American Pastoral/Philip Roth

Readers may recall that I kept this book by my loo as an aid to constipation. Occasionally when a passage of writing engrossed me it moved location but before long was back in its place of residence.

It’s problem is that it is long, over-detailed, wordy and there is no narrational time arc.

The plot – such as it is – is a bomb attack by Merry Levov, daughter of Dawn and Seymour, the central character, and the theme the questioning of the American Dream.

Lou Levov, Seymour’s father, built up a glove business which made father and son rich.

Seymour a prodigious athlete and marine marries Dawn, a young catholic beauty queen, and move to a WASP part of New Jersey.

Their tragedy is that their anti-Vietnam war activist daughter blows up the local store/post office and flees.

Dawn goes into a depression, has a  face-lift and wants to move.

Seymour asks the questions any father would  “Where is she? Why did she do this? What went wrong?”

He has no answers.

Nor does Merry who does appear briefly in the novel. Dawn has an affaire with Ocutt, their Wasp architect, who rather improbably has her over the kitchen sink at a dinner party Seymour and Dawn are giving for his parents.

Even more improbably Seymour has an affaire with Shirley Salzmann, old friends but the couple who gave Merry shelter after she fled the home.

Without a temporal arc the book is hard to follow and much of the writing is dense and over-detailed. To be fair, Roth is a perceptive observer of American and Jewish society and writes elegantly.

However there are inconsistencies in the story. Why does Seymour not engage a private detective to track his daughter down?

Who is Ruth Cohen, supposedly a friend of Merry, who offers herself rather vulgarly to Seymour? Why did Merry commit the crime?

The novel won a Pulitzer prize.

I am never that impressed by book prizes and perhaps it was to reward a big beast of American literature rather than this novel. An adaptation of a  better novel by Roth The Plot Against America is to be broadcast on SKY in a week’s time.