American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International) - American Pastoral

A slow, difficult read that's nonetheless rewarding. Fans of the argument that the U.S. no longer makes anything, much to the country's despair, will be heartened by the sanctity of industry in this book. Everything else, however, that comprises your moral compass will be challenged. Have fun!

American Pastoral was one of the memorable books for our club. We actually began the discussion in the car on the way to our hostess' home, continued through wine and appetizers through dinner. We had some very divergent opinions on "Swede" and his reaction to the book's events. The book also prompted a good discussion on whether the individual can change, parenthood, the Vietnam war as compared to the war in Iraq, and the context of religion in our lives.

This review is for the Kindle version. Wow, lots of terrible OCR errors. I don't know how many times I saw like 15 for is or words with extraneous spaces. There was almost a mistake per page. You can understand what you are reading, but for a great book like this you would expect them to proofread it a time or two.

This book is entirely improbable. I went to college in NYC in 1968. Mark Rudd and sds had shut down Columbia that spring. The weathermen were formed the next summer to use violence to protest the war's incomparably greater violence against the Vietnamese. There were no bombings in February 1968 and it is ridiculous to picture a 16 year old girl in wealthy rural NJ committing an act like that. I knew dozens of radicals during those years and no one like the twisted revolting daughter in the book. The few unbalanced people I met were most likely fbi informers or provocateurs. The bombings that did happen later were not intended to kill, although a few people did die.

The story of the Swede is an outstanding, outstanding read.

I really, truly enjoyed the way in which Roth creates a world of ambiguity and circumstance... of best intentions gone awry, and how good people in small worlds may still be shown to be painfully ignorant. I've recommended this to many friends, and will likely read again.

Love the book, very insightful. What is up with all the typos? Seriously, I have found this to be true for several digital books, but this one was horrible. The cost of these books is much too high for the consumer to be happy with the purchase. Whomever is responsible please get it together.

Disappointing in several ways.
Certainly Roth is too smart for his own good and seems to have a strong desire to be weird and outre, rather than penetrating – so much so that there is a lot of drizzle here but not much rain. For a start if the writer were half as good at describing how people come about as he is at how gloves are made this would have been a great book, one that would actually deserve a Pulitzer. I think it got the latter because those who decide such things wanted to make sure everyone knew that they followed along with Pastoral. The book is full of slide-in agenda so maybe that was what they liked.
But no matter, I don’t think Roth really gets the 60s and the seismic shift between the GIs and boomers, who although the same in terms of nationality, blood, location, etc., came from totally different circumstances and thus became totally different people. One raised in privation, depression, global hostility and where the next meal was coming from, hence had a survival-critical mindset, and one raised in provision, prosperity, peace and largesse, hence survival solved. One without choice, internally driven by external trouble, and one externally provided for, looking for trouble and finding it internally. We all have to have a game don’t we, whether it’s depression and Japanese or not a cloud in the sky – and circumstances make us decide which game it will be, whether it’s about our own survival or, as in Merry’s case, about someone else’s. She could afford what the GIs couldn’t – idealism, and is thereby driven by the old vision of to get an omelet you have to break the eggs, but as usual with Left-wing solutions you get no further than broken eggs. Roth’s repetitive side-swipes against the political Right reveals that he has more in common with Merry than he would ever admit; he uses the pen, she uses bombs.
Roth is not out of his depth on writing but he is on cause and effect which is what the 60s chasm is really about – a generation on one side, another on the other, but he’s obviously as mystified as his hero on the issue. Is that the point of the book? I don’t know, but he’s big on effects, which are cited in the extreme here, but not on causes, where he’s as shallow as the Swede in fact.
A long drizzle here but, as is usually the case with drizzle, not much to see.

This book is so rich in description, character, and historical events that it truly is a wonder. A very realistic portrayal of the difficulty of achieving the American dream. A complicated story that you cannot stop reading. If you grew up in the 50s and 60s you will relate to the characters. If you are younger it will perhaps help you understand what life was like for the boomers and their parents.

Probably Roth's masterpiece. A portrait of America in the sixth decade of the twentieth century and the dissolution of the promise of the American Dream. Swede Levov is as tragic a hero as Oedipus and Hamlet.

Roth wrote in a manner which constantly pulled at my heart. Descriptions which terrified and sent chills through out my soul. It is impossible to determine the storyline which swirls in uncontainable examples of reality vs fantasy. Does all good have to be bad? Is it wrong to do good? Or is it all an illusion?

A master piece. A very intriguing story about the perfect American family until their daughter becomes a political activists and blows up a post-office. The phycological analysis of the motives and way of thinking of the characters is splendid. At the same time the some more general problems of the United States of America through the 20th century are discussed as well.

A pastoral is an urban fiction celebrating bucolic life in the countryside. As such, this book appears misnamed. If irony is intended then the title might have better been Cold Pastoral following Keats. For that's where this book leaves me: Cold. I confess I like a book that reaches some sort of moral, esthetic, or logical conclusion; that has a beginning, middle, and end, and that is not over written, pretentious, self-conscious, and repetitive. And so I don't like AP. As a writer, I always was taught that Backstory should be in the mind of the writer not in his book. And I was taught that you don't tell the reader about all that research you did to find out how they made gloves in the old days, or what the Miss America thing is all about, or why the Jains wear those silly veils. Each time Roth goes off into such detail I hear the index cards rustling in the background. I shouldn't hear those cards, because the information should have been seamlessly woven into the narrative. Nathan Zuckerman and Philip Roth (narrator and author of AP) are not necessarily the same person any more than art must necessarily duplicate life, but it is interesting that Zuckerman and Roth both were born and raised in middle class Jewish households in Newark, N.J. Both are successul white Jewish male writers writing for over forty years on what it was like to grow up in Newark in a middle class Jewish family. Both like to make the Jews, especially Jewish men, look bad. Both Z and R (I am not making this up) graduated from Weequahic High School, where during a reunion, Zuckerman (and probably Roth) decided to make up a story about the High School sports hero, the Swede. Just as dreams reflect the psychology of the dreamer, the story must reflect the psychology of the maker. Not a very good psychology it is: Filled with buried resentment, jealousy, and rage and overburdened with some pretty fantastic subplots and multiple characters from central casting. You will do better spending your time reading something else.