American Pastoral

A re-read – and a masterpiece. Roth's depiction of the life and world of Seymour 'The Swede' Levov is all-consuming, the Swede's troubles and fall (and rise) shattering. I re-read this after 20 years, now a father myself, and took a whole world more from it than first time out at 25. Sabbath's Theater may be a better or more extraordinary book but American Pastoral has its attack and pitch-black humor too and much more besides. In the “indigenous American berserk”, Roth named something at the heart of America – ever so but rarely more so than now. I don't… show more.

In the current media environment, it is hard for us to do the one essential thing that novel readers must do: suspend disbelief—to read something that we know is not true, yet accept it as if it were true. It is a cynical time. We have learned to mistrust what we read.

So what is a novelist to do? Well, one way to win over skeptical readers is by a simple trick, one that I love (as both reader and writer): the novelist appears in his own novel. My novel uses a similar device, beginning with a novelist-narrator who bears… show more.

I’ve always loved how Philip Roth populates his fiction with transgressors. It’s hard not to envy their boldness, bad as they may be. Narrated by Roth’s stand-in, bad boy Nathan Zuckerman, American Pastoral focuses on Zuckerman’s high school idol, ‘Swede’ Levov. Swede’s triumphs on the sporting field and later in business, anoint him for a life marked by pure American success. His inevitable fall from grace feels moving and tragic and infuriating. Swede can’t comprehend how his darling teenage daughter has become an anti-Viet Nam War terror bomber, responsible for bystander death. No happy lessons here. Read American Pastoral if… show more.

Sometimes the problems we face blow up with such force they become public, and the image we strived for—the one that says all is fine, we’re doing very well, thank you—is shattered forever. That’s what happens to the Swede—the protagonist in American Pastoral—when his precious, stuttering daughter Merry grows into an anti-Vietnam war zealot and dynamites a rural post office in their quiet New Jersey town. Roth’s prose is distinctive. The arguments between the Swede and his daughter will make you feel like you’re behind a curtain in their living room. When… show more.