Finished reading Philip Roth’s
American Pastoral, winner of the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Roth’s novel seeks to be an ambitious literary statement – some would call it a pretentious read – as it follows in the footsteps of many past literary figures who’ve searched for a final word on the American Dream. Roth is a skilled enough writer to attempt his own say on the American Dream – an otherwise over worn theme that’s occupied and hamstrung the highest levels of American Literature since the 1920s. Nevertheless, the reader (or at least me) is left weighed down by the exceeding pessimism/cynicism/negativity of Roth’s
American Pastoral.
Set in mostly Newark NJ, the plot follows its uplifting and upstanding main character, Seymour Levov, as the narrative jumps back and forth across Levov’s life from the WWII 1940s through the social upheavals of the 1960s and ending in the 1990s when the undeserved damage to Levov’s life has set in. With Levov, Roth creates an otherwise perfect character, a living American Dream – local basketball star, caretaker of his family’s glove manufacturing business, devout to religion and his growing family, and deserving of his contentment – only to systematically destroy this character, piece by piece, and by doing so, souring the sense of optimism that a self-built post-WWII America affords. The Wikipedia page for American Pastoral sums this up well:
“Seymour sadly concludes that everyone he knows may have a veneer of respectability, but each engages in subversive behavior, and that he cannot understand the truth about anyone based upon the conduct they outwardly display. He is forced to see the truth about the chaos and discord rumbling beneath the "American pastoral."As readers, I don’t believe we invite much of our reading to inform us of the author, especially that of commercial fiction. But in the case of literary figures it’s almost unavoidable. After reading enough F. Scott Fitzgerald, we might rightfully conclude that
Gatsby’s famed author was a hopeless dreamer with persistent financial problems. With Edgar Allen Poe or Franz Kafka we might conclude they both 1) needed psychological help but 2) also used their unsettling writings as a form of self-psychological help. We’d also might rightfully conclude that Sylvia Plath suffered from a number of mental illnesses after reading her memorable novel
The Bell Jar which progresses quite helplessly through the mental downfall of the novel’s main character.
Hardly any of the fiction we read leaves us upset by the thematic intentions of an author. But in this case, Philip’s Roth’s message is that of spreading hopelessness;
American Pastoral wants readers to distrust post-WWII America, each other, and ourselves.
