Philip Roth won the Pulitzer prize for this riveting, quietly horrifying
novel that shatters the idyllic illusion of America that its inhabitants
once harbored. A commentary on the human incapacity to truly
see beneath the surfaces of apparent well-being in other people, American
Pastoral also provides a fascinating glimpse into the novelist's
process of "what-if." Simply told and deeply affecting, this is a book
that deserves commemoration.
Novelist Skip Zuckerman has a chance meeting with a boyhood hero of
his at a baseball game. That hero is Swede Levov, an older man now who
in his improbably blond-haired, blue-eyed youth was a legend in his own
time within his Jewish neighborhood, an extraordinary athlete who was the
embodiment of "American" to his contemporaries, to their parents, to their
little brothers and sisters. The Swede's younger brother was
Skip's best friend, and that friendship gave the eventual writer ample
opportunity to observe and worship his idol. Swede Levov has aged gracefully,
looking every bit the successful and contented businessman that no one
from their neighborhood ever doubted he could become. He seems, to Skip
now, impossibly serene, as though the Swede is unafflicted by any depth,
that he is incapable of having anything other than the perfect life.
A short time later, Skip receives a letter from Seymour "Swede" Levov,
asking that they meet to discuss a private memoir of the Swede's and his
brother Jerry's father, a glovemaker whose company the Swede eventually
inherited and successfully carried on. Unable all these years later to
resist the quiet, legendary Swede, Skip meets with him. But at the lunch,
the Swede makes no mention of his father or of a memoir, simply talks of
his sons and of memories of Newark before and during World War II. Skip's
impression, is not exactly of shallowness, but of layer after layer of surface, of
glowing blandness and self-contentedness. Skip leaves the meeting disappointed
and a little bewildered about his own continuing fascination with the
great Swede Levov:
Why the appetite to know this guy? Ravenous because once
upon a time he said to you and to you alone, "Basketball was never like
this, Skip"? Why clutch at him? What's the matter with you? There's
nothing here but what you're looking at. He's all about being looked at.
He always was. He is not faking all this virginity. You're craving
depths that don't exist. This guy is the embodiment of nothing.
I was wrong. Never more mistaken about anyone in my life.
A couple of months later, Skip attends his fory-fifth high school reunion.
Having various conversations with old male classmates about the fear of
prostate cancer (and lying about the debilitating effects prostate surgery
has had on himself), watching and wondering at the fact that he and these
people who were once young and strong have grown as old as they are,
Skip runs into the Swede's brother Jerry -- once his intense, combative
Ping Pong-playing best friend, now a several-times-divorced and very
successful surgeon. Skip mentions having had lunch with the Swede, and
Jerry stuns him by saying he's just come from his funeral. The Swede knew
he was dying when he met with Skip, and as the two reminisce, Skip comes
to realize that there was far more to the Swede beneath that seemingly
unscratchable surface.
Obsessed by a few surprising facts of the Swede's life that Jerry
gives him, Skip begins a novel about the Swede. It is a story, a book that Skip is making up as he goes along, but a story
that is nonetheless true and that resonates painfully with anyone who
has ever felt alone, or in control, or who has thought that they knew
all they could about someone of whom they've carried memories all their
lives. As the secrets of the Swede's life unfold, so does the smooth
gloss of satisfaction, contentment, blandness slough away. The
pain that can lie beneath the public face of a person we admire and
respect is laid bare, as is the fact that one torment can lead to more
and further agony with an inevitability that is appalling upon the
realization. American Pastoral is painful, yet a thing of
great beauty, a gorgeous elegy for an innocent America that has long ago
passed away.