American Pastoral

You figure "hey, it's Philip Roth. All sorts of awards. Might as well read his Pulitzer Prize winner. Can't be half bad, can it? can't be that bad. He's got other good stuff. This one must be good, too." American Pastoral defies logic with its terrible, terrible writing. This was one of the most boring, most difficult to force myself through books I've ever read. Roth has clearly become more of an old man, rambling on and on about the good ole days of Newark, America, the countryside, glovemakin [...]

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 [...]

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 w [...]

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 απροσ� [...]

I didn't finish it. I realized that life is probably too short, and certainly I read too slowly, to spend another minute with Philip Roth. He's Jewish, did you know? JEWISH. Also, he is a man. Men have penises, did you know? PENISES! that are very important and special self-starting things, and when they don't work it is an AMERICAN TRAGEDY, and when they do, well they just do stuff and we observe all of that with some very pretty sentences that almost distract a person from how we're basically [...]

"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 wh [...]

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 [...]

1998 Pulitzer Prize Time Magazines 100 best novelsI 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 [...]

LA VITA È SOLO UN BREVE PERIODO DI TEMPO NEL QUALE SIAMO VIVIEcco 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. 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 e [...]

Onvan : American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1) - Nevisande : Philip Roth - ISBN : 99771810 - ISBN13 : 9780099771814 - Dar 432 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1997

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 [...]

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. Th [...]

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, a [...]

Il diritto di lasciare“Sua figlia era una folle assassina che si nascondeva sul pavimento di una stanza di Newark, sua moglie aveva un amante che fingeva di scoparla sopra il lavandino della cucina, la sua ex amante aveva portato coscientemente la sua famiglia al disastro e lui stava cercando di ingraziarsi suo padre spaccando il capello in quattro”.Non c'è nulla di male nell'essere deboli come Seymour Levov, Lo Svedese. Ragione e passione lo insegnano. La storia che Roth racconta ha un val [...]

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 gol [...]

Yes, the breach had been pounded in their fortification, even out here in secure old Rimrock, and now that it was opened it would not be closed again… All the voices from without, condemning and rejecting their life!A reviewer, normal, long-winded, often boring.That reviewer's alter ego, may think he's more interesting, but actually quite like the formerAn author, Roth by nameA fictional author, Nathan Zuckerman, who has many apparent links to the latterThe sixth (by publication date) of Roth' [...]

OK let me just say that I am so. excited. about this book. My friend Cal recommended it to me a while back, and I finally got around to it. OH MY GOSH I've been missing out on Philip Roth! He is now my new favorite author. I know that's a rash judgment to make based on one book, but it's just that good.Cal and I love a lot of the same books for entirely different reasons, which is fun. To put it simplistically (which I hate to do), Cal gets more excited about story / character development and I [...]

Swede's Worst Nightmare: Detonating Daughter, Disintegrated MarriageWeather Underground Motto, quoted in American Pastoral "We are against everything that is good and decent in honky America. We will loot and burn and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers' nightmares."*4.4 stars*The most popular guy in Newark's Weequahic High School Class of 1945, Seymour "Swede" Levov, who was the school's star athlete in 3 sports, was called Swede due to his blonde hair, blue eyes and Nordic looks. He [...]

Overwritten, self-indulgent version of Paradise LostI 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 [...]

Having just completed my reread of American Pastoral, I want to begin my updated review in an unusual way, with two quotes from authors that are not Philip Roth:Tornadoes are a good metaphor for how bad things happen in our lives. They build from small disturbances that usually don't mean a thing and almost always dissipate. But somehow one particular random event attracts others, and all of them together grow and attract more nasty stuff. Once it gets up to a critical size, the odds of it growi [...]

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 [...]

“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.” ― Philip Roth, American PastoralJeffery Pugh's Tree HuggersWow. I remember reading Underworld and thinking, "why didn't it win more awards?" Perhaps, it is simply the small issue of it was published in the same year as 'American Pastoral'. The idea of two great American Novels, one Jewish and one WASP, both published in 1997 -- is absolutely incredible. Order meets chaos. Civilization is unraveled. Th [...]

A questo punto mi toccherà riconsiderare le cinque stelle attribuite finora.C'è tutto: il percorso di un uomo, la storia della famiglia e dei singoli componenti e poi la Storia, l'evolversi di una nazione e della sua cultura: il dissolversi del sogno americano.E' stata una delle riletture più illuminanti mai fatte, esiste davvero il tempo giusto per ciascun libro.

Clearly a lot of research went into this book. I only wish Roth hadn’t been so compelled to show off every single trinket of minutiae, arcania, and esoterica (yes, I invent words when necessary) that he could acquire relating to the glove-making industry in New Jersey. The book is unquestionably too long, and the political allegory can feel a bit oppressive as one strives to believe in characters that remain just short of plausible (excepting a few bit players, such as the bullying heart surge [...]

T. S. Eliot said it clearer.But, I will grudgingly admit, there were a lot of things to love about this novel, even if I never fell IN love with it.What I liked most was the transformation of all these identical events from "all-surface" from the beginning to the nearly mad-ramblings of internal monologue by the end. There was no sharp delineation. It was like I was being boiled alive like a lobster, learning that all the good and true things of the world are, in fact, illusion and subterfuge, e [...]

youtube/watch?v=tUbXlMais um filme para verPhilip Roth (n. 1933)O livro “Pastoral Americana” do escritor norte-americano Philip Roth (n. 1933) foi editado em 1997 - é o primeiro volume da denominada Trilogia Americana, juntamente com “Casei com um Comunista” e “A Mancha Humana” - e tem como narrador o seu alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman.Zuckerman dá voz a Seymour Irving Levov, mais conhecido por “Sueco”, um jovem “perfeito”, alegre e fisicamente atraente, com um comportamento ir [...]

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 [...]

Back in late 2004 I had a lot of things happening: I had just gone through a significant break-up in October of that year, I had a bit of an uncomfortable situation with a not-so-secret-admirer sniffing around where I worked at the time, and I was in the early stages of a new relationship that I wasn't sure I wanted to even be a relationship. That December I was having a hard enough time reading one page, let alone finishing any actual books.I picked up Philip Roth's The Plot Against America tha [...]

Dovete assolutamente leggerlo tutti, inizio così a parlarvi di questo libro che mi ha sconvolta, Pastorale Americana è un manifesto contro i punti saldi di un pensiero conservatore, cieco e borghese. Più che mai questo libro è assolutamente attuale, la pastorale americana (non solo americana) è l’idea di vita perfetta, onesta che ha il protagonista (l’americano felice ligio al dovere), in cui nulla può andare storto, nulla si può infiltrare, un’idea che non può esistere e che si ri [...]

I discovered Philip Roth last summer, when I picked up a used copy of "The Human Stain" and proceeded to have my mind completely blown by both the story and Roth's incredible writing. I wasn't sure what to expect when I decided to dive into "American Pastoral": when you fall in love with a book and pursue the author's other works, you always run the risk of being severely disapointed - and people seem to either love or hate this book with a suprising passion…I'm happy to report that I was not [...]