American Pastoral
LC Class | PS3568.O855 A77 1997 |
American Pastoral is a
The
American Pastoral won the
Plot
Seymour Irving Levov is born and raised in the
Seymour establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved wife and daughter, a satisfying business career, and a magnificent house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. Yet, as the
At a dinner party, Seymour discovers that his wife Dawn has been having an affair with
Historical setting
The novel alludes extensively to the social upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It refers to the 1967 Newark riots, the Watergate scandal, the sexual revolution and Deep Throat, the code name of the secret source in the Watergate scandal and the title of a 1972 pornographic film. In the novel's final scene, both the Watergate scandal and the pornographic film are discussed at a dinner party during which the first marriage of "the Swede" begins to unravel when he discovers that his wife is having an affair. The novel also alludes to the rhetoric of revolutionary violence of the radical fringe of the New Left, the Black Panthers, the trial of the leftist African-American activist Angela Davis, and the bombings carried out between 1969 and 1973 by the Weathermen and other radicals opposing the US military intervention in Vietnam. The novel quotes from Frantz Fanon's A Dying Colonialism, which Zuckerman imagines as one of the texts that inspires Merry to carry out her bombing of a local post office.
In the novel, there is a slight plot/historical anomaly since a "Weatherman motto" is tacked to Merry's wall about two years before the phrase was actually uttered: Merry's bombing takes place in February 1968, during the presidency of
The inspiration for the Levov character was a real person: Seymour "Swede" Masin, a legendary all-around Jewish athlete who, like the Levov character, attended Newark's Weequahic High School. Like the book's protagonist, Swede Masin was revered and idolized by many local middle-class Jews. Both "Swedes" were tall and had distinctively blond hair and blue eyes, which stood out among the typically dark-haired, dark-complexioned local residents. Both attended a teachers' college in nearby East Orange; both married out of their faith; both served in the military and, upon their return, both moved to the suburbs of Newark.
American Pastoral was a scrupulously researched book: Roth traveled to Gloversville, New York to learn about the glove-making industry and interviewed Yolande Fox, the winner of the 1951 Miss America pageant, while developing the character of Dawn Dwyer.[3] Roth later said, of his conversations with Fox, "She was very smart, very funny. ... She just opened up whole ideas for me that I couldn't have had on my own."[4]
The book cover features a photo of the post office in Brookside, New Jersey.[5]
Reception
After Roth's death, The New York Times asked several prominent writers to pick their favorite work by Roth, and many picked American Pastoral. Richard Ford, in his response, wrote: "The fusing powers of Roth’s imagination, conviction and raging intelligence are everywhere evident and exhilarating. There is about it a profound and heartening sense (and it is a profound book) that the verbal construction you’re undertaking as a reader represents absolutely the only way this mighty story could ever be brought into existence. American Pastoral stares back at me audaciously unblinking as a great novel. And although such a rambunctious piece of artifice can inevitably not be perfect, it is nonetheless in all its ways right." Stephen King also chose it as his favorite Roth novel, writing: "American Pastoral is one of the five best novels I have ever read, maybe the best. It is muscular storytelling complemented by characters — especially Swede Levov — who burn their way into one’s memory. The scope is relatively small, but the ambition is epic. Few can handle the passing years as well as Roth does here. It ranks with the greatest of American fiction."[6] Harold Bloom named Roth one of the greatest living American authors, alongside Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, naming their respective masterpieces as Sabbath's Theater and American Pastoral; Blood Meridian; The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and Mason & Dixon; and Underworld.[7]
Film adaptation
See also
- Pastoral
- The American Dream
- Counterculture of the 1960s
References
- ^ Grossman, Lev; Lacayo, Richard (October 16, 2005). "All-Time 100 Novels". Time. Archived from the original on October 19, 2005.
- ^ "What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?". The New York Times. May 21, 2006.
- ^ Senior, Jennifer. "Philip Roth Blows Up," New York May 1, 2000.
- ^ Sykes, Christopher. "Researching Miss America," Web of Stories, Mar. 18 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-8135-3351-3.
- ^ "What is Philip Roth's Best Book?". The New York Times. May 25, 2018.
- ^ Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why.
- ^ "Ewan McGregor to Make Feature Directorial Debut with American Pastoral". comingsoon.net. February 18, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.