American Pastoral by Philip Roth

For 40 years I have avoided reading anything by Philip Roth, because Portnoy's Complaint annoyed me so. That book was so whiny, so non-funny in its humor, so obviously designed to shock, and, finally, just so Jewish. It was like Woody Allen on paper.

But this one is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I try to read all of those, so I read it, although with some misgivings. As it turns out, it is not whiny; it does not even try to be funny; its shock lies in the tragedy of events rather than in graphic sexual descriptions; it is still pretty Jewish, but not in a stereotypical, only-Jews-can-understand-this way. It is superbly written, switching backward and forward through time with ease and clarity to place climactic events at just the right places. Roth is a wizard with words. The book lends itself to a variety of interpretations, and I have been thinking about it all morning. That, in itself, is the mark of a good book--you think about it afterward.

On one level, this is just the incredibly sad story of "Swede" Levov, a third-generation Jewish boy who seems to be living the American dream. He is a three-sport athletic wonder in high school and a Marine in World War II, marries an Irish-Catholic beauty who was Miss New Jersey, becomes rich from the glove factory his father started, moves to the New Jersey countryside, and has an intelligent and loving daughter. And then things fall apart. The adored daughter becomes a fanatical teenager who protests the war in Viet Nam with a savage act of terrorism. The daughter "transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral--into the indigenous American berserk."

On another level, as I interpret it, this is an allegory for the death of the American promise. For a good while, the dream held together. Hard work, dedication to "doing the right thing," and a general desire for assimilation seemed to work. And then, it just didn't work anymore--race riots, outsourcing of manufacturing, war protests, a general discontent. The center could not hold.

One reason I keep thinking about this book is that once again, it seems to me, America is falling apart, this time along religious and economic fault lines.

American Pastoral is not an easy book to read, does not tie up all the loose plot ends, and is certainly not "happily ever after." Still, it is an essential book, worthy of its Pulitzer Prize and its inclusion on the Times Top 100.