American Pastoral (First Edition)

Roth, Philip

ISBN 10: 0395860210 / ISBN 13: 9780395860212

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1997

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. First edition, first printing with full number line. Hardcover. Very good in a near fine dust jacket. Evidence of glue residue on front colored endpapers. Some wear to head and foot of spine (jacket nad book). "American Pastoral" is the story of Seymour Swede Levov, a New Jersey businessman whose seemingly ideal life is shattered by his daughter's radical politics during the Vietnam War era. Roth (1933-2018) was one of America's most acclaimed novelists, winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award (three times), among many others. "American Pastoral" won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the first volume in his American Trilogy, followed by "I Married a Communist" (1998) and "The Human Stain" (2000). NOTE: the stock image associated with this title is the wrong picture; book is the Houghton Mifflin edition, not faux leather. Seller Inventory # Sale-Fiction-Roth

Synopsis:

A former athletic star, devoted family man, and owner of a thriving glove factory, Seymour "Swede" Levov finds his life coming apart during the social disorder of the 1960s, when his beloved daughter turns revolutionary terrorist out to destroy her father's world. 100,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo.

Reviews: Roth's elegiac and affecting new novel, his 18th, displays a striking reversal of form--and content--from his most recent critical success, the Portnoyan Sabbath's Theater (1995). Its narrator, however, is a familiar Rothian figure: writer Nathan Zuckerman (of The Ghost Writer, et al.)--and in case you're wondering whether he still seems to be his author's alter ego, Nathan is now in his early 60s, recovering from both cancer surgery and a longtime affair with an English actress. Essentially retired, Nathan is approached by a high-school classmate's older brother-- and the well-remembered hero of his youth: Seymour ``Swede'' Levov, once a blue-eyed athletic and moral paragon who strode through life with ridiculous ease, now nearing 70 and crushed by outrageous misfortunes. Swede asks his help writing a tribute to his late father, and soon thereafter dies himself. Piqued by the enigma of a seemingly perfect life (superb health, a successful family business, marriage to a former beauty queen) inexplicably gone wrong, Zuckerman ``dream[s] a realistic chronicle'' that reconstructs Swede's life--compounded of information gleaned from others who knew him, and centering in the 1960s when Swede's life began to unravel. His only daughter Meredith (``Merry'') had rebelled against her parents' and her culture's complacency, protested against the war in Vietnam, claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing in which innocent people were killed, and gone ``underground'' as a fugitive. Most of the scenes Zuckerman/Roth imagines, therefore, are intensely emotional conversations in which the conflicting claims of social solidarity and individual integrity are debated with pained immediacy. Here, and in more conventionally expository authorial passages, meditativeness and discursiveness predominate over drama. Nevertheless, passion seethes through the novel's pages. Some of the best pure writing Roth has done. And Swede Levov's anguished cry ``What the hell is wrong with doing things right?'' may be remembered as one of the classic utterances in American fiction. (First printing of 100,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $150,000 ad/promo) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

There is no sex in the new Philip Roth novel, but that is only one shortcoming. Pastoral, like Roth's 21 previous works, is well crafted with vivid, crisp prose, but unlike the others, it's empty. There's no there there. Roth resurrects alter ego Nathan Zuckerman to introduce Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Phineas-like character from Roth's childhood at Newark's Wequahic High School. Swede and Nathan meet by chance at a Mets' game years later. Swede, a towheaded, square-jawed, six-foot superathlete, had a knack for transcending the turbulence of wartime America. A marine at the end of World War II, he is spared the South Pacific slaughterhouse and is kept stateside to play baseball for the Parris Island squad. After the war, he marries Dawn, the blond Miss New Jersey, buys a house in the country, and takes over his father's multimillion-dollar glove factory in Newark. And after that, Roth delights in the destruction of his all-American hero, filling page after page with frustration, humiliation, and anxiety: Vietnam radicalizes Swede's daughter, Merry, destroying the family; Dawn's depression and infidelity ruin their marriage; and a jealous, vindictive brother and controlling father each take a toll. Pastoral is both sentimental and savage. Roth vents his bitterness with America and himself. Once again, no one escapes the misery that personifies modern America. Ted Leventhal

In his latest novel, Roth shows his age. Not that his writing is any less vigorous and supple. But in this autumnal tome, he is definitely in a reflective mood, looking backward. As the book opens, Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, recalls an innocent time when golden boy Seymour "the Swede" Levov was the pride of his Jewish neighborhood. Then, in precise, painful, perfectly rendered detail, he shows how the Swede's life did not turn out as gloriously as expected?how it was, in fact, devastated by a child's violent act. When Merry Levov blew up her quaint little town's post office to protest the Viet Nam war, she didn't just kill passing physician Fred Conlon, she shattered the ties that bound her to her worshipful father. Merry disappears, then eventually reappears as a stick-thin Jain living in sacred povery in Newark, having killed three more people for the cause. Roth doesn't tell the whole story blow by blow but gives us the essentials in luminous, overlapping bits. In the end, the book positively resonates with the anguish of a father who has utterly lost his daughter. Highly recommended.
-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bibliographic Details

Title: American Pastoral (First Edition)
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: Book Club Edition