
In American Pastoral Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth centurys promises of prosperity civic order & domestic bliss. Roths protagonist is Seymour Swede Levov
- a legendary high school athlete a devoted family man a hard worker the prosperous inheritor of his fathers Newark glove factory
- comes of age in thriving triumphant post-war America. & then one day in 1968 Swedes beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swedes 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. & overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral & into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable propelled by sorrow rage & a deep compassion for its characters this is Roths masterpiece.