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A review by aegagrus
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
4.0
While I've always been rather ambivalent towards the mythic ideal of the Great American Novel, American Pastoral certainly feels like the outgowth of a distinctly national tradition. Philip Roth's meandering volubility and detailed industrial digressions reminded me of Melville, while his emphasis on neurotic interiority called to mind the celebrated novelist's 20th century peers. Roth's prose is not what I would describe as elegant, but it is exquisite in its own way -- especially for connoisseurs of the finely-crafted run-on sentence.
At the novel's heart is a three-pronged fall from innocence -- the intertwined destruction of a personal idyll, an aspirational immigrant ethos, and a city's economic identity -- and the sheer bewilderment and paralysis these calamities produce in Seymour "Swede" Levov, the man who tried to do everything right. Courting self-destruction by straining to embody all that which is expected of him, the Swede is ultimately trapped in a tense, claustrophobic limbo -- a sensation best captured in the masterfully neurotic dinner party that comprises the novel's final chapters. Ultimately, there is no explanation to be had:
"Jerry thinks he can escape the bewilderment by ranting, shouting, but everything he shouts is wrong... Reasons. But there are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books." (281)
On a personal level, I paid special attention to the Swede's feckless compassion:
"As usual, the Swede's default reaction to not being able to fathom cause and effect...was to fall back on a lifelong strategy and become tolerant and charitable" (341). The reference here is to a friend's puzzling choice of spouse, but the broader critique resonates because it reflects a predisposition I often notice in myself.
Merry Levov, the Swede's beloved daughter cum domestic terrorist, is an interesting character. On the one hand, I appreciated that her political violence is not presented as the unfortunate misadventure of a young, gullible, ideologue -- and that the Swede fumes at the "provincial smugness" with which his neighbors presume to understand what has happened to her. On the other hand, the stereotype of a young ideologue is deemed objectionable because it posits a rational account of violent radicalism where there is none -- not because the novel is interested in offering a better account.
Roth is sometimes deemed a misogynist. I haven't read enough of his work or engaged enough with his public persona to have an informed stance on this. In the case of this novel, the multilayered frame narration means that we are always at some remove from "the truth" -- often in a character's unreliable or purely imagined reconstruction of events. This being so, I found the troubling sentiments expressed by various characters at various points largely appropriate to the novel's bleak and confused moral universe. Taking this work in isolation, I did not think any of these preoccupations and prejudices were being endorsed by the author (again -- the content of these character's explanations for things is largely besides the point). However, it seems that the critique of Roth's body of work concerns his proclivity to inhabit certain minds, give voice to certain feelings, and repeatedly ignore or sideline others. I find this line of argument eminently reasonable, though once again I will have to defer to those having more familiarity with his entire corpus. Taken as an individual book, American Pastoral was an immensely compelling read.
At the novel's heart is a three-pronged fall from innocence -- the intertwined destruction of a personal idyll, an aspirational immigrant ethos, and a city's economic identity -- and the sheer bewilderment and paralysis these calamities produce in Seymour "Swede" Levov, the man who tried to do everything right. Courting self-destruction by straining to embody all that which is expected of him, the Swede is ultimately trapped in a tense, claustrophobic limbo -- a sensation best captured in the masterfully neurotic dinner party that comprises the novel's final chapters. Ultimately, there is no explanation to be had:
"Jerry thinks he can escape the bewilderment by ranting, shouting, but everything he shouts is wrong... Reasons. But there are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books." (281)
On a personal level, I paid special attention to the Swede's feckless compassion:
"As usual, the Swede's default reaction to not being able to fathom cause and effect...was to fall back on a lifelong strategy and become tolerant and charitable" (341). The reference here is to a friend's puzzling choice of spouse, but the broader critique resonates because it reflects a predisposition I often notice in myself.
Merry Levov, the Swede's beloved daughter cum domestic terrorist, is an interesting character. On the one hand, I appreciated that her political violence is not presented as the unfortunate misadventure of a young, gullible, ideologue -- and that the Swede fumes at the "provincial smugness" with which his neighbors presume to understand what has happened to her. On the other hand, the stereotype of a young ideologue is deemed objectionable because it posits a rational account of violent radicalism where there is none -- not because the novel is interested in offering a better account.
Roth is sometimes deemed a misogynist. I haven't read enough of his work or engaged enough with his public persona to have an informed stance on this. In the case of this novel, the multilayered frame narration means that we are always at some remove from "the truth" -- often in a character's unreliable or purely imagined reconstruction of events. This being so, I found the troubling sentiments expressed by various characters at various points largely appropriate to the novel's bleak and confused moral universe. Taking this work in isolation, I did not think any of these preoccupations and prejudices were being endorsed by the author (again -- the content of these character's explanations for things is largely besides the point). However, it seems that the critique of Roth's body of work concerns his proclivity to inhabit certain minds, give voice to certain feelings, and repeatedly ignore or sideline others. I find this line of argument eminently reasonable, though once again I will have to defer to those having more familiarity with his entire corpus. Taken as an individual book, American Pastoral was an immensely compelling read.