Bludgeoning Deviancy

American Pastoral
Philip Roth
Vintage, Random House, Inc., 423 pages

I can understand why veteran book critic and writer for Time magazine Paul Gray has chosen Philip Roth as America's Best Author for 2002. Gray said of the writer - "Roth is a serious writer who has never been somber in print; his narrative voice is unique, and so is the way he consistently wrings slapstick comedy out of tics and obsessions of his characters. No one else writing today has been more amusing or more enlightening."
It was a worthy accolade. After all, Roth has been awarded almost all of the major literary prizes in America: The PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1994) and The Human Stain (2001); National Book Award for Goodbye, Columbus (1960) and Sabbath's Theater (1995); National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1987) and Patrimony (1992).
Portnoy's Complaint (1969) was in No. 52 in the The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century as chosen by The Board of Modern Library, a division of Random House.
American Pastoral won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and evaluated the state of American families not only in the 60's but also in the current situation.
The novel is divided into three parts. The first part, entitled Paradise Remembered tells the story of The Swede, Seymour Irving Levov in real life, who is considered as a legendary athlete at his Newark High School during the war years.
Told by The Swede's brother's best friend Nathan Zuckerman, an author, it serves as the background of the story. Swede Levov's name is considered "magical" and bears resemblance to a superstar. The Swede starred as end in football, center in basketball and first baseman in baseball and a well-admired hero of his hometown.
The Swede's parents, Lou and Sylvia, were a refined Jewish couple whose business, manufacturing ladies' gloves, hit a jackpot in 1942.
Swede married a former Miss New Jersey, former Miss Union County and Spring Queen at Upsala and represented her state in the 1949 Miss America.
Zuckerman and Swede met in 1985 with which they recalled what once was. The Swede, aged close to 70, suffers from prostate cancer, came to tell the author of his three sons from his second marriage but did not disclose his state in his relationship with the former Miss New Jersey.
After such encounter, Zuckerman learned from their class reunion that The Swede had already died. He then proceeded to write a story about the legend and the controversies that haunt them.
What is primarily discusssed in the first part was the happier moments of the Swede and the prestige mark that he brought to his hometown. However, as the pages go on it also gives the sad account of the fall of a perfect American couple when they had their first daughter Merideth Levov, called Merry. As Merry grew there was a distinct flaw in her, though a beautiful and charming child, she has a speech abnormality marked by stuttering.
That state put her into difficulty bonding with others (talk about Polly) where she became an "angry-with-everything child because of her speech deficiency and doesn't make friends."
The second part entitled The Fall is an account of the conflict between father and daughter. While the father tried to uplift their condition, the daughter boils into hassle bringing down their "nice" reputation.
For the past 25 years, their daughter goes into seclusion after bombing a post office and killing a doctor who has just stopped by the collection box to drop off his mail.
The Swede's little darling has been tagged as the "Rimrock Bomber" and tortured him in a pained discursiveness and compromises. The agony has given the Swede "sleeplessness and self-castigation night after night. Enormous loneliness. Unflagging remorse..."
The agony became worse when father and daughter met in an uncompromising situation. The daughter was converted informally into a religion which treats every living things with "respect." "She wore a veil to do no harm to the microscopic organisms that dwell in the air we breathe. She did not bathe because she revered all life, including the vermin. She did not wash to do no harm to the water... she has to do such thing to be a perfected soul."
The third part is entitled Paradise Lost which surges into the depth of the Swede's life - the haunting and the psychological impact that consumed their lives.
American Pastoral is an illustration of an American social irresponsibility, an optimism gone wrong and a striving familial upheaval./

(Published in Sun.Star Bacolod August 17, 2004 Lifestyle Section)