni de „catastrofă”, de răsturnare bruscă, așa cum ar vrea, poate, Jerry. Și-ar pierde mințile.
În fond, nimic nu e greșit în viziunea lui Seymour. Omul e obligat să se amăgească. Seymour Levov nu se deosebește prin nimic de ceilalți. E firesc să fie covîrșit de vinovăție. Dar acest sentiment nu are, în cazul lui, nici o justificare. El nu a greșit cu nimic. Nimeni nu poate anticipa o psihoză. Nu poți fi răspunzător de faptul că, uneori, viața se lovește de hazard.
Putem sesiza în romanul lui Philip Roth (și) o variantă a poveștii lui Iov...
September 27, 2016
Σε όλη τη διάρκεια της απολαυστικής ανάγνωσης αυτού του βιβλίου αναρωτιέσαι γιατί εξελίχθηκαν όλα τόσο άσχημα,τόσο απρόσμενα αρνητικά ενώ οι βάσεις και οι προϋποθέσεις έδιναν μόνο θετικά αποτελέσματα και ιδεώδεις καταλήξεις.
Αυτή η ιστορία είναι ένας εφιάλτης, μια απροσδόκητη κόλαση λανθασμένων αποφάσεων,ανατρεπτικών αντιφάσεων,διαψευσμένων ονείρων και αναπάντεχων ατυχημάτων που έρχεται σε σύγκρουση με γεγονότα και καταστάσεις τα οποία σημάδεψαν οικογένειες,κοινωνίες,πόλεις,χώρες.
Σαν ένα ντόμινο ξεκινάει το αμερικανικό ειδύλλιο του πλαστού ονείρου και κάθε κομματάκι που πέφτει με τόση επιδεξιότητα και αρμονία παρασύροντας όλα τα υπόλοιπα, αλλάζει ριζικά τα πάντα.
Πόλεμοι, πολιτικά σκάνδαλα, κοινωνικές επαναστάσεις,οικονομικά παιχνίδια,επιφέρουν το απόλυτο χάος ενώ φαινομενικά θα έπρεπε να προσφέρουν εξέλιξη στην ευημερία.
Ο Νέιθαν Ζούκερμαν είναι ένας ηλικιωμένος, άρρωστος και αποκαμωμένος συγγραφέας που αφού μας μιλάει για την προσωπική του ζωή τη γεμάτη αναταράξεις,μας προσκαλεί σε μια συνάντηση παλιών συμμαθητών του όπου το ονειρεμένο παρελθόν συναντάει το γέρικο και ρεαλιστικό παρόν σε μια απομυθοποίηση τραγική.
Ο Ζούκερμαν μας συστήνει το ίνδαλμα του, τον περιβόητο "Σουηδό", την ενσάρκωση της επιτυχίας τον ζωντανό θρύλο.
Σε όλη του τη ζωή θαύμαζε και εξυμνούσε αυτή τη χρυσή προσωπικότητα. Ήταν ο ήρωας του, ήταν αυτός που θα ήθελε να αντικαταστήσει το δικό του μέτριο εαυτό. Ήταν ο πρωταγωνιστής που βάδιζε στο δρόμο των μεγάλων κατορθωμάτων μια ανοδική πορεία προς τον παράδεισο των ονείρων. Ήταν ο τέλειος, ο μοναδικός,ο θεός της υπαρκτής ουτοπίας.
Όταν τυχαία μαθαίνει σε αυτή τη συνάντηση των συμμαθητών του πως ο "Σουηδός" απέτυχε παταγωδώς στη ζωή του, αρνείται να το δεχτεί και ξεκινάει η αφήγηση της τραγικής ειρωνείας.
Τώρα ο Ζούκερμαν ανοίγει την πόρτα της αφήγησης με κλειδί την εντροπία και μας οδηγεί στο χάος της ζωής του πρωταγωνιστή "Σουηδού" και ολόκληρης της Αμερικής των προσδοκιών.
Ξεκινάμε με το παρατσούκλι "Σουηδός" το οποίο προσδίδεται σε ένα εβραιόπουλο εξαιτίας των χαρακτηριστικών του.
Ο Σίμουρ Λιβόβ ο επονομαζόμενος •Σουηδός• είναι ξανθός,γαλανομάτης,με απόλυτα λευκό δέρμα, πανέμορφος,ψηλός και γεροδεμένος.
Στα τρία αμερικανικά αθλήματα έχει εξαιρετικές επιδόσεις.
Έξυπνος,χαρισματικός,ταπεινός,ηθικός,ευγενικός,
άψογος.
Το καμάρι της οικογένειας. Το υπόδειγμα ήθους και αρετής.
Γεννήθηκε με την ευδαιμονία καπέλο.
Επομένως αξίζει και έχει κάθε ευτυχία και επιτυχία. Ακούραστα. Ανεμπόδιστα. Φυσικά.
Αργότερα ως ενήλικας είναι ένας πλούσιος πετυχημένος επιχειρηματίας που συνεχίζει την οικογενειακή παράδοση στην βιομηχανία παρασκευής γαντιών.
Όλα ευοίωνα. Ένα εξαίρετο παρόν και ενα λαμπρό μέλλον μπροστά του χωρίς εμπόδια και ανατροπές.
Υπήρχε βέβαια μια προϋπόθεση -μάλλον- για όλα αυτά στην αμιγώς Αμερικανική ονειρεμένη ζωή, να μην αμφισβητήσει ποτέ το δικαίωμα του στον μονόδρομο της επιτυχίας. Να μην αναρωτηθεί ποτέ για την σύσταση και τη δομή των καταστάσεων και των γεγονότων.
Είναι έτσι, γιατί του αξίζουν. Ότι γίνει θα ναι καλό. Αν είναι κακό δεν θα γίνει ή θα περάσει γρήγορα.
ΤΟΣΟ ΚΑΛΑ ΓΙΑ ΝΑ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΛΗΘΙΝΑ...
Όμως ο Σουηδός δεν πτοείται. Το ζει το όνειρο του. Το ευχαριστιέται ψυχικά,σωματικά και νοερά.
Οι αλλαγές που φέρνουν τις εξελίξεις μεταπολεμικά δεν τον ενδιαφέρουν. Δεν αγγίζουν τον αμερικανικό παράδεισο του. Εθελοτυφλεί. Αδιαφορεί. Συγκρατείται όταν όλα γύρω του αλλάζουν ασυγκράτητα. Ζει στην ουτοπία της χαράς και της ματαιοδοξίας. Τα έχει όλα τακτοποιήσει. Τα πάντα είναι σε τάξη μέσα στο χαρμάνι του πόθου του.
Το λάθος υπάρχει παντού. Διάθεση για διόρθωση καμία.
Και φτάνει η κορύφωση.
Αταξία. Χαμός. Καταστροφή. Ολική προσδιοριστικά τραγωδία.
Δεν βγαίνει νόημα. Δεν υπάρχει λογική. Παράνοια. Εφιάλτης. Αίμα. Ψέμμα.
Τι πήγε στραβά στον ονειρεμένο παράδεισο των ψευδαισθήσεων;
Τι έφταιξε και η απόλυτη τάξη μετατράπηκε σε χάος;
Πως απο την πλήρη μετουσιωμένη ομορφιά της ζωής γεννιέται η λασπωμένη βρόμικη ασχήμια;
Κανείς δεν μπορεί να απαντήσει.
Ο συγγραφέας φωνάζει σιωπηλά:Η τραγωδία του κενού δεν βγάζει κανένα νόημα. Δεν υπάρχει εξήγηση.
Υπάρχει μόνο το "μάθημα" της ζωής που διδάσκεται χωρίς διάλειμμα ως το φινάλε.
Καλή ανάγνωση!!
Αυτή η ιστορία είναι ένας εφιάλτης, μια απροσδόκητη κόλαση λανθασμένων αποφάσεων,ανατρεπτικών αντιφάσεων,διαψευσμένων ονείρων και αναπάντεχων ατυχημάτων που έρχεται σε σύγκρουση με γεγονότα και καταστάσεις τα οποία σημάδεψαν οικογένειες,κοινωνίες,πόλεις,χώρες.
Σαν ένα ντόμινο ξεκινάει το αμερικανικό ειδύλλιο του πλαστού ονείρου και κάθε κομματάκι που πέφτει με τόση επιδεξιότητα και αρμονία παρασύροντας όλα τα υπόλοιπα, αλλάζει ριζικά τα πάντα.
Πόλεμοι, πολιτικά σκάνδαλα, κοινωνικές επαναστάσεις,οικονομικά παιχνίδια,επιφέρουν το απόλυτο χάος ενώ φαινομενικά θα έπρεπε να προσφέρουν εξέλιξη στην ευημερία.
Ο Νέιθαν Ζούκερμαν είναι ένας ηλικιωμένος, άρρωστος και αποκαμωμένος συγγραφέας που αφού μας μιλάει για την προσωπική του ζωή τη γεμάτη αναταράξεις,μας προσκαλεί σε μια συνάντηση παλιών συμμαθητών του όπου το ονειρεμένο παρελθόν συναντάει το γέρικο και ρεαλιστικό παρόν σε μια απομυθοποίηση τραγική.
Ο Ζούκερμαν μας συστήνει το ίνδαλμα του, τον περιβόητο "Σουηδό", την ενσάρκωση της επιτυχίας τον ζωντανό θρύλο.
Σε όλη του τη ζωή θαύμαζε και εξυμνούσε αυτή τη χρυσή προσωπικότητα. Ήταν ο ήρωας του, ήταν αυτός που θα ήθελε να αντικαταστήσει το δικό του μέτριο εαυτό. Ήταν ο πρωταγωνιστής που βάδιζε στο δρόμο των μεγάλων κατορθωμάτων μια ανοδική πορεία προς τον παράδεισο των ονείρων. Ήταν ο τέλειος, ο μοναδικός,ο θεός της υπαρκτής ουτοπίας.
Όταν τυχαία μαθαίνει σε αυτή τη συνάντηση των συμμαθητών του πως ο "Σουηδός" απέτυχε παταγωδώς στη ζωή του, αρνείται να το δεχτεί και ξεκινάει η αφήγηση της τραγικής ειρωνείας.
Τώρα ο Ζούκερμαν ανοίγει την πόρτα της αφήγησης με κλειδί την εντροπία και μας οδηγεί στο χάος της ζωής του πρωταγωνιστή "Σουηδού" και ολόκληρης της Αμερικής των προσδοκιών.
Ξεκινάμε με το παρατσούκλι "Σουηδός" το οποίο προσδίδεται σε ένα εβραιόπουλο εξαιτίας των χαρακτηριστικών του.
Ο Σίμουρ Λιβόβ ο επονομαζόμενος •Σουηδός• είναι ξανθός,γαλανομάτης,με απόλυτα λευκό δέρμα, πανέμορφος,ψηλός και γεροδεμένος.
Στα τρία αμερικανικά αθλήματα έχει εξαιρετικές επιδόσεις.
Έξυπνος,χαρισματικός,ταπεινός,ηθικός,ευγενικός,
άψογος.
Το καμάρι της οικογένειας. Το υπόδειγμα ήθους και αρετής.
Γεννήθηκε με την ευδαιμονία καπέλο.
Επομένως αξίζει και έχει κάθε ευτυχία και επιτυχία. Ακούραστα. Ανεμπόδιστα. Φυσικά.
Αργότερα ως ενήλικας είναι ένας πλούσιος πετυχημένος επιχειρηματίας που συνεχίζει την οικογενειακή παράδοση στην βιομηχανία παρασκευής γαντιών.
Όλα ευοίωνα. Ένα εξαίρετο παρόν και ενα λαμπρό μέλλον μπροστά του χωρίς εμπόδια και ανατροπές.
Υπήρχε βέβαια μια προϋπόθεση -μάλλον- για όλα αυτά στην αμιγώς Αμερικανική ονειρεμένη ζωή, να μην αμφισβητήσει ποτέ το δικαίωμα του στον μονόδρομο της επιτυχίας. Να μην αναρωτηθεί ποτέ για την σύσταση και τη δομή των καταστάσεων και των γεγονότων.
Είναι έτσι, γιατί του αξίζουν. Ότι γίνει θα ναι καλό. Αν είναι κακό δεν θα γίνει ή θα περάσει γρήγορα.
ΤΟΣΟ ΚΑΛΑ ΓΙΑ ΝΑ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΛΗΘΙΝΑ...
Όμως ο Σουηδός δεν πτοείται. Το ζει το όνειρο του. Το ευχαριστιέται ψυχικά,σωματικά και νοερά.
Οι αλλαγές που φέρνουν τις εξελίξεις μεταπολεμικά δεν τον ενδιαφέρουν. Δεν αγγίζουν τον αμερικανικό παράδεισο του. Εθελοτυφλεί. Αδιαφορεί. Συγκρατείται όταν όλα γύρω του αλλάζουν ασυγκράτητα. Ζει στην ουτοπία της χαράς και της ματαιοδοξίας. Τα έχει όλα τακτοποιήσει. Τα πάντα είναι σε τάξη μέσα στο χαρμάνι του πόθου του.
Το λάθος υπάρχει παντού. Διάθεση για διόρθωση καμία.
Και φτάνει η κορύφωση.
Αταξία. Χαμός. Καταστροφή. Ολική προσδιοριστικά τραγωδία.
Δεν βγαίνει νόημα. Δεν υπάρχει λογική. Παράνοια. Εφιάλτης. Αίμα. Ψέμμα.
Τι πήγε στραβά στον ονειρεμένο παράδεισο των ψευδαισθήσεων;
Τι έφταιξε και η απόλυτη τάξη μετατράπηκε σε χάος;
Πως απο την πλήρη μετουσιωμένη ομορφιά της ζωής γεννιέται η λασπωμένη βρόμικη ασχήμια;
Κανείς δεν μπορεί να απαντήσει.
Ο συγγραφέας φωνάζει σιωπηλά:Η τραγωδία του κενού δεν βγάζει κανένα νόημα. Δεν υπάρχει εξήγηση.
Υπάρχει μόνο το "μάθημα" της ζωής που διδάσκεται χωρίς διάλειμμα ως το φινάλε.
Καλή ανάγνωση!!
December 19, 2018
My awareness of this book came from my wife and some of her friends from college. It was legendary as the single most awful experience during their first four years of higher education. You would think that would keep me away . . . But, after several years of putting it off I finally said, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!"
It was not the worst book I have ever read. It was not the greatest book I have ever read. I have seen some people sing it's praises as vehemently as the loathing my wife and her friends felt for it. I can easily see both sides of this response.
I would say 3 to 3.5 stars
It was definitely one of the most melodramatic stories I have ever read. Every scene and every discussion was amped up to the next level. Part of that led to super descriptive prose. The best way I can describe it is that it is the literary equivalent of a hyper-realistic painting (Click here for a hyper-realistic painting of Homer Simpson to see what I mean)
I did find the book interesting overall. It is basically the story of a seemingly perfect life going out of control in mid-1900s America because of social expectations, religion, war, politics, and family. At times it was a bit repetitive and drug on a bit. For me, I think it would have had the same impact if it was trimmed and toned down.
I can recommend this to you if you want to cover the classics. For example, I belong to a reading list completist book club and this book appears on several lists. If you like historical fiction, then I think there is a chance you will like it. But, if you are not in the mood for something lengthy, wordy, and intense, this really isn't the book for you.
It was not the worst book I have ever read. It was not the greatest book I have ever read. I have seen some people sing it's praises as vehemently as the loathing my wife and her friends felt for it. I can easily see both sides of this response.
I would say 3 to 3.5 stars
It was definitely one of the most melodramatic stories I have ever read. Every scene and every discussion was amped up to the next level. Part of that led to super descriptive prose. The best way I can describe it is that it is the literary equivalent of a hyper-realistic painting (Click here for a hyper-realistic painting of Homer Simpson to see what I mean)
I did find the book interesting overall. It is basically the story of a seemingly perfect life going out of control in mid-1900s America because of social expectations, religion, war, politics, and family. At times it was a bit repetitive and drug on a bit. For me, I think it would have had the same impact if it was trimmed and toned down.
I can recommend this to you if you want to cover the classics. For example, I belong to a reading list completist book club and this book appears on several lists. If you like historical fiction, then I think there is a chance you will like it. But, if you are not in the mood for something lengthy, wordy, and intense, this really isn't the book for you.
June 1, 2017
American Pastoral by Philip Roth is a 1997 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publication.
This book doesn’t need much of an analysis from me, especially since so many have voiced such eloquent and poignant reviews of ‘one of the best novels ever written’, and have broken it down and analyzed it in great qualified detail.
However, I did have a few random thoughts about the book-
The book is not upbeat, not once, not ever. It’s moody, sad, and weighted down with the heaviness of yearning, regret, and disillusionment.
‘What the hell is wrong with doing things right?”
The novel simmers with anger, directed in any number of ways, for any number of reasons, at any number of situations and people, but is also a well of deeply rooted retrospection, and even fervor.
The novel moves slowly, and I will confess it took two long wait periods from my library to complete it. But, it was still a hypnotic novel, chock of full of allegory, and is considered a true American classic, by many.
I don’t know how I would have felt about this book if I had read it years ago, but now I think I ‘get’ it and understand why it resonates with some people, but I can also understand why others were left unimpressed.
There is a letdown of sorts as the book concludes, which left me feeling slightly depressed, but the book did give me much to consider.
This is not my first dance with Roth and it won’t be my last, but it wasn't a favorite, nor do I think it lives up to the Pulitzer hype, but it was worth the extra time and effort I went through to read it.
However, I think I am ready to return to my regularly scheduled programming for a while.
3.5 stars
This book doesn’t need much of an analysis from me, especially since so many have voiced such eloquent and poignant reviews of ‘one of the best novels ever written’, and have broken it down and analyzed it in great qualified detail.
However, I did have a few random thoughts about the book-
The book is not upbeat, not once, not ever. It’s moody, sad, and weighted down with the heaviness of yearning, regret, and disillusionment.
‘What the hell is wrong with doing things right?”
The novel simmers with anger, directed in any number of ways, for any number of reasons, at any number of situations and people, but is also a well of deeply rooted retrospection, and even fervor.
The novel moves slowly, and I will confess it took two long wait periods from my library to complete it. But, it was still a hypnotic novel, chock of full of allegory, and is considered a true American classic, by many.
I don’t know how I would have felt about this book if I had read it years ago, but now I think I ‘get’ it and understand why it resonates with some people, but I can also understand why others were left unimpressed.
There is a letdown of sorts as the book concludes, which left me feeling slightly depressed, but the book did give me much to consider.
This is not my first dance with Roth and it won’t be my last, but it wasn't a favorite, nor do I think it lives up to the Pulitzer hype, but it was worth the extra time and effort I went through to read it.
However, I think I am ready to return to my regularly scheduled programming for a while.
3.5 stars
February 6, 2017
Overwritten, self-indulgent version of Paradise Lost
I have mixed feelings about this 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning book. On one hand, I am enamoured with the power and grandness of the story, which is brought out by zoning in on one man, Seymour "The Swede" Levov. He is the beautiful American archetype, living in an idyllic countryside... then all goes to shit. His daughter Merry baffles and betrays all that he is when she becomes an uncontrollable teenager who resorts to acts of terrorism in protest over the Vietnam war. The juxtaposition of the beauty of the Swede, the purity of his intentions, the glory of the nature around them, and the utter horror and destruction that befalls, is what great literature is all about. Huge statements about what it is to be American, to be human, to be unknowable and unknowing (yes, this veers heavily to the pessimistic side) are made, painted in wild, thick, black strokes over the pastoral scenery.
BUT:
My brain hurt, often, slogging through what I can only describe as overwritten, self indulgent, sometimes even boring ramblings. Sentences that were novella in length that necessitated me to go back entire pages to remind myself what the hell he was talking about. SO much about glove making that made my eyes glaze over. Lots of focus on Jewish identity and the fact that the Swede married a shikse, though from what I could see, no one really cared about that more than Roth himself. The beginning, which was told from the point of view of "Skip" Zuckerman, the writer and huge admirer of the Swede, was especially painful and bombastic.
That being said, I am glad to have read it (and finished it), and many parts of this book were compelling and magnificent so I think it was worth it. Particularly the character of Merry fascinated me. Her journey and where she ends up is incredibly dark and heartrending. Her battle against her father, who is always trying to do things right, not for himself but for appearances, ends up in a tragedy beyond any parent's worst nightmare. What that says on a personal level, and then on a more general American platform, will keep me thinking for a long time.
I have mixed feelings about this 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning book. On one hand, I am enamoured with the power and grandness of the story, which is brought out by zoning in on one man, Seymour "The Swede" Levov. He is the beautiful American archetype, living in an idyllic countryside... then all goes to shit. His daughter Merry baffles and betrays all that he is when she becomes an uncontrollable teenager who resorts to acts of terrorism in protest over the Vietnam war. The juxtaposition of the beauty of the Swede, the purity of his intentions, the glory of the nature around them, and the utter horror and destruction that befalls, is what great literature is all about. Huge statements about what it is to be American, to be human, to be unknowable and unknowing (yes, this veers heavily to the pessimistic side) are made, painted in wild, thick, black strokes over the pastoral scenery.
BUT:
My brain hurt, often, slogging through what I can only describe as overwritten, self indulgent, sometimes even boring ramblings. Sentences that were novella in length that necessitated me to go back entire pages to remind myself what the hell he was talking about. SO much about glove making that made my eyes glaze over. Lots of focus on Jewish identity and the fact that the Swede married a shikse, though from what I could see, no one really cared about that more than Roth himself. The beginning, which was told from the point of view of "Skip" Zuckerman, the writer and huge admirer of the Swede, was especially painful and bombastic.
That being said, I am glad to have read it (and finished it), and many parts of this book were compelling and magnificent so I think it was worth it. Particularly the character of Merry fascinated me. Her journey and where she ends up is incredibly dark and heartrending. Her battle against her father, who is always trying to do things right, not for himself but for appearances, ends up in a tragedy beyond any parent's worst nightmare. What that says on a personal level, and then on a more general American platform, will keep me thinking for a long time.
January 7, 2012
The reason there is "shattering" shelf in my book list is because of a professor I had back in undergrad a million years ago. Her name was Marjorie, and she was great- smart as hell, kind, maternal, worldly. Her specialty was Chinese philosophy and Feminism. I think she had a bad go on a stairwell or something and she fractured her leg. She was on sick leave for several months as her bones reset and she basically learned to walk again.
When she got back (we were on friendly terms throughout, even after I stopped taking her classes) I asked her how the rehab went. True to form, she said the time away was tough, not able to do what she loved most, but fruitful in other ways in that she got a lot reading done. What stood out? American Pastoral, which a couple of other professors had been nagging her to read for a long time. Wow. That good, huh? Yes, she said, she found it "shattering", in fact. Always loved the Kafka quote that books should be axes for the frozen sea inside of us, and I remembered the adjective and the book for years.
I like trilogies, generally speaking, and I've done some reading in other Roth, with alternately enthralling and relatively pleasant results. I read "I Married A Communist" a few years back, enjoyed it quite a bit (happy to see it was one of Bruce Springsteen's favorite books, in fact) and intended to get at that great 90's trilogy of Roth's, which apparantly won him just about every award under the sun.
Finally plucked it off the shelves, sat down, and was immediately knocked on my ass. Powerful, colloquial, multilayered, provocative, intense, and- forgive me- wholly American. You get not only the splendors of American life in all their Hallmark glory; the teenage dreams of a glistening ballfield, the picket fence, the college sweetheart, the high-ho high-ho cameraderie of the military, the garrulous man in the street which seems to be something of a Roth specialty, the sad sacks jawing at each other at the 25th High School reunion. Roth really nails the jaunty/pathetic speech patterns of aimiably broken middle aged dudes, another specialty?
And, of course, the nightmare purling under the surface: the fracture of the old manufacturing centers beginning to give way to the neoliberal traffic of modern (late) capitalism, the cannibal wraith of Vietnam, incoherent rage in the discourse at the dinner table, the hollow nigh-fascistic obsession with the perfect body bespeaking the perfect soul, listless adultery, and the extremes of violence which ride on the heels of what Roth refers to here as "the indigenous American berserk"- a gradually terrifying phrase the longer you consider its implications. My hero Greil Marcus wields this particular phrase quite a bit in his macro-critiques of music and culture, which was another reason I knew I needed to ingest this text.
One thing that sort of drove me nuts throughout the novel was the fact that Merry's political radicalism is expressed in pretty much none other than gruesome, myopic, didactic, knee-jerk, resentment-ridden terms. The narrator (and maybe Roth as well, it's ambiguous but seems close) seems to diagnose this as a reaction to the Swede's oppressive, anodyne normalcy.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely understand in my own way, being a grizzled veteran of the kitchen table skirmish with the conservative lace curtain. You just about want to strangle the mouthy little brat, and dont blame the Levovs (nemonic with 'love', if you're curious) for their patient, open-minded, and exasperatedly reasonable reaction to their daughter's stuttering rage.
BUT- and this is kind of a big BUT- there isn't really much more of a voice offered in terms of Merry's radical critique. Roth knows more than he puts in Merry's mouth, certainly, and its absolutely his choice to sketch her character as he sees fit. The problem for me was that I know very well there were more prinicpled, complex, and morally distinct radical crticisms of the war in Vietnam and a well-intentioned reader can come to the novel not getting any of them.
I don't know if it's fair to criticize Roth for this, and by doing so apply a politics which none of his characters (save Merry, and as I say her grasp of self is tenuous to say the least) tend to make central to their identities, but it's still a little dubious if you want to expand the reading of the novel to a larger perspective. In some of my more cynical moments, it seemed to fit a little too well that he would be feted by the Clinton-era cultural kingmakers. I mean, an imaginitively reconstructed conversation between the essentially apolitial Swede and an imagined Angela Davis isn't really enough to cut the political discourse mustard.
There's easily way more truth and power in the real story of American dissent than appears in these pages. Again, I don't want to mailgn the esteemed Mr. Roth for a politics he doesn't seem to attempt, but I would really hate if the curious and well-intentioned reader, lured by the prizes and pedigree, were to pick up this book and see Merry's vapid, uninformed, and rather credulous and gullible antagonism as the real voice of the 60's, let alone the counterculture.
I hate Abbie Hoffman because I liked him when I first discovered him and came to find out from people who actually knew him back in the day when he was just a wise-ass Masshole not unlike Your Humble Narrator and learned that he was merely that and no more. It's tempting to valorize people like that, and there's plenty of books which would happily do so, but give me a Phil Ochs any day of the week.
Here's Louis Lapham saying this in a much more articulate way:
"Some years ago, in a review of Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, I argued that Roth had not done what was necessary to get inside the idea of political radicalism. Instead he had created, as an expression of “the American berserk,” a pathetic, twisted, angry young leftist who was made to exemplify the primary thrust of the 1960s New Left. An extremist with some plausible relation to actually existing elements in the counterculture of the period, Roth’s Merry Levov could seem genuinely terrifying. But she was, at the same time, an undifferentiated cartoon of adolescent rebellion, and her creator had made no effort to accord to her or her associates the benefit of any doubt, to accord to anyone associated with the New Left even a modicum of respect for their idealism and their opposition to an established order that had given us the Vietnam War. The spiritual attitude exhibited in such a novel is thus deficient in the sense that it does not labor to resist the reduction of reality to caricature. Roth offers no sign whatsoever that he entertained misgivings about the easy reduction of the radical left in the 1960s to lunacy and puerility."
The ending (NO SPOILERS! I PROMISE!) also seemed a little weak. Bit of a plotline anti-climax, if you ask me. It wasn't quite enough to bring the roaring motor of the narrative to a conclusion. So much forward momentum, not as elegantly brutal a denouement as I would have hoped for.
But these are the immediate criticisms. This novel is, all in all, a whopper. At times, I literally had to put the thing down and just rest my bludgeoned head a little while. The roil in this narrative just rears up every so often and changes the dynamic of the story completely. At certain points, it really felt more like a hellfire sermon- in a good way.
One of the things that makes this novel so memorable is that Roth really sustains a fairly busy and engaging and wide-ranging momentum throughout the story. The pitch is slowly, inexorably raised until your readerly heart is racing, waiting for the next blow. It seems really hard to do, for a lot of novelists these days at least, and prizes went to Roth aplenty for this, I'd imagine, and well-deserved.
It seems at times that Roth and the narrator (not necessarily clearly separated but that is not an issue in an of itself, just an interesting issue) meld into one, and begin to existentially storm into the progression of the story, and call down fire and brimstone upon the (seemingly) innocent heads of the main characters. One of the blurbs approvingly mentions "elegant tantrums", which is belittingly stupid. This is a glimpse of an Americana version of Job- a reference which doesn't go unutilized early on, and elegantly, at that- in the sense that Roth (thinking about it some more, it really does seem like Roth himself) wants to yank up the carpet to show the limitless void of chaos, confusion, dread, and plain old loneliness which recedes into eternity under the Levov's (and, crucially, our) feet.
A searing, ironic, indominable vision- "novel" is insufficient- of the America which creates and then destroys the very dreams it needs to sustain itself. Necessary, eloquent, prophetic, masterful, and true. Nobody's left off the hook, nobody gets away scot free, no one leaves the party unquestioned, and there isn't a face or a word or a landscape you don't recognize.
Read it and exhult, read it and tremble, to read it is to see the beauty and insanity of America, simmering or soaring for 400 (ish) years, coming right up at you like ghost in the bright yellow daylight. Roth loves America as much as he hates what it requires; he hates America as much as he loves what it makes possible. To be an American, in Roth's eyes, is to be in the thick of life's inexorable contradictions.
Shattering? Yes. Like a baseball covered in blood violating a stained glass window.
January 20, 2008
Representative sentence, from the book's non-conclusion:
"However, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hill roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's an n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-colored wild mustard sturdily spilling over the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlasting wind."
I see that I now only have a little over 2200 characters left to finish this review. I once wrote in a paper in college something like, "Dostoyevsky never hesitates to say in fifty words what could be said in fifteen." Roth, apparently, never hesitates to say in 400 leaden pages what could be said in 50. Here, then, is the plot of the book. I went ahead and lopped off the superfluous 113-page first act (think frame story with no end frame).
Swede Levov is a Jewish kid in New Jersey in the 40s and he is good at football. He becomes a marine, eventually marries Miss New Jersey (a Catholic), inherits his father's glove factory, becomes rich. Swede has a daughter who stutters and eventually blows up a general store as a means of protesting the Viet Nam war, killing one person and later killing three others in a separate explosion. The daughter then becomes a Jain and wears a mask over her face and lives in filth. Later on, some new characters are introduced into the story and we find out Swede's wife is cheating on him, that he had an affair, et cetera. Therefore, the concept of the American Pastoral is a myth. The end.
Seriously, fuck this book. It's everything I hate about literature and nothing I like about it. That this book won the Pulitzer prize boggles the mind. That it won the Pulitzer prize when contemporary winners include works such as The Hours, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Empire Falls, and most recently, The Road makes me wonder just who Philip Roth has nude photos of.
"However, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hill roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's an n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-colored wild mustard sturdily spilling over the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlasting wind."
I see that I now only have a little over 2200 characters left to finish this review. I once wrote in a paper in college something like, "Dostoyevsky never hesitates to say in fifty words what could be said in fifteen." Roth, apparently, never hesitates to say in 400 leaden pages what could be said in 50. Here, then, is the plot of the book. I went ahead and lopped off the superfluous 113-page first act (think frame story with no end frame).
Swede Levov is a Jewish kid in New Jersey in the 40s and he is good at football. He becomes a marine, eventually marries Miss New Jersey (a Catholic), inherits his father's glove factory, becomes rich. Swede has a daughter who stutters and eventually blows up a general store as a means of protesting the Viet Nam war, killing one person and later killing three others in a separate explosion. The daughter then becomes a Jain and wears a mask over her face and lives in filth. Later on, some new characters are introduced into the story and we find out Swede's wife is cheating on him, that he had an affair, et cetera. Therefore, the concept of the American Pastoral is a myth. The end.
Seriously, fuck this book. It's everything I hate about literature and nothing I like about it. That this book won the Pulitzer prize boggles the mind. That it won the Pulitzer prize when contemporary winners include works such as The Hours, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Empire Falls, and most recently, The Road makes me wonder just who Philip Roth has nude photos of.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 6, 2018
Διαβάζοντας την τελευταία σελίδα νόμιζα ότι είχα διαβάσει 3,000 και ήθελα ακόμα 1,000. Η ανάγνωση έγινε αργά με πολλά διαλείμματα. Το δεύτερο μέρος (Πτώση) ήταν από τα πιο απολαυστικά σημεία της λογοτεχνίας που έχω συνολικά διαβάσει.
Η πλοκή του έργου μου θύμισε λιγάκι Πύντσον, λόγω της χαρακτηριστικής του τεχνικής, της εντροπίας. Ο αφηγητής συναντάει μετά από πολλά χρόνια τον παλιό του συμμαθητή, για τον οποίο είχε δημιουργήσει μια τέλεια εικόνα της ζωής του. Κάπου εκεί αρχίζει η απομυθοποίηση σε σημείο αρχαίας τραγωδίας. Είναι η συντριβή του American Dream, είναι η ειρωνεία της ζωής, είναι αυτό που θέλουμε να βλέπουμε παντού γύρω μας αλλά κάνουμε τόσο λάθος.
Στο δεύτερο μέρος που είναι και το καλύτερο από τα τρία, έχουμε ένα εξαιρετικό ψυχογράφημα των χαρακτήρων μιας αμερικανικής οικογένειας, αντάξιο του Ντοστογιέφσκι. Σ’ αυτό ακριβώς το σημείο η γραφή είναι πολύ πυκνή και γεμάτη ουσία, λες και διάβαζα Pessoa.
Όντας το δεύτερο μυθιστόρημα του Roth που διάβαζα, η σύγκριση με το Σύνδρομο του Πορτνόι ήταν αναπόφευκτη. Τα δύο βιβλία έχουν μεταξύ τους μια χρονική διαφορά 30 χρόνων κάτι το οποίο φαίνεται ξεκάθαρα από την ωριμότητα του συγγραφέα. Το προηγούμενο δεν με είχε ικανοποιήσει, ενώ αυτό με εντυπωσίασε. Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι έχω μέλλον με τον Ροθ.
Η πλοκή του έργου μου θύμισε λιγάκι Πύντσον, λόγω της χαρακτηριστικής του τεχνικής, της εντροπίας. Ο αφηγητής συναντάει μετά από πολλά χρόνια τον παλιό του συμμαθητή, για τον οποίο είχε δημιουργήσει μια τέλεια εικόνα της ζωής του. Κάπου εκεί αρχίζει η απομυθοποίηση σε σημείο αρχαίας τραγωδίας. Είναι η συντριβή του American Dream, είναι η ειρωνεία της ζωής, είναι αυτό που θέλουμε να βλέπουμε παντού γύρω μας αλλά κάνουμε τόσο λάθος.
Στο δεύτερο μέρος που είναι και το καλύτερο από τα τρία, έχουμε ένα εξαιρετικό ψυχογράφημα των χαρακτήρων μιας αμερικανικής οικογένειας, αντάξιο του Ντοστογιέφσκι. Σ’ αυτό ακριβώς το σημείο η γραφή είναι πολύ πυκνή και γεμάτη ουσία, λες και διάβαζα Pessoa.
Όντας το δεύτερο μυθιστόρημα του Roth που διάβαζα, η σύγκριση με το Σύνδρομο του Πορτνόι ήταν αναπόφευκτη. Τα δύο βιβλία έχουν μεταξύ τους μια χρονική διαφορά 30 χρόνων κάτι το οποίο φαίνεται ξεκάθαρα από την ωριμότητα του συγγραφέα. Το προηγούμενο δεν με είχε ικανοποιήσει, ενώ αυτό με εντυπωσίασε. Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι έχω μέλλον με τον Ροθ.
October 7, 2023
Who’s writing like this now? I don’t mean who’s the most esteemed or problematic or best or most “important,” whatever any of that means. But who, today, is writing circles around the rest of us? Whose mastery of the English language is so overwhelming that every page astonishes on that basis alone, never mind all those niggling themes?
Roth’s words sizzle and sing, never slow down, race forward, trembling with life, and within that irresistible momentum, it is as if he can do anything, take you anywhere, bury the truth or shout it, bury the past or live it, bury the future or make it. Time is putty in his hands. He says the maddest things, the funniest things, the most preposterous, horrifying, real, unreal things. Is this the story of white America in the 20th century? Or is it a preposterous farce, totally detached from reality?
Merry, the young woman at the novel’s heart, is not a real person, not a flesh and blood human being. No lesser writer could possibly have recovered from that—that decision. The Swede, our protagonist, is not a real human being either. This fact is broadcast loud and clear from page one, and fooling you into forgetting it is one of Roth's most staggering tricks. These characters are not symbols either, not generations personified—although Roth toys with that possibility, like a cat batting around a mouse it doesn't intend to eat. So what are we dealing with here? Anxieties personified? Phantoms of Americas past? Not real people, but reality made flesh? And then suddenly there they are, human beings! How wrong I was to doubt! Foolish, ridiculous, ungainly human beings. Astonishingly, Roth can more or less accomplish this—whatever this is—with any old side character in half a page. Astonishingly, what you think is a scene turns out to be nothing but incoherent ranting; then, what appears to be an incoherent rant turns out to be scene, vivid as technicolor.
Roth’s words sizzle and sing, never slow down, race forward, trembling with life, and within that irresistible momentum, it is as if he can do anything, take you anywhere, bury the truth or shout it, bury the past or live it, bury the future or make it. Time is putty in his hands. He says the maddest things, the funniest things, the most preposterous, horrifying, real, unreal things. Is this the story of white America in the 20th century? Or is it a preposterous farce, totally detached from reality?
Merry, the young woman at the novel’s heart, is not a real person, not a flesh and blood human being. No lesser writer could possibly have recovered from that—that decision. The Swede, our protagonist, is not a real human being either. This fact is broadcast loud and clear from page one, and fooling you into forgetting it is one of Roth's most staggering tricks. These characters are not symbols either, not generations personified—although Roth toys with that possibility, like a cat batting around a mouse it doesn't intend to eat. So what are we dealing with here? Anxieties personified? Phantoms of Americas past? Not real people, but reality made flesh? And then suddenly there they are, human beings! How wrong I was to doubt! Foolish, ridiculous, ungainly human beings. Astonishingly, Roth can more or less accomplish this—whatever this is—with any old side character in half a page. Astonishingly, what you think is a scene turns out to be nothing but incoherent ranting; then, what appears to be an incoherent rant turns out to be scene, vivid as technicolor.
September 7, 2021
"Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire bene la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la vita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati."
Eccellente. Letteratura nella sua forma più pura. La narrazione è dura, ma intensa. Devi rileggerlo, viverlo.
Si riesce a distinguere come scorrono le parole, come occupano il proprio posto nella prosa. Ogni frase è necessaria per scoprire la visione devastante di una società.
Roth è uno dei miei autori preferiti e un riferimento immediato alla letteratura statunitense, esplora molti temi della storia del suo paese e mantiene uno stile rivoluzionario.
In questo libro è Zuckerman (su alter ego) il personaggio che ascolta e narra dettagliatamente con alcuni dati certi ma in gran parte ricreando passaggi immaginati la storia di Seymour Levov, lo Svedese, soprattutto inserendo nel racconto il costumbrismo tipico dell'autore dall'umile mondo che conosce, il mondo della comunità ebraica della sua amata Newark del New Jersey, negli Stati Uniti. Nonostante ciò, i loro eroi sono contraddizioni di questa comunità (i tratti fisici dello svedese e gli atteggiamenti di Nathan Zuckerman) che a volte cercano di abbandonare persino la religione.
Il libro affronta la crisi sociale e politica negli Stati Uniti con la guerra del Vietnam e in seguito la lotta per i diritti civili, la rivoluzione sessuale, la rivolta di Newark del 1967 e lo scandalo Watergate. Uno di questi avvenimenti storici mette anche la famiglia Levov nel centro della Storia, dato dall'attacco terroristico commesso dalla figlia dello svedese, "quel mostro di Merry", che poi scompare.
La prima parte, chiamata "Paradiso ricordato" e molto divertente e ricca nella presentazione dei personaggi, la seconda parte "La caduta" è più piatta e stancante, per finire, la terza e ultima parte "Paradiso perduto" è una lunga cena a casa dei Levov con tanti flashback, molto potente.
Pochi scrittori sono riusciti a cogliere le contraddizioni della società americana*, e non solo americana*, nella seconda metà del ventesimo secolo.
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*: dove dice "americano" vuol dire Nordamericano o statunitense, oddio usare l'aggettivo "americano" per far riferimento a un nativo degli Stati Uniti, come si fa comunemente qui in Italia, giacché anch'io sono AMERICANO, ma ben lontano di essere degli Stati Uniti, comunque, si capisce, è solo un mio sfogo ricorrente al sentirmi escluso di una comunità che mi appartiene (quella di tutti gli americani, parafrasando George Orwell possiamo concludere che "Tutti gli Americani sono uguali, ma alcuni sono più uguali di altri" ;).
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November 9, 2018
Everyone knows just how completely mad I am for “The Human Stain.” I think it really is one of the most brilliant books of all time—seriously. Roth is famous for his prose, for his lengthy sentences which in turn become lengthy paragraphs. The Pulitzer Prize was given prematurely in this instance, for "American Pastoral" has just an ounce of the brilliance of his later work (which still won awards, though not THAT one). This one is unnecessarily long because it deals with one central event, with the destruction of everyman (American Everyman) Swede Levlov. I’ve always said somethin like
“The straight life... is full of strife.”
(Stupid notion undoubtedly.) An it’s true: Because he falls for all the traps that countless other hetero pro-family, pro-Americana twerps fall for, we see the horrible descent, which is particularly awesome. Roth has the audacity to make so many statements about U.S. pre-911 that he could considerably be called a literary apostle. Few writers have the balls to go so deep into history, to correlate it to one particular instance of being “wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk” (John Updike in his Rabbit novels, for instance, does something similar to this).
Confident, adult, and perhaps too sophisticated—this is what Rothianites like me simply cannot get enough of. (So you may imagine my shocker to realize that "Nemesis" is his official last novel!)
“The straight life... is full of strife.”
(Stupid notion undoubtedly.) An it’s true: Because he falls for all the traps that countless other hetero pro-family, pro-Americana twerps fall for, we see the horrible descent, which is particularly awesome. Roth has the audacity to make so many statements about U.S. pre-911 that he could considerably be called a literary apostle. Few writers have the balls to go so deep into history, to correlate it to one particular instance of being “wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk” (John Updike in his Rabbit novels, for instance, does something similar to this).
Confident, adult, and perhaps too sophisticated—this is what Rothianites like me simply cannot get enough of. (So you may imagine my shocker to realize that "Nemesis" is his official last novel!)
April 13, 2016
Should be a five star book and would have been with a good editor. As it stands Roth’s self-pleasuring digressions, his pedantic cataloging of sideshow detail kept spoiling it for me. Still a brilliant achievement but there were times when I wished Saul Bellow had written it.
March 8, 2016
I read an article about a year ago that supposedly describes Philip Roth’s rituals every time they announce a new Nobel Prize winner for Literature. It allegedly goes something like every year he travels to his agent’s office in New York awaiting the precious call. And every year it doesn’t come so he goes back home to Connecticut with his head down. This is all merely gossip, but I think that if this were true, it really reflects the attitude of what many people say is his magnum opus.
This is a self-conscious book. What do I mean by that? This novel was not merely a form of expression or story telling, there are passages here that seem very self-aware of their greatness. Little monologues to give social commentary and pseudo intellectual critique. Sometimes they work, but there were times they stifled the life out of the novel. After a while you begin to suspect that these characters are not characters anymore but mouthpieces for an award-giving body.
Is this a bad thing though? Not necessarily. There are certain books that are too heavy handed with it, but most books that matter have a degree of self-awareness to them. It’s usually balancing the agenda with the complexity of characterization and story telling that matters. And when done right, the self-awareness is rendered invisible. Although, in my opinion, the best kinds of books are those written without any pretensions.
In the field literature, there exists that crazy phenomenon when self-consciousness would translate into self-confidence and that confidence can goad an author to take extremely ambitious risks. And in this instance, the risks paid off. This novel has moments when I thought I was reading out of a DeLillo novel. I’m not comparing the two, nor knocking on one of them. I’m merely stating that here Roth achieves such an advanced degree of self-awareness that it could be called self-mastery. He digs inside his ego and sees his fears, and in them he unearths a voice that scares us all.
What is wrong with my way of life? This is a question you might not have asked yourself, but probably will if you choose to or have read this book. If you’re an upper middle-class, decently educated person, and you probably are since you can afford to waste so much time between books and this site, then you are like the rest of the Levovs. You love the norms and the absolutes you are used to and comfortable with. But sometimes people like Merry appear, a little too idealistic, susceptible to propaganda and driven by their craving for needed change. There are also those intellectuals sitting atop their little ivory towers and fancy armchairs too high to be bothered with anything tangible. And there are nobs that just like money and nothing else. Point is, people are different. We all think we’re right, and people all want to flush their beliefs down each other’s throats. That’s what postmodernism is now. Religion, political preference, race, gender, sports, brands, paper vs e-books, name it, all these cause conflict. America the great is a land of unlimited opportunities, but with unlimited opportunities came the price of unlimited threats, threats to your way of life, threats to your family. And now this isn’t just an American issue anymore with the onset of globalization, this is now a relevant issue anywhere. The time when nations went to war is over, the individual battles, idea against belief, are now being fought. As a species, our issues are now looking to be more and more self-centric. Let this remind you to keep your family close and keep a wary eye cause every who’s not you is out to get you. Well, sort of.
It took me two months to read this novel. To be a little more accurate, it took me two months to read the first half of this novel and less than four hours to read the rest. This started out as a little ode to a childhood hero, turned into a romance, then a perfect little fairytale, which morphed into a parental horror story, and finally culminated in a man’s awakening to the realities around him. It’s a pretty rough read. As I said, the first half of the novel doesn’t really grab you. The initial pacing is marred by Roth’s succumbing to unnecessary grandiosity and it kills the story’s momentum. This style suited the second half, but right from the get go without the necessary foundation his monologues seem misplaced. But when you get to the dinner party, and his characters start to actually feel alive, it surprised me. At its best this is up there among the great American novels. Yes, it sort of sputtered initially and this is where, I think, many people write it off. But endure the shaky takeoff and some early turbulence; this can take you to great heights.
This is a self-conscious book. What do I mean by that? This novel was not merely a form of expression or story telling, there are passages here that seem very self-aware of their greatness. Little monologues to give social commentary and pseudo intellectual critique. Sometimes they work, but there were times they stifled the life out of the novel. After a while you begin to suspect that these characters are not characters anymore but mouthpieces for an award-giving body.
Is this a bad thing though? Not necessarily. There are certain books that are too heavy handed with it, but most books that matter have a degree of self-awareness to them. It’s usually balancing the agenda with the complexity of characterization and story telling that matters. And when done right, the self-awareness is rendered invisible. Although, in my opinion, the best kinds of books are those written without any pretensions.
In the field literature, there exists that crazy phenomenon when self-consciousness would translate into self-confidence and that confidence can goad an author to take extremely ambitious risks. And in this instance, the risks paid off. This novel has moments when I thought I was reading out of a DeLillo novel. I’m not comparing the two, nor knocking on one of them. I’m merely stating that here Roth achieves such an advanced degree of self-awareness that it could be called self-mastery. He digs inside his ego and sees his fears, and in them he unearths a voice that scares us all.
What is wrong with my way of life? This is a question you might not have asked yourself, but probably will if you choose to or have read this book. If you’re an upper middle-class, decently educated person, and you probably are since you can afford to waste so much time between books and this site, then you are like the rest of the Levovs. You love the norms and the absolutes you are used to and comfortable with. But sometimes people like Merry appear, a little too idealistic, susceptible to propaganda and driven by their craving for needed change. There are also those intellectuals sitting atop their little ivory towers and fancy armchairs too high to be bothered with anything tangible. And there are nobs that just like money and nothing else. Point is, people are different. We all think we’re right, and people all want to flush their beliefs down each other’s throats. That’s what postmodernism is now. Religion, political preference, race, gender, sports, brands, paper vs e-books, name it, all these cause conflict. America the great is a land of unlimited opportunities, but with unlimited opportunities came the price of unlimited threats, threats to your way of life, threats to your family. And now this isn’t just an American issue anymore with the onset of globalization, this is now a relevant issue anywhere. The time when nations went to war is over, the individual battles, idea against belief, are now being fought. As a species, our issues are now looking to be more and more self-centric. Let this remind you to keep your family close and keep a wary eye cause every who’s not you is out to get you. Well, sort of.
It took me two months to read this novel. To be a little more accurate, it took me two months to read the first half of this novel and less than four hours to read the rest. This started out as a little ode to a childhood hero, turned into a romance, then a perfect little fairytale, which morphed into a parental horror story, and finally culminated in a man’s awakening to the realities around him. It’s a pretty rough read. As I said, the first half of the novel doesn’t really grab you. The initial pacing is marred by Roth’s succumbing to unnecessary grandiosity and it kills the story’s momentum. This style suited the second half, but right from the get go without the necessary foundation his monologues seem misplaced. But when you get to the dinner party, and his characters start to actually feel alive, it surprised me. At its best this is up there among the great American novels. Yes, it sort of sputtered initially and this is where, I think, many people write it off. But endure the shaky takeoff and some early turbulence; this can take you to great heights.
April 30, 2023
E' il primo libro di Philip Roth che leggo e di sicuro non sarà l'ultimo.
Il romanzo ha una struttura narrativa basata su flashback dentro flasback, che a volte rendono difficoltosa la lettura, ma mai pesante nè noiosa.
Una scrittura meravigliosa, nella quale neppure una parola è inappropriata né un pensiero ridondante.
La storia è narrata dallo scrittore Nathan Zuckerman, "alter ego" di Roth, che nel 1995 incontra un suo vecchio compagno di scuola, Seymour Levov detto lo Svedese, un ebreo americano. Importante è la puntualizzazione della religione dello Svedese, perchè la tematica religiosa è presente sempre ed ovunque nel racconto.
Da qui comincia la ricostruzione della storia di quest'uomo, con continui passaggi dalla terza alla prima persona, a significare la "incarnazione" dello scrittore con il suo personaggio e con lo stesso Roth.
Lo Svedese è la personificazione del "sogno americano": bello, ricco, sportivo, figlio amatissimo ed ubbidiente dei genitori, marito innamorato di una ragazza di famiglia irlandese cattolicissima che fu Miss New Jersey nel 1959, padre affettuoso di una bimba, Merry.
La sua vita è volta ad "accontentare la gente". Come gli rinfaccerà spietatamente il fratello Jerry, lo Svedese è "quello che è sempre lì a cercare di minimizzare le cose. Sempre lì che si sforza di essere di essere moderato. Mai dire la verità, se credi che possa ferire i sentimenti di qualcuno. Sempre pronto ai compromessi... Il ragazzo che non viola mai le regole...".
Un evento sconvolge l'esistenza dello Svedesee della sua famiglia: la sua adorata Merry, a sedici anni, nel 1968, diventa una terrorista e uccide 4 persone. La rivolta della figlia contro il conformismo del padre, che si realizza non solo con gli atti terroristici, ma con una vita di stenti e di violenze fisiche e psicologiche, porta come conseguenza la distruzione totale della famiglia dello Svedese.
"Tre generazioni. Tutte avevano fatto dei passi avanti. Quella che aveva lavorato. Quella che aveva risparmiato. Quella che aveva sfondato. Tre generazioni innamorate dell'America. Tre generazioni che volevano integrarsi con la gente che vi avevano trovato. E ora, con la quarta, tutto era finito in niente. La completa vandalizzazione del loro mondo."
Tutto il romanzo è costruito sul tentativo di dare una spiegazione all'accaduto: come può una famiglia americana per bene generare un'assassina?
Ma la conclusione è che la spiegazione non c'è e il lettore è lasciato libero nel propendere per l'una o l'altra motivazione senza venire a capo della verità.
Questo è quello che mi ha maggiormente affascinato nel libro.
"Avevano allevato una figlia che non era nè cattolica nè ebrea, che era stata prima una balbuziente, poi un'assassina, poi una giaina. Per tutta la vita lui si era sforzato di non fare mai cose sbagliate, e quello che aveva fatto era questo. Tutti gli sbagli che si era trattenuto dal fare, che aveva seppellito più profondamente che poteva, erano venuti alla luce comunque, solo perchè una ragazza era bella".
Questa è la spiegazione che mi sono data dell'accaduto.
Ma è un libro talmente denso di riflessioni e di contenuti che il commento che ho scritto mi sembra inappropriato. Consiglio solo di leggerlo.
Il romanzo ha una struttura narrativa basata su flashback dentro flasback, che a volte rendono difficoltosa la lettura, ma mai pesante nè noiosa.
Una scrittura meravigliosa, nella quale neppure una parola è inappropriata né un pensiero ridondante.
La storia è narrata dallo scrittore Nathan Zuckerman, "alter ego" di Roth, che nel 1995 incontra un suo vecchio compagno di scuola, Seymour Levov detto lo Svedese, un ebreo americano. Importante è la puntualizzazione della religione dello Svedese, perchè la tematica religiosa è presente sempre ed ovunque nel racconto.
Da qui comincia la ricostruzione della storia di quest'uomo, con continui passaggi dalla terza alla prima persona, a significare la "incarnazione" dello scrittore con il suo personaggio e con lo stesso Roth.
Lo Svedese è la personificazione del "sogno americano": bello, ricco, sportivo, figlio amatissimo ed ubbidiente dei genitori, marito innamorato di una ragazza di famiglia irlandese cattolicissima che fu Miss New Jersey nel 1959, padre affettuoso di una bimba, Merry.
La sua vita è volta ad "accontentare la gente". Come gli rinfaccerà spietatamente il fratello Jerry, lo Svedese è "quello che è sempre lì a cercare di minimizzare le cose. Sempre lì che si sforza di essere di essere moderato. Mai dire la verità, se credi che possa ferire i sentimenti di qualcuno. Sempre pronto ai compromessi... Il ragazzo che non viola mai le regole...".
Un evento sconvolge l'esistenza dello Svedesee della sua famiglia: la sua adorata Merry, a sedici anni, nel 1968, diventa una terrorista e uccide 4 persone. La rivolta della figlia contro il conformismo del padre, che si realizza non solo con gli atti terroristici, ma con una vita di stenti e di violenze fisiche e psicologiche, porta come conseguenza la distruzione totale della famiglia dello Svedese.
"Tre generazioni. Tutte avevano fatto dei passi avanti. Quella che aveva lavorato. Quella che aveva risparmiato. Quella che aveva sfondato. Tre generazioni innamorate dell'America. Tre generazioni che volevano integrarsi con la gente che vi avevano trovato. E ora, con la quarta, tutto era finito in niente. La completa vandalizzazione del loro mondo."
Tutto il romanzo è costruito sul tentativo di dare una spiegazione all'accaduto: come può una famiglia americana per bene generare un'assassina?
Ma la conclusione è che la spiegazione non c'è e il lettore è lasciato libero nel propendere per l'una o l'altra motivazione senza venire a capo della verità.
Questo è quello che mi ha maggiormente affascinato nel libro.
"Avevano allevato una figlia che non era nè cattolica nè ebrea, che era stata prima una balbuziente, poi un'assassina, poi una giaina. Per tutta la vita lui si era sforzato di non fare mai cose sbagliate, e quello che aveva fatto era questo. Tutti gli sbagli che si era trattenuto dal fare, che aveva seppellito più profondamente che poteva, erano venuti alla luce comunque, solo perchè una ragazza era bella".
Questa è la spiegazione che mi sono data dell'accaduto.
Ma è un libro talmente denso di riflessioni e di contenuti che il commento che ho scritto mi sembra inappropriato. Consiglio solo di leggerlo.
March 7, 2020
La más famosa y, sin embargo, la que menos me gustó de la trilogía.
August 11, 2015
Cosa c'è da aggiungere se non questo?
"Come penetrare nell'intimo della gente? Era una dote o una capacità che non possedeva. Non aveva, semplicemente, la combinazione di quella serratura. Prendeva per buono chi lanciava i segnali della bontà. Prendeva per leale chi lanciava i segnali della lealtà. Prendeva per intelligente chi lanciava i segnali dell'intelligenza. E fino a quel momento non era riuscito a vedere dentro sua figlia, non era riuscito a vedere dentro sua moglie, non era riuscito a vedere dentro la sua unica amante: forse non aveva neppure cominciato a vedere dentro di sé. Cos'era, lui, spogliato di tutti i segnali che lanciava? La gente, dappertutto, si alzava in piedi urlando: - Questa persona sono io! Questa persona sono io! - Ogni volta che li guardavi si alzavano e ti dicevano chi erano, e la verità era che non avevano, non più di quanto l'avesse lui, la minima idea di chi o che cosa fossero. Credevano anche loro ai segnali che lanciavano. Avrebbero dovuto alzarsi e gridare: - Questa persona non sono io! Questa persona non sono io! - L'avrebbero fatto, se non avessero avuto un minimo di pudore. - Questa persona non sono io! - Allora forse avresti saputo come procedere tra quei segnali, tra le innumerevoli stronzate di questo mondo".
"Come penetrare nell'intimo della gente? Era una dote o una capacità che non possedeva. Non aveva, semplicemente, la combinazione di quella serratura. Prendeva per buono chi lanciava i segnali della bontà. Prendeva per leale chi lanciava i segnali della lealtà. Prendeva per intelligente chi lanciava i segnali dell'intelligenza. E fino a quel momento non era riuscito a vedere dentro sua figlia, non era riuscito a vedere dentro sua moglie, non era riuscito a vedere dentro la sua unica amante: forse non aveva neppure cominciato a vedere dentro di sé. Cos'era, lui, spogliato di tutti i segnali che lanciava? La gente, dappertutto, si alzava in piedi urlando: - Questa persona sono io! Questa persona sono io! - Ogni volta che li guardavi si alzavano e ti dicevano chi erano, e la verità era che non avevano, non più di quanto l'avesse lui, la minima idea di chi o che cosa fossero. Credevano anche loro ai segnali che lanciavano. Avrebbero dovuto alzarsi e gridare: - Questa persona non sono io! Questa persona non sono io! - L'avrebbero fatto, se non avessero avuto un minimo di pudore. - Questa persona non sono io! - Allora forse avresti saputo come procedere tra quei segnali, tra le innumerevoli stronzate di questo mondo".
March 12, 2021
Μοναδικός Ροθ, για ακόμα μία φορά.
Ο Ροθ είναι από τους συγγραφείς που σέβομαι. Αν τον είχα μπροστά μου αυτό θα του έλεγα: RESPECT. Συμπαθώ την εβραϊκότητά του, προεξέχον πάντα θέμα, αγαπώ το alter ego του Νέιθαν Ζούκερμαν, συγγραφέα μεσήλικα πια με πολλά κουσούρια, γοητεύομαι από τη σοβαρότητα που αποπνέει στα βιβλία του, το λεπτό χιούμορ και τον αυτοσαρκασμό του, κερδίζει πάντα όλη την προσοχή μου από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος.
Το διάλυμα των βιβλίων του Ροθ έχει συγκεκριμένες ιδιότητες: οι αναμνήσεις αναμιγνύονται με το ιστορικό και πολιτικό φόντο της μεταπολεμικής Αμερικής, η γοητεία του αφηγήματός του με ως επίκεντρο την εφαρμοσμένη ή μη εβραϊκότητα και την καρικατούρα της, οι ψυχογραφικές λεπτομέρειες που δίνουν σταδιακά το ιδιοσυγκρασιακό στίγμα των χαρακτήρων, όλα αυτά είναι καλά μελετημένα, όλα αυτά υφέρπουν για να επιπλεύσει τελικά στην επιφάνεια κάτι, ένα αποτέλεσμα, μια αίσθηση, ένα κατακάθι που μένει τελικά στον αναγνώστη και το κουβαλά ως «εμπειρία Ροθ» ή και «στίγμα Ροθ». Αισθάνομαι ότι πρέπει να το πω έτσι: κοντολογίς, δε γράφει μαλακίες.
Στη γενέτειρα πόλη του Ροθ, το Νιούαρκ, τόπος-δορυφόρος στα βιβλία του, διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία της εβραϊκής οικογένειας των Λιβόβ. Η κηλίδα, το στίγμα (έχουμε και εδώ ένα είδος στίγματος όπως στο Ανθρώπινο στίγμα) έρχεται προειδοποιητικά με τη μορφή του τραυλίσματος της κόρης του Σίμουρ Λιβόβ, ενός καθόλα κανονικού, ήρεμου, πετυχημένου, «Άριου» θα λέγαμε ανθρώπου που ζει μια ζωή νομότυπη και μη συγκρουσιακή.
Η ουτοπία μιας ορθολογικής κανονικής ζωής στην Αμερική στηλιτεύεται, η ανηθικότητα α��τιπαρέρχεται την πολιτική ορθότητα του αμερικανικού ονείρου, ο κομφορμισμός της άψογης αμερικανικής ζωής δέχεται το μεγαλύτερο χτύπημα από την κόρη-θύτη, την κόρη-κριτή και δράστη.
Η κηλίδα αυτή μεταλάσσεται σε κάτι πιο άγριο, στον φόνο ανθρώπων στα πλαίσια της εξεγερτικής ιδιοσυγκρασίας της κόρης – εν προκειμένω κατά του πολέμου του Βιετνάμ –, και μαρκάρει, κηλιδώνει το αμερικανικό ιδανικό, λαβώνει την εκτεθειμένη αχίλλειο πτέρνα του και αρχίζει να απλώνεται σαν σταγόνα που διαγράφει ομόκεντρους κύκλους σε ατάραχα νερά. Απλώνεται διαταράσσοντας την υπνωτιστική κανονικότητα του Αμερικανικού Ονείρου. Αυτό είναι και το αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο, που αναπαρίσταται τέλεια στην καταληκτική σκηνή, σε ένα φινάλε τόσο θεατράλε, που αφήνει τον αναγνώστη έμπλεο ανάμικτων συναισθημάτων να αποφασίσει μόνος του, να λύσει τις απορίες του μόνος του, να σκεφτεί μόνος του τι διάολο έφταιξε; Τι μπορεί να έφταιξε για αυτή την απρόσμενη παρεκτροπή, για αυτήν την παρεκτροπή-ξενίστρια που έκανε έφοδο τόσο άγαρμπα για να αλλάξει τον ρου της φυσιολογικότητας ανά τις γενιές.
Το Αμερικανικό Ειδύλλιο είναι τελικά ένα μορατόριουμ –κατά τον Ροθ–, μια αναστολή, μια ρηγμάτωση, ένα κενό ανάμεσα, για να διερευνήσει κανείς τη διαφορετικότητα, την ανοχή, τον συγκερασμό δυο ή και περισσότερων κόσμων (εδώ με θρησκευτική απόχρωση), την αντίληψη της πραγματικότητας που είναι πολύ προσωπική υπόθεση. Μια ανακωχή μεταξύ διαφορετικών θεωρήσεων για να πάρει ο καθένας τον χρόνο και τον χώρο του να ανασάνει, για να ξαναμπουκώσει στην επόμενη διάψευση.
Τι μας είπε τελικά ο Ροθ σε αυτό το βιβλίο; Γύρω από ένα αδιάφορο φαινομενικά οικογενειακό πορτραίτο, έπλεξε το εγκώμιο και την ίδια στιγμή ξετύλιξε την πλάνη που βρίσκεται μέσα από το περιτύλιγμα του αμέρικαν ντριμ. Όλα ήταν τόσο σωστά, τόσο στη θέση τους. Αν όμως πέσει ένα κομμάτι του ντόμινο σε μια παρέκκλιση, τίποτα πια δε μένει όρθιο.
*Ειδική μνεία στο χιούμορ του Ροθ∙ το σημείο διαπραγματεύσεων του πατέρα του Σίμουρ, Λου Λιβόβ, με την υποψήφια νύφη του Ντόουν, (καθολική, ωιμέ!), για την προ-συμφωνία περί θρησκευτικής ανατροφής των μελλοντικών εγγονιών του ήταν για να γελάς μέχρι δακρύων. («Θα προτιμούσα να μην αφήσω το παιδί ν’ αποφασίσει, Ντόουν. Θα προτιμούσα ν’ αποφασίσω εγώ. Δεν θέλω ν’ αφήσω ένα παιδί ν’ αποφασίσει αν θα φάει Ιησού [για τη θεία κοινωνία]. Λυπάμαι. Αυτό αποκλείεται. Κοίτα τι θα κάνω για σένα. Θα σου δώσω το βάπτισμα. Μόνο αυτό μπορώ να κάνω.)
Ο Ροθ είναι από τους συγγραφείς που σέβομαι. Αν τον είχα μπροστά μου αυτό θα του έλεγα: RESPECT. Συμπαθώ την εβραϊκότητά του, προεξέχον πάντα θέμα, αγαπώ το alter ego του Νέιθαν Ζούκερμαν, συγγραφέα μεσήλικα πια με πολλά κουσούρια, γοητεύομαι από τη σοβαρότητα που αποπνέει στα βιβλία του, το λεπτό χιούμορ και τον αυτοσαρκασμό του, κερδίζει πάντα όλη την προσοχή μου από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος.
Το διάλυμα των βιβλίων του Ροθ έχει συγκεκριμένες ιδιότητες: οι αναμνήσεις αναμιγνύονται με το ιστορικό και πολιτικό φόντο της μεταπολεμικής Αμερικής, η γοητεία του αφηγήματός του με ως επίκεντρο την εφαρμοσμένη ή μη εβραϊκότητα και την καρικατούρα της, οι ψυχογραφικές λεπτομέρειες που δίνουν σταδιακά το ιδιοσυγκρασιακό στίγμα των χαρακτήρων, όλα αυτά είναι καλά μελετημένα, όλα αυτά υφέρπουν για να επιπλεύσει τελικά στην επιφάνεια κάτι, ένα αποτέλεσμα, μια αίσθηση, ένα κατακάθι που μένει τελικά στον αναγνώστη και το κουβαλά ως «εμπειρία Ροθ» ή και «στίγμα Ροθ». Αισθάνομαι ότι πρέπει να το πω έτσι: κοντολογίς, δε γράφει μαλακίες.
Στη γενέτειρα πόλη του Ροθ, το Νιούαρκ, τόπος-δορυφόρος στα βιβλία του, διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία της εβραϊκής οικογένειας των Λιβόβ. Η κηλίδα, το στίγμα (έχουμε και εδώ ένα είδος στίγματος όπως στο Ανθρώπινο στίγμα) έρχεται προειδοποιητικά με τη μορφή του τραυλίσματος της κόρης του Σίμουρ Λιβόβ, ενός καθόλα κανονικού, ήρεμου, πετυχημένου, «Άριου» θα λέγαμε ανθρώπου που ζει μια ζωή νομότυπη και μη συγκρουσιακή.
Η ουτοπία μιας ορθολογικής κανονικής ζωής στην Αμερική στηλιτεύεται, η ανηθικότητα α��τιπαρέρχεται την πολιτική ορθότητα του αμερικανικού ονείρου, ο κομφορμισμός της άψογης αμερικανικής ζωής δέχεται το μεγαλύτερο χτύπημα από την κόρη-θύτη, την κόρη-κριτή και δράστη.
Η κηλίδα αυτή μεταλάσσεται σε κάτι πιο άγριο, στον φόνο ανθρώπων στα πλαίσια της εξεγερτικής ιδιοσυγκρασίας της κόρης – εν προκειμένω κατά του πολέμου του Βιετνάμ –, και μαρκάρει, κηλιδώνει το αμερικανικό ιδανικό, λαβώνει την εκτεθειμένη αχίλλειο πτέρνα του και αρχίζει να απλώνεται σαν σταγόνα που διαγράφει ομόκεντρους κύκλους σε ατάραχα νερά. Απλώνεται διαταράσσοντας την υπνωτιστική κανονικότητα του Αμερικανικού Ονείρου. Αυτό είναι και το αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο, που αναπαρίσταται τέλεια στην καταληκτική σκηνή, σε ένα φινάλε τόσο θεατράλε, που αφήνει τον αναγνώστη έμπλεο ανάμικτων συναισθημάτων να αποφασίσει μόνος του, να λύσει τις απορίες του μόνος του, να σκεφτεί μόνος του τι διάολο έφταιξε; Τι μπορεί να έφταιξε για αυτή την απρόσμενη παρεκτροπή, για αυτήν την παρεκτροπή-ξενίστρια που έκανε έφοδο τόσο άγαρμπα για να αλλάξει τον ρου της φυσιολογικότητας ανά τις γενιές.
Το Αμερικανικό Ειδύλλιο είναι τελικά ένα μορατόριουμ –κατά τον Ροθ–, μια αναστολή, μια ρηγμάτωση, ένα κενό ανάμεσα, για να διερευνήσει κανείς τη διαφορετικότητα, την ανοχή, τον συγκερασμό δυο ή και περισσότερων κόσμων (εδώ με θρησκευτική απόχρωση), την αντίληψη της πραγματικότητας που είναι πολύ προσωπική υπόθεση. Μια ανακωχή μεταξύ διαφορετικών θεωρήσεων για να πάρει ο καθένας τον χρόνο και τον χώρο του να ανασάνει, για να ξαναμπουκώσει στην επόμενη διάψευση.
Τι μας είπε τελικά ο Ροθ σε αυτό το βιβλίο; Γύρω από ένα αδιάφορο φαινομενικά οικογενειακό πορτραίτο, έπλεξε το εγκώμιο και την ίδια στιγμή ξετύλιξε την πλάνη που βρίσκεται μέσα από το περιτύλιγμα του αμέρικαν ντριμ. Όλα ήταν τόσο σωστά, τόσο στη θέση τους. Αν όμως πέσει ένα κομμάτι του ντόμινο σε μια παρέκκλιση, τίποτα πια δε μένει όρθιο.
*Ειδική μνεία στο χιούμορ του Ροθ∙ το σημείο διαπραγματεύσεων του πατέρα του Σίμουρ, Λου Λιβόβ, με την υποψήφια νύφη του Ντόουν, (καθολική, ωιμέ!), για την προ-συμφωνία περί θρησκευτικής ανατροφής των μελλοντικών εγγονιών του ήταν για να γελάς μέχρι δακρύων. («Θα προτιμούσα να μην αφήσω το παιδί ν’ αποφασίσει, Ντόουν. Θα προτιμούσα ν’ αποφασίσω εγώ. Δεν θέλω ν’ αφήσω ένα παιδί ν’ αποφασίσει αν θα φάει Ιησού [για τη θεία κοινωνία]. Λυπάμαι. Αυτό αποκλείεται. Κοίτα τι θα κάνω για σένα. Θα σου δώσω το βάπτισμα. Μόνο αυτό μπορώ να κάνω.)
November 1, 2018
"Εκεί που είμαι εγώ, εκεί είναι και η Γερμανία" είχε δηλώσει χωρίς καμία διάθεση μετριοφροσύνης ο T. Mann κατά τη διάρκεια της αυτοεξορίας του. Το ίδιο μπορεί να ειπωθεί -σε έναν βαθμό ανάλογο της εποχής- και για την Αμερική του P. Roth.
Ο Εβραιο-Αμερικανός συγγραφέας στο πλούσιο έργο του ανασκάπτει τα θεμέλια της χώρας για να μιλήσει για το θέμα της ταυτότητας, όντας απόγονος μεταναστών, επίγονος ενός μοναδικού πειράματος (αυτού των ΗΠΑ) στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία. Η ανασκαφή που επιχειρεί όμως ο συγγραφέας δεν έχει τίποτα το ηρωικό, αν μη τι άλλο διότι οι ανθρώπινες κοινωνίες πόρρω απέχουν από το ιδανικό που ακόμα και οι πλέον εμπνευσμένοι (όπως ήταν οι Αμερικανοί Founding Fathers) είχαν συλλάβει στον παγκόσμιας εμβέλειας οραματισμό τους.
Εκείνο που η πένα του μεγάλου συγγραφέα ανασύρει στο "Αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο" είναι το ανθρώπινο δράμα, η εκδίκηση που παίρνει η πραγματικότητα επάνω στα όνειρα, η αδυναμία ουσιαστικής επικοινωνίας, η αγεφύρωτη ετερότητα, και τα τρομακτικά της αποτελέσματα σε ψυχές και σώματα. Αλλά και το πώς οι μυλόπετρες της Ιστορίας αλέθουν τα άτομα, πώς το προσωπικό δράμα μετατρέπεται σε ιστορικό-πολιτικό, συνεχίζοντας να στοιχειώνει τις ζωές των εμπλεκομένων που αδυνατούν να κατανοήσουν εαυτόν και αλλήλους.
Ο Roth στο εν λόγω βιβλίο συναρμόζει επιτυχώς το ατομικό με το ιστορικό, εμβαπτίζει το προσωπικό δράμα στο συλλογικό, ανατέμνοντας με περισσή ικανότητα -ενίοτε σαδιστική- το κακό στη ρίζα του. Και, στη συνέχεια, για να την καυτηριάσει, απλά θα ρίξει οκάδες το αλάτι στ�� χαίνουσα πληγή: στην οικογένεια και στον εγγενή κανιβαλισμό της, στον τελετουργικά ανθρωποφαγικό της χαρακτήρα, στην επιμελημένη της κρυψίνοια, στην "comme il faut" σχιζοφρένειά της, στο εργοστά��ιο παραγωγής ενοχών της.
Αν υπάρχει κάποιο ειδύλλιο σε αυτό το βιβλίο, λειτουργεί σίγουρα αρνητικά, καθιστώντας την προδιαγεγραμμένη κάθοδο στην κόλαση ακόμα πιο αφόρητη. Η πτώση είναι πολύ πιο επώδυνη για εκείνον που διατηρεί μια ανάμνηση του παραδείσου, ένα νοσταλγικό παρελθόν –έστω ωραιοποιημένο-, καθώς η υπόσχεση της ευτυχίας διαλύεται εμπρός του στα εξ ων συνετέθη.
Και αυτή είναι και η μόνη -απολύτως υποκειμενική- μου ένσταση. Αυτός ο Roth που αγαπώ, ο εμμονικός με την εβραϊκή, αντρική, σεξουαλική του ταυτότητα, με τους ψυχαναγκασμούς, τον αβυσσαλέο εγωκεντρισμό και τα ερεβώδη απωθημένα του, δεν έχει τόσο μεγάλη παρουσία (όση εγώ θα επιθυμούσα) σε αυτή τη σειρά των μυθιστορημάτων με ιστορικό πλαίσιο, καθώς ο συγγραφέας αμφιταλαντεύεται μεταξύ του κοινωνικο-ιστορικού και προσωπικού, επιθυμώντας να καταγράψει την απώλεια της αθωότητας του μεταπολεμικού Αμερικανού.
Παραμένω, επομένως, εσαεί λάτρης των "Θέατρο του Σάμπαθ", "Ζούκερμαν Δεσμώτης" (εκείνο το ονειρεμένο 1ο μέρος της επίσκεψης στον μέντορά του συγγραφέα -μάλλον ο Μπέλοου- και η συνομιλία τους…), "Η ζωή μου ως άντρα", "Πατρική κληρονομιά" κ.ο.κ. Σε αυτά τα έργα αφήνεται απερίσπαστος, μακριά από τις όποιες πολιτικο-κοινωνικές οχλήσεις, να κατακρεουργήσει την Αγία Οικογένεια και τις τελετουργίες της, βυθίζοντας την ακονισμένη οδοντοστοιχία τού λόγου του στο σηπόμενο σώμα της μεταπολεμικής Αμερικής (δλδ. του συνόλου του Δυτικού κόσμου), με έναν Τσεχοφικό οίστρο και διεισδυτικότητα.
Συγκεφαλαιώνοντας, το "Αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο" δεν υπολείπεται ουδόλως, μα και δεν ορρωδεί προ ουδενός, έχοντας κατακτήσει τη θέση που του αρμόζει δίπλα στους Κλασικούς, όντας κλασικό.
Ο Εβραιο-Αμερικανός συγγραφέας στο πλούσιο έργο του ανασκάπτει τα θεμέλια της χώρας για να μιλήσει για το θέμα της ταυτότητας, όντας απόγονος μεταναστών, επίγονος ενός μοναδικού πειράματος (αυτού των ΗΠΑ) στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία. Η ανασκαφή που επιχειρεί όμως ο συγγραφέας δεν έχει τίποτα το ηρωικό, αν μη τι άλλο διότι οι ανθρώπινες κοινωνίες πόρρω απέχουν από το ιδανικό που ακόμα και οι πλέον εμπνευσμένοι (όπως ήταν οι Αμερικανοί Founding Fathers) είχαν συλλάβει στον παγκόσμιας εμβέλειας οραματισμό τους.
Εκείνο που η πένα του μεγάλου συγγραφέα ανασύρει στο "Αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο" είναι το ανθρώπινο δράμα, η εκδίκηση που παίρνει η πραγματικότητα επάνω στα όνειρα, η αδυναμία ουσιαστικής επικοινωνίας, η αγεφύρωτη ετερότητα, και τα τρομακτικά της αποτελέσματα σε ψυχές και σώματα. Αλλά και το πώς οι μυλόπετρες της Ιστορίας αλέθουν τα άτομα, πώς το προσωπικό δράμα μετατρέπεται σε ιστορικό-πολιτικό, συνεχίζοντας να στοιχειώνει τις ζωές των εμπλεκομένων που αδυνατούν να κατανοήσουν εαυτόν και αλλήλους.
Ο Roth στο εν λόγω βιβλίο συναρμόζει επιτυχώς το ατομικό με το ιστορικό, εμβαπτίζει το προσωπικό δράμα στο συλλογικό, ανατέμνοντας με περισσή ικανότητα -ενίοτε σαδιστική- το κακό στη ρίζα του. Και, στη συνέχεια, για να την καυτηριάσει, απλά θα ρίξει οκάδες το αλάτι στ�� χαίνουσα πληγή: στην οικογένεια και στον εγγενή κανιβαλισμό της, στον τελετουργικά ανθρωποφαγικό της χαρακτήρα, στην επιμελημένη της κρυψίνοια, στην "comme il faut" σχιζοφρένειά της, στο εργοστά��ιο παραγωγής ενοχών της.
Αν υπάρχει κάποιο ειδύλλιο σε αυτό το βιβλίο, λειτουργεί σίγουρα αρνητικά, καθιστώντας την προδιαγεγραμμένη κάθοδο στην κόλαση ακόμα πιο αφόρητη. Η πτώση είναι πολύ πιο επώδυνη για εκείνον που διατηρεί μια ανάμνηση του παραδείσου, ένα νοσταλγικό παρελθόν –έστω ωραιοποιημένο-, καθώς η υπόσχεση της ευτυχίας διαλύεται εμπρός του στα εξ ων συνετέθη.
Και αυτή είναι και η μόνη -απολύτως υποκειμενική- μου ένσταση. Αυτός ο Roth που αγαπώ, ο εμμονικός με την εβραϊκή, αντρική, σεξουαλική του ταυτότητα, με τους ψυχαναγκασμούς, τον αβυσσαλέο εγωκεντρισμό και τα ερεβώδη απωθημένα του, δεν έχει τόσο μεγάλη παρουσία (όση εγώ θα επιθυμούσα) σε αυτή τη σειρά των μυθιστορημάτων με ιστορικό πλαίσιο, καθώς ο συγγραφέας αμφιταλαντεύεται μεταξύ του κοινωνικο-ιστορικού και προσωπικού, επιθυμώντας να καταγράψει την απώλεια της αθωότητας του μεταπολεμικού Αμερικανού.
Παραμένω, επομένως, εσαεί λάτρης των "Θέατρο του Σάμπαθ", "Ζούκερμαν Δεσμώτης" (εκείνο το ονειρεμένο 1ο μέρος της επίσκεψης στον μέντορά του συγγραφέα -μάλλον ο Μπέλοου- και η συνομιλία τους…), "Η ζωή μου ως άντρα", "Πατρική κληρονομιά" κ.ο.κ. Σε αυτά τα έργα αφήνεται απερίσπαστος, μακριά από τις όποιες πολιτικο-κοινωνικές οχλήσεις, να κατακρεουργήσει την Αγία Οικογένεια και τις τελετουργίες της, βυθίζοντας την ακονισμένη οδοντοστοιχία τού λόγου του στο σηπόμενο σώμα της μεταπολεμικής Αμερικής (δλδ. του συνόλου του Δυτικού κόσμου), με έναν Τσεχοφικό οίστρο και διεισδυτικότητα.
Συγκεφαλαιώνοντας, το "Αμερικάνικο ειδύλλιο" δεν υπολείπεται ουδόλως, μα και δεν ορρωδεί προ ουδενός, έχοντας κατακτήσει τη θέση που του αρμόζει δίπλα στους Κλασικούς, όντας κλασικό.
July 18, 2022
الجزء الأول من الثلاثية الأمريكية لفيليب روث
رواية مميزة تصور الحلم الأمريكي بين الوهم والحقيقة
التغيرات الحياتية والشخصية والاختلاف في الأفكار والقناعات بين الأجيال
في فترة ستينيات القرن الماضي المُعقدة سياسيا واجتماعيا
قرأت الرواية من شهور, وحاليا صدرت الترجمة العربية
This is one of the most brilliant novels by Philip Roth
a three generations novel, concentrated on a rupture relationship between a father and daughter at 60s in America
the father thought that he was living the postwar American dream, but on the contrary, it was a disturbed period politically and socially because of the Vietnam War and racial discrimination
the youth rebelled violently against the government and parents , including his only daughter who claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing, she ran away and had been manipulated by political groups
after years he saw the truth about the chaos beneath the American pastoral, but his life was already destroyed by his daughter and the troubled decades
good writing showing the ideological and social differences at that time
رواية مميزة تصور الحلم الأمريكي بين الوهم والحقيقة
التغيرات الحياتية والشخصية والاختلاف في الأفكار والقناعات بين الأجيال
في فترة ستينيات القرن الماضي المُعقدة سياسيا واجتماعيا
قرأت الرواية من شهور, وحاليا صدرت الترجمة العربية
This is one of the most brilliant novels by Philip Roth
a three generations novel, concentrated on a rupture relationship between a father and daughter at 60s in America
the father thought that he was living the postwar American dream, but on the contrary, it was a disturbed period politically and socially because of the Vietnam War and racial discrimination
the youth rebelled violently against the government and parents , including his only daughter who claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing, she ran away and had been manipulated by political groups
after years he saw the truth about the chaos beneath the American pastoral, but his life was already destroyed by his daughter and the troubled decades
good writing showing the ideological and social differences at that time
March 15, 2020
Un atto di coraggio, ecco, così potrei definire questo romanzo. Un atto coraggioso per una serie di ragioni, bastanti - le prime due che elencherò - ad argomentare l’asserzione: l’opera è una denuncia del falso mito americano, in primo luogo, ed è, in seconda battuta , una critica fatta da una parte debole del melting pot che compone il popolo America. La parte ebrea, una tra le tante molecole di un composto chimico non ancora ben amalgamato nonostante si sia, ai tempi di Roth - coincidenti con quelli della narrazione – alla seconda generazione, quelle di figli dei migranti che si sentono pienamente americani. È americano lo Svedese? È americano lo stesso Roth? Perché lo chiedo, perché ve lo chiedo? Partiamo dall’assoluto protagonista della narrazione, Seymour Levov, nomen omen verrebbe da dire, di facile tracciabilità: ebreo al cento per cento; e no, che fa il nostro Roth? gli appioppa una alterità, una diversità tale che già a livello visivo fa di lui un originale, un diverso, un unicum , ha i tratti somatici di uno svedese e tale è , per tutta l’opera, un caso eccezionale: un uomo retto, eccellente, infallibile, equilibrato, un puro, un giusto verrebbe da pensare. Lo Svedese. E no! Calma: si va in direzione opposta; è semplicemente il riflesso negli occhi altrui di un modello vincente e rampante che incarna appieno il mito americano, dell’uomo di successo, della società di successo, quella competitiva e infallibile anche quando sguazza nel fango nero della guerra inutile o , per tornare alla dimensione del singolo, quando vive un vero e proprio dramma familiare che, all’insegna della violenza, della mina vagante, della casualità, dell’idealismo, dell’ingenuità, della pazzia se vogliamo, frantuma un’identità, fragile e contraddittoria come quelle di tanti, di tutti. Arriviamo ora al narratore, un vero e proprio alter ego dell’autore, Nathan Zuckerman, nomen omen nuovamente, di chiara matrice ebraica, uno scrittore con alle spalle anche lui un mondo di migranti americanizzati. Ennesima identità celata, ennesimo tratto originale perché la sua narrazione sarà solo frutto di una mera supposizione, una possibile ricostruzione dei fatti che potrebbe avere vissuto lo Svedese a partire da un’unica certezza: era un giovane brillante, lo incontra a distanza di anni, gli vorrebbe consegnare brevi manu la sua vita; la consegna è solo rimandata e non avverrà perché il narratore apprenderà poco dopo del decesso dello Svedese dal fratello.
Originale cornice a incastonare una narrazione secca, asciutta, a tratti ripetitiva, martellante direi, quando tocca gli aspetti più ideologici, l’ etica. Una visione laica e dissacrante di un falso mito creato da cantori precedenti che lo hanno voluto generare con intento puramente autoreferenziale. Una voce scomoda e stridente che non necessita di autocompiacimento e che quindi non cerca plauso alcuno, neanche in termini di piacevolezza. Sì, non mi è piaciuto, fatico a dirlo, perché è davvero un grande romanzo, è innegabile. Sono forse nostalgica della prima generazione di migranti e delle loro difficoltà? Qui l’omologazione necessaria e il desiderio di conformismo dei loro figli annienta ogni beltà e fornisce un quadro ancor più triste e desolante di quanto non fosse quello, per esempio, del triste commesso malamudiano. Viva l ‘America? Anche no.
Originale cornice a incastonare una narrazione secca, asciutta, a tratti ripetitiva, martellante direi, quando tocca gli aspetti più ideologici, l’ etica. Una visione laica e dissacrante di un falso mito creato da cantori precedenti che lo hanno voluto generare con intento puramente autoreferenziale. Una voce scomoda e stridente che non necessita di autocompiacimento e che quindi non cerca plauso alcuno, neanche in termini di piacevolezza. Sì, non mi è piaciuto, fatico a dirlo, perché è davvero un grande romanzo, è innegabile. Sono forse nostalgica della prima generazione di migranti e delle loro difficoltà? Qui l’omologazione necessaria e il desiderio di conformismo dei loro figli annienta ogni beltà e fornisce un quadro ancor più triste e desolante di quanto non fosse quello, per esempio, del triste commesso malamudiano. Viva l ‘America? Anche no.
July 9, 2022
This book is the most layered one of Roth that I read of him so far. It is impossible to describe what this book is all about, so I can present only the main layers.
American Pastoral revolves around Seymour Levov, a white man of Jewish origin who seems to have his act perfectly together: in his youth a celebrated baseball and basketball player, married to his beautiful wife Dawn (an ex-Miss New Jersey), he's a successful businessman (who took over his father's glove factory in Newark), an involved and concerned father, and in general a really amiable man. Behind that facade however Seymour, or the Swede as he is called colloquially, hides a great personal drama which is related to his daughter Merry; in her puberty she completely derailed and got actively involved in deadly terrorism acts against the Vietnam war and against the capitalist system. Until the end we see Seymour intensely struggling with the question of what he has done wrong, and what he could have done to prevent the tragedy.
The Swede is the victim of blind fate that strikes in a seemingly unjust way. In that sense, there are nice parallels with Greek drama and with the biblical Job-story. "He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach — that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one's history. The nice gentle man with his mild way of dealing with conflict and contradiction, the confident ex-athlete sensible and resourceful in any struggle with an adversary who is fair, comes up against the adversary who is not fair — the evil ineradicable from human dealings — and he is finished. He whose natural nobility was to be exactly what he seemed to be has taken in far too much suffering to be naively whole again. "
Roth gives gives evidence of a lot of empathy, both for the position of the concerned parent as for that of the rebellious daughter. But he also mercilessly describes the wrong self-image that these ‘normal’ people appear to have, and suggests that they also are guilty, because they too much wanted to accommodate to the American model, and they did this in such an extreme way that they lost everything.
This brings us to the broader context: that of the shattering of the American dream (here called ‘American Pastoral’). The Levovs belong to a family of East-European jewish immigrants that in 3 generations managed to become respectable Americans, fully going up in the American dream, and that period has now unmercifully come to an end: "Three generations. All of them growing. The working. The saving. The success. Three generations in raptures over America. Three generations or becoming one with a people. And now with the fourth it had all come to nothing. The total vandalization of their world." The story of the unhinged daughter Merry gets a perfect parallel in the violence of the social and racially discriminated African Americans, in the riots that at the end of the 1960s smashed half Newark to smithereens. Inevitably Roth brings with it a portrait of the turbulent sixties, and explores the background of the radicalism of young people and minority groups.
And finally there is a typical Roth-twist: the whole story of Seymour Levov is told by Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, based on scarce information elements. Somewhere around page 150, almost unnoticed the transition is made: until then Zuckerman is the principal character, but then he jumps to the seemingly 'objectively' told life story of the Swede, with lots of interior monologues. By the very chaotic way of storytelling and the open ending the alert reader can be aware that here actually a third narrator is speaking and not Seymour himself, and so you get the impression that Zuckerman (a.k.a. Roth) uses the life story of the Swede to put personal elements in it. This gives this book an extra (postmodern) layer.
Now, is this a successful book? It’s difficult to answer that question. What Roth has done with the character of Seymour Levov is nothing short of masterly, and partly that is also the case with his wife Dawn, a much stronger figure than seen at first sight (although she remains in the background). But circling around them are characters who happen to be much less convincing, with the very caricatured father Lou Levov as absolute cliché, and even the rebellious daughter Merry is not credibly painted. Then there’s also the habit of many American writers (Irving is another example) to develop certain background aspects in such detail, that they become really annoying; in this book that’s the case with the perfectionist passion of Seymour and his father for the glove manufacturing; pages and pages on end we get information on how gloves are manufactured; of course this serves a particular purpose, but it is just too much.
Though it's not perfect, ‘American Pastoral’ for sure is a major work of American literature. Roth has shown us what it is to be human, and he has shown us we also need literature to really be human.
American Pastoral revolves around Seymour Levov, a white man of Jewish origin who seems to have his act perfectly together: in his youth a celebrated baseball and basketball player, married to his beautiful wife Dawn (an ex-Miss New Jersey), he's a successful businessman (who took over his father's glove factory in Newark), an involved and concerned father, and in general a really amiable man. Behind that facade however Seymour, or the Swede as he is called colloquially, hides a great personal drama which is related to his daughter Merry; in her puberty she completely derailed and got actively involved in deadly terrorism acts against the Vietnam war and against the capitalist system. Until the end we see Seymour intensely struggling with the question of what he has done wrong, and what he could have done to prevent the tragedy.
The Swede is the victim of blind fate that strikes in a seemingly unjust way. In that sense, there are nice parallels with Greek drama and with the biblical Job-story. "He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach — that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one's history. The nice gentle man with his mild way of dealing with conflict and contradiction, the confident ex-athlete sensible and resourceful in any struggle with an adversary who is fair, comes up against the adversary who is not fair — the evil ineradicable from human dealings — and he is finished. He whose natural nobility was to be exactly what he seemed to be has taken in far too much suffering to be naively whole again. "
Roth gives gives evidence of a lot of empathy, both for the position of the concerned parent as for that of the rebellious daughter. But he also mercilessly describes the wrong self-image that these ‘normal’ people appear to have, and suggests that they also are guilty, because they too much wanted to accommodate to the American model, and they did this in such an extreme way that they lost everything.
This brings us to the broader context: that of the shattering of the American dream (here called ‘American Pastoral’). The Levovs belong to a family of East-European jewish immigrants that in 3 generations managed to become respectable Americans, fully going up in the American dream, and that period has now unmercifully come to an end: "Three generations. All of them growing. The working. The saving. The success. Three generations in raptures over America. Three generations or becoming one with a people. And now with the fourth it had all come to nothing. The total vandalization of their world." The story of the unhinged daughter Merry gets a perfect parallel in the violence of the social and racially discriminated African Americans, in the riots that at the end of the 1960s smashed half Newark to smithereens. Inevitably Roth brings with it a portrait of the turbulent sixties, and explores the background of the radicalism of young people and minority groups.
And finally there is a typical Roth-twist: the whole story of Seymour Levov is told by Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, based on scarce information elements. Somewhere around page 150, almost unnoticed the transition is made: until then Zuckerman is the principal character, but then he jumps to the seemingly 'objectively' told life story of the Swede, with lots of interior monologues. By the very chaotic way of storytelling and the open ending the alert reader can be aware that here actually a third narrator is speaking and not Seymour himself, and so you get the impression that Zuckerman (a.k.a. Roth) uses the life story of the Swede to put personal elements in it. This gives this book an extra (postmodern) layer.
Now, is this a successful book? It’s difficult to answer that question. What Roth has done with the character of Seymour Levov is nothing short of masterly, and partly that is also the case with his wife Dawn, a much stronger figure than seen at first sight (although she remains in the background). But circling around them are characters who happen to be much less convincing, with the very caricatured father Lou Levov as absolute cliché, and even the rebellious daughter Merry is not credibly painted. Then there’s also the habit of many American writers (Irving is another example) to develop certain background aspects in such detail, that they become really annoying; in this book that’s the case with the perfectionist passion of Seymour and his father for the glove manufacturing; pages and pages on end we get information on how gloves are manufactured; of course this serves a particular purpose, but it is just too much.
Though it's not perfect, ‘American Pastoral’ for sure is a major work of American literature. Roth has shown us what it is to be human, and he has shown us we also need literature to really be human.
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