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In A Nutshell The good news: when you're done with American Pastoral, you have two more books left in Philip Roth's American Trilogy. The bad news: American Pastoral is so deeply affecting, so upsetting, so brain-tinglingly Postmodern and so dryly hilarious and biting that… oh, wait. That's also good news. Okay. The bad news: American Pastoral is such a nuanced and clever look at 20th Century American politics and the media, and has such deeply flawed yet sympathetic characters that… hmm. Still good news. All right. All right. Here: don't read American Pastoral if you're thinking of buying property in Newark, New Jersey between 1967 and 1995. That's the bad news. This book will dissuade you from time-traveling and flipping houses. American Pastoral, first published in 1997, is the twenty-second (yeah, you read that right) book by American author Philip Roth. It was nominated for the 1997 National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is on Time magazine's list of the top 100 novels since 1923. Oh yeah—it was a national bestseller, a New York Times editors' choice, and it was awarded the coveted Pulitzer Prize for fiction. See why we couldn't find any reasons why reading American Pastoral would be bad news bears? But don't crack this bad boy expecting a happy-go-lucky romp through malt-shop midcentury American. American Pastoral is one of Roth's many tragic novels. And boy oh boy is it depressing: at his high school reunion Zuckerman learns that the daughter of his childhood idol bombed a small-town post office when she was sixteen and killed a doctor. As you can imagine, this tragedy wreaks havoc on the Levov family. Zuckerman sets out to imagine the Swede's life and to explore the effects of the tragedy on the family, all the while interrogating ideas of the American dream. So put aside all your Americana fantasies. Forget about happy families on rural farms. Forget about peaceful Vietnam War-era hippies offering flowers to soldiers. Forget about the snazzy first days of disco. The America in American Pastoral is, from the early sixties onward, gritty and nightmarish. It's real. We'll let you keep your nurse-and-sailor-kissing-in-Times-Square WWII-era American dream, though—after all, the Swede remembers those days fondly—and we promise we won't touch 1990's nostalgia. Some things, like Daria, are just sacred.

WHY SHOULD I CARE? Everyone's been jealous of someone. They might be a Regina George-type queen bee, who does a car commercial in Japan and can punch whoever they like in the face and leave them sighing, "It was awesome." Or perhaps you know someone that's kind of like American Pastoral's "the Swede" Levov. Someone who women want and men want to be. A guy who can out-smooth James Bond, who inspires men to write poems to their girlfriends apologizing for not being as cool as he is, who is so gleaming and perfect that you want to hate him… if only he wasn't so cool, so smart, so kind, so handsome. There's someone like the Swede in everyone's present, but characters like the Swede tend to exist most often in the past. These mysterious creatures appear most often during the glory days of high school. And dang do we obsesses over them. We obsess over them so much, in fact, that many of us find ourselves thinking about these bright stars for years after we've last seen them. But what would happen if you not only ran into one of these mythical beings, but also found out that their lives had taken a turn for the dark and twisted? Well, you might just be tempted to write a novel about them. American Pastoral is the story of a man who looks perfect on the outside—married to a beauty queen, rich and utterly irresistible, but inside he's shattered with pain, grief, doubt, and guilt. And just as we see the dark inside of the Swede Levov, we also get a peek into the underside of The American Dream, which the novel calls "the American berserk" (3.114). Maybe American Pastoral will make you think seriously about your own notions of the American Dream. Maybe it will be a lesson in compassion, nuance, and human complexity. Maybe it will stop you from turning into a green-eyed monster every time you think about your own personal Swede Levov. Or maybe it will just provide hours of awesome reading. Any way you cut it, American Pastoraldelivers a win. Just like the Swede did in back in his glory days.

How It All Goes Down

In the novel's first section, "Paradise Remembered," we first look at Seymour Irving Levov (the Swede), a high school sports hero to the predominantly Jewish Weequahic neighborhood in Newark New Jersey, during the years leading up to the end of World War II. The as yet unnamed narrator remembers idolizing the Swede as a child, and hanging out with the Swede's younger brother, Jerry. The Swede's father Lou Levov runs a successful glove making business, and the family is wealthy. After high school the Swede joins the Marines, just as World War II is coming to a close. While in the marines he gets engaged to a non-Jewish girl, and his father breaks up the marriage. Later on the Swede marries Miss New Jersey, 1949, Dawn Dwyer. In 1985 the narrator, who we learn is the novelist Nathan Zuckerman, runs into the Swede. Ten years later he gets a letter from the Swede (who is about seventy) inviting him to dinner. He goes to the dinner, but feels he's never been able to penetrate beneath the Swede's still perfect surface. The Swede shows him lots of pictures of his three teenage sons and fairly young second wife, who is the boys' mother. A few months later, at Zuckerman's forty-fifth high school reunion he meets Jerry and learns that the Swede died a few days earlier. He also learns that the Swede had a daughter who bombed a post office in the small town of Rimrock, New Jersey. She too has died. From the few clues Zuckerman has, he sets out to imagine what the Swede's life might have been like with his daughter, before and after the bombing. He turns his imaginings into a novel. The first thing he imagines is an uncomfortable scene where the Swede kisses his daughter, Merry, when she is eleven. He then conjures up a series of conversations between the Swede and Merry, concerning her growing interest in taking action against the Vietnam War. The section ends with a recap of the post-office bombing. In the novel's second section, "The Fall," Zuckerman seems to drop out of the story (as we discuss in "Narrator Point of View"). The remainder of the novel seems to be told in the third person, from the Swede's perspective (though we can't help but keep Zuckerman in our minds). The section begins four months after the bombing. A young woman named Rita Cohen comes to see the Swede at Newark Maid. After pretending to be a student researching the leather industry, she tells the Swede she's come on Merry's behalf. In the hopes of finding his daughter, the Swede gives Rita some of Merry's most personal items. The Swede gives Rita ten thousand dollars for Merry, but doesn't get to see her. Rita seems to have disappeared too. The Swede spends the next five years desperately waiting for another word about his daughter and trying to figure out what happened to make things turn out so ugly. During those five years he watches the news constantly looking for signs that Merry is still alive. At the end of the five years, just after his wife Dawn has started to recover from the trauma of Merry's disappearance and is enjoying her new face lift, he gets a letter from Rita Cohen telling him where Merry is. He finds Merry and learns that she really was the bomber, that she has killed three more people, that she has been raped twice, and that she considers herself a Jain and has

taken a vow of non-violence. The Swede also learns that Merry's speech therapist hid her for the first few days after the bombing. The section ends with a brutal conversation between the Swede and his brother Jerry, where Jerry blames the Swede for what's become of Merry. The novel's final section ("Paradise Lost") begins with the Swede imagining his earlier life with Merry and Dawn in Rimrock. The Swede returns home after his visit with Merry, and the rest of the novel centers around a dinner party happening at the Swede's house that night. First he visits with his parents, in from Florida. They discuss Merry with some anxiety. Bill and Jessie Orcutt are the first to arrive, and we learn some of Orcutt's family history. Barry and Marcia Umanoff and Shelly and Sheila Salzman are also in attendance. The conversation turns to Watergate, and then to the film Deep Throat, reminding us that we are in the 1970s. When the Swede goes to the kitchen to find Orcutt and tell him his wife Jessie is having problems, he sees Dawn and Bill Orcutt having sex in the kitchen. Soon after, the Swede gets a call from Rita Cohen, accusing him of trying to take Merry away from her. We learns about the Swede's brief affair with Sheila, Merry's speech therapist, and see the Swede confront her about hiding Merry in her apartment just after the Rimrock bombing—a fact he's just learned from Merry. Throughout the section, the Swede tries to decide whether to go back and get Merry out of the awful room, to run away with Sheila, or to run away with Merry. The novel ends with the Swede's father getting "stabbed" (9.352) in the face with a fork when he's trying to force a very drunk Jessie Orcutt to eat pie. The fork barely misses Lou's eye. We aren't given details of the extent of his physical injuries, though it's implied they are minor. We certainly hope so, since Marcia Umanoff is laughing at him. The novel's last lines are as follows: They'll never recover. Everyone is against [the Levovs], everyone and everything that does not like their life. All the voices from without, condemning and rejecting their life! And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs? (9. 355, 356)

AMERICAN PASTORAL PART

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● BACK ● NEXT Part 1 is called "Paradise Remembered." The novel begins with the following sentence: "The Swede." (1.1) The narrator (unnamed at this point) explains that the Swede is the name of an amazing "high school athlete" (1.1) when the narrator was a kid. Then we get a flashback: The Swede is amazing in part because of his looks. The narrator says that "the few fair complexioned Jews in our predominantly Jewish public high school" (1.1) don't look anything like the Swede. The Swede is Jewish, too, but he doesn't look Jewish. He has blue eyes, blond hair. He looks like a Viking. (Viking: "any of the Scandinavian people who raided the coasts of Europe from the 8th to the 11th centuries." Swedish people are Scandinavian, hence the nickname.) The Swede has starring roles in high school football, basketball, and baseball. As long as the Swede is on the team, everybody is happy, win or lose. The parents of the Jewish kids in the neighborhood, many of them without education, work really hard to support families and value education (grades) over sports. Because of the Swede, the neighborhood is able to "enter into a fantasy about itself" (1.2), a fantasy that sports can help them forget about "real life" and focus on, well, sports. The neighborhood uses sports as a way to "forget the war" (1. 2). Somehow the Swede gives them hope that their relatives fighting in the war against Germany and Japan (World War II) will come home alive. The neighborhood worships him like a god. The narrator wonders what this must have been like for the Swede. At the games, The Swede even has his own cheer: "Swede Levov! It rhymes with… "The Love!"...[…]" (1.4). No grownups are ever rude to him. They show him respect and call him "Swede." Some of the mothers call him "Seymour" (his real name). Sometimes girls call him "Levov of my life!" (1.5). In those days, the narrator is friends with the Swede's brother, Jerry Levov.

● Jerry is kind of the opposite of the Swede—skinny, dark, and brainy. ● He doesn't really have any friends other than the narrator. ● Jerry would invite the narrator over to play ping pong in the basement of the Levov house. ● Jerry plays ping pong super aggressively. ● The narrator normally wouldn't put his life in danger like that, but he likes telling people he hangs around the Swede's house. ● The narrator used to think it would be awesome to be the Swede's brother, but now he thinks it must have been awful. ● In the Swede's room, the narrator sees a set of books by John R. Tunis about baseball. ● This is when the narrator is ten. He reads those books and loves them. He imagines the Swede as the young hero, Kid. ● He says those books are about "a sweet star unjustly punished" (1.11), and in his mind the Swede and the hero of the books are the same person. ● The Levovs live on Keer Avenue, where other wealthy Jewish people in the neighborhood live. ● The narrator's father is a chiropodist (foot doctor) and makes enough for the narrator's family to get by on. ● But the Levovs are rich; the Swede's father, Lou Levov, has an extremely successful business manufacturing ladies' gloves. ● (Now we go deeper back in the past, and then forward again) ● Lou's father (the Swede's grandfather) comes to Newark, New Jersey (where much of the novel is set) in the 1890s. He works in awful conditions in the leather industry, tanning leather and making leather goods. ● Lou starts working in tanning when he's fourteen and spends lots of time among the grease and "hunks of skin all over the floor" (1.14)—the brutal environment of the tannery. ● Lou and his brothers eventually open their own business, but it goes bankrupt. Alone, Lou starts Newark Maid Leatherwear soon after. ● He doesn't really start making any money until 1942 when the Women's Army Corps orders dress gloves from him. ● Then he gets a huge account, the Bamberger account. ● Bamberger's admiration of the teenage athletic star, the Swede, plays a big role in Lou getting the account. ● By the end of World War II (1945) the business begins to prosper and is stable. ● In 1958 they open a factory in Puerto Rico, and the Swede becomes president of his father's company. ● He now lives in Rimrock New, Jersey, "a wealthy, rural" (1.16) small town on a big farm. He commutes to Newark every day to work at Newark Maid. ● (Now, we're moving back to the past again.) ● In June of 1945 the Swede graduates high school and joins the Marine Corp. ● The narrator hears rumors that his parents are trying to get him to join the navy instead, fearing "notorious Marine Corp anti-Semitism." (1.17) ● But, the Swede wants to be among "the toughest of the tough." (1.17)

● He is still in basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina when the US bombs Hiroshima and the war soon comes to an end. ● So, the Swede spends his time as a Marine on Parris Island as a drill instructor. ● He gets engaged to "an Irish Catholic girl" (1.17). ● Lou Levov comes down to Parris Island and doesn't leave until the couple is broken up. ● The Swede comes home in 1947, when he's twenty, and enrolls in Upsala College. ● At this point in time, the narrator is in high school. He and his friends would go to watch the Swede play baseball at the home games. ● When the narrator is in college he hears that the Swede has joined Newark Maid. ● He later hears that the Swede is married to a Miss New Jersey who competed in the 1949 Miss America Contest. ● "A shiksa," the narrator thinks. "Dawn Dwyer. He'd done it." (1.18) ● ("Shiksa" is a term that shows up often in Roth novels. Shiksas are any nonJewish women. The term can be used derogatorily or for humorous effect. Jewish parents like Lou Levov don't want their sons marrying shiksas.) ● (Now the novel skips forward) ● In 1985 the narrator is in New York with friends to watch a baseball game, the New York Mets vs. the Houston Astros. ● Suddenly, the narrator sees the Swede, who is thirty-six years older than when Zuckerman last saw him. ● He's looking good and is wearing an incredibly nice suit. He has a child with him, obviously a son. ● The narrator goes up to the Swede and tells him he used to be friends with the Swede's brother in the neighborhood. ● The Swede says to the narrator, "You're Zuckerman? […] The author?" (1.20) ● Zuckerman says that he is indeed Zuckerman the author. ● They make a little small talk. The Swede introduces Zuckerman and his son, Chris; Zuckerman introduces the Swede and his friends. ● When the Swede leaves, he calls Zuckerman "Skip." ● His friends tease him about it. This was Zuckerman's nickname when he was a kid because he skipped some grades. ● After the Swede leaves, one of Zuckerman's friends tells him, "You should have seen your face—you might well have told us he was Zeus. I saw just what you looked like as a boy" (1.35). ● Ten years later (1995), Zuckerman gets a letter from the Swede. ● In the letter, the Swede says he wants to take Zuckerman to dinner in New York City and talk to him. ● He says that his father (Lou) died the year before, at ninety-six. ● The Swede has been "trying to write a tribute" (1.37) to Lou to share with friends and family, and he wants Zuckerman's advice. ● He ends the letter by saying, "Not everyone knew how much he suffered because of the shocks that befell his loved ones" (1.39). ● He says he'll understand if Zuckerman doesn't have time to meet him. ● Zuckerman tells us that he wouldn't normally agree to meet someone to talk about a tribute for their father.

● But he has "compelling reasons for […] getting a note off to the Swede — within the hour" (1.42), agreeing to meet him. ● First, the Swede was his idol, and he is flooded with memories of him. ● Zuckerman wonders "where was the Jew" (1.45) in the Swede? He thinks, "You couldn't find it yet you knew it was there" (1.45). ● The Swede just looks and acts so perfectly "all-American." ● He wonders, "what did [the Swede] do for subjectivity? What was the Swede's subjectivity?" (1.45) ● (In other words, is the Swede something besides his perfect good looks, his complete success, and his star quality? A person's "subjectivity" is their introspection, their self-analysis, their beliefs and desires: what is "under their skin.") ● Because Zuckerman idolized the Swede, he can't imagine anything that is under his perfect surface. ● Zuckerman tells us that "the second reason [he answers] the Swede's letter" (1.46) is because he's curious about the Swede's "substratum," (1.42) what's underneath his visible surface. ● He wants to know about the Swede's inner life, and if there were things that challenged and disrupted all that perfection. ● Zuckerman knows that "no one gets through unmarked by brooding, grief, confusion, and loss" (1.47). ● But Zuckerman just can't imagine it in the case of the Swede. ● Zuckerman ponders the line in the letter where the Swede talks about shocks. ● He thinks that, "The Swede has suffered a shock" (1.47) and that this shock is what he really wants to talk about. ● But, Zuckerman tells us, "I was wrong" (1.49). ● He and the Swede meet at the Italian restaurant, Vincent's, where the Swede is a regular, and Zuckerman can see instantly that he isn't going to get anywhere near the substratum. ● Rather, the Swede seems to be showing Zuckerman that nothing has changed; the Swede is just as adored and worshiped as before. ● The Swede doesn't have to order. His running order for the past thirty years is baked ziti and clams posillipo. ● Zuckerman orders chicken cacciatore. ● Now Zuckerman is bored. ● The Swede comes out with (groan) the photos of his children, Chris, 18, Steve, 16, and Kent, 14. ● Their mother is a blond woman who looks about forty. ● As the meal "wore on" (1. 55), Zuckerman sees more and more surface Swede. Still no sign of what could be underneath. ● The Swede, he thinks, is "incognito" (1.55), a person with a hidden identity. ● Soon, Zuckerman wonders if the Swede might actually be insane, if something has "warned him" (1.56) against ever "run[ing] counter to anything" (1.56). ● The Swede is almost seventy, six or seven years older than Zuckerman, and still a perfectly beautiful specimen. Still, he looks hollow around the cheeks.

● When they are almost finished eating Zuckerman...