American Pastoral

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

American Pastoral is a novel written by Philip Roth. Released in 1997, it is the first in Roth's American trilogy and the sixth novel featuring recurring protagonist Nathan Zuckerman. It tells of an American family during the 1960s and their deterioration.

Characters[]

Seymour Irving "Swede" Levov - the patriarch of the Levov family
Merry Levov - Swede's daughter
Nathan Zuckerman
Jerry Levov - Swede's brother and a friend of Nathan's

rest to be added

Publisher's summary[]

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

Sources[]

Goodreads
Wikipedia

Works of Philip Roth
Early novels (1959-1977) Goodbye, Columbus, Letting Go, When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang, The Breast, The Great American Novel, My Life as a Man, The Professor of Desire Middle novels (1979-1993) The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, The Prague Orgy, The Counterlife, Deception, Operation Shylock Later novels (1995-2010) Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain, The Dying Animal, The Plot Against America, Everyman, Exit Ghost, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis Miscellany Goodbye, Columbus, Reading Myself and Others, A Philip Roth Reader, Zuckerman Bound, The Facts, Patrimony, Shop Talk Major and recurring characters Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth, Neil Klugman, David Kepesh, Gabe Wallach, Lucy Nelson, Alexander Portnoy, Trick E. Dixon, Word Smith, Peter Tarnopol, Mickey Sabbath, Swede Levov, Nathan Zuckerman, Marcus Messner, Simon Axler, Bucky Cantor, Arnie Mesnikoff

Title	Author	Release date	Significance
The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen	2001	A novel which shows another family deteriorating
Rabbit, Run	John Updike	1960	A novel with similar themes
Machine Dreams	Jayne Anne Phillips	1984	A novel with similar themes
Revolutionary Road	Richard Yates	1961	A novel which shows another family deteriorating
Appointment in Samarra	John O'Hara	1934	A novel with similar themes
Bullet Park	John Cheever	1967	A novel with similar themes

American Pastoral

Contents

Characters[]

Publisher's summary[]

See also[]

Sources[]