American Pastoral: Book Review

American Pastoral: Book Review

"At once expansive and painstakingly detailed.... The pages of American Pastoral crackle with the electricity and zest of a first-rate mind at work." —San Francisco Chronicle

I just finished reading American Pastoral, a novel written by Phillip Roth. This book is a literary fiction novel about a man (the Swede) who represents the American Ideal: he was the star athlete in high school, he went on to marry the Miss New Jersey he met in college, and he inherited his father's glove making industry. And this book depicts this man's destruction when his daughter is ensnared by a radical communist ideology.

This book is well-praised and held up as a great work of literature. It even won the Pulitzer Prize. I've only heard of that honor in passing, but apparently it matters. Of course, I absolutely despised this book in almost every respect. In terms of execution, I thought the ideas were horrifically handled and written. From the line level to the scene level, this novel is an abomination.

TL;DR: Rambling, discursive trash. Obnoxious, overlong sentences. Needlessly convoluted syntax. Pseudo-profound, indulgent pontifications that clutter the page. Shameless lack of scene structure. Imagine occupying an abstract space, only to haphazardly be plunged into various concrete scenes in the "story," with the consistent impression that new elements are being casually thrown in as the "story" progresses. Except it's non-linear, so it just looks bad. I hated it.

Overall (No Spoilers)

I don't think there are any positives to this story. I think the concept has the potential to be interesting. Everything about the execution is what I took issue with. But before I start dumping my thoughts out, I just want to share this one quote from the book that I actually do like:

His body had really achieved a strange form: despite the majestic upper torso that had replaced the rolling-pin chest of the gawky boy, he locomoted himself on the same ladderlike legs that had made his the silliest gait in the school, legs no heavier or any shapelier than Olive Oyl's in the Popeye comic strip.

The image this evokes, the comic silliness of the word choice, all of it, is perfect. And I'll admit that Jerry's whole character is very entertaining. He's so unapologetically brash and rude, and I found that it resonated with me quite a bit.

Story Structure

I think the best place to start is by talking about story structure, because a lot of my issues are downstream of the way that this story is told. I mentioned in the TL;DR section that this story was like occupying an abstract place, only to be haphazardly plunged into scene at various points in the story. I don't think there is a better way to summarize this. The general idea is that there is no scene immersion. There is no sense that you are in the life of the Swede, or anyone, really. You are instead told the story. I don't feel what he feels, or really see what he sees as the events unfold. Instead, I felt like I was in white space, with scattered concrete images being presented to me until a "story" emerged. Defenders of the book might point to the Zuckerman frame the story operates within, but I will address that later in this post, because I have a fair bit to say about that detail as well.

One of my favorite parts of reading GRRM's books is that he emphasizes the importance of immersion. While important scenes are unfolding, you also get the sense that there is a day-in-the-life feel to each chapter. And through this you actually live in the head of the character in a way that you can connect to, because you experience things with them. I acknowledge that this might vary between people, but emotional connection was basically non-existent in this book. It felt like I was suspended in white space with some self-satisfied pseudointellectual pontificating endlessly about trivial things—either that or adding nothing substantive to the things that were serious.

Tied to this is Roth's stream of consciousness style of writing. This is what I mean when I say "discursive." His writing has little to no structure that I can tell. I don't really know how he broke the story up into chapters, or into the three parts, because the only connections from one scene to the next are the local connections in the scenes themselves—there are no global connections, save for the novel considered as a whole. I imagine much of the writing process was kind of like a telephone game. I say a word, and then we go back and forth saying the first thing that comes to mind, laughing about where we end up: robot: droid: star wars: science fiction: Einstein: gravity: apple: worm. There! That's my novel! This makes the story hard to follow, and generally annoying—and because I don't want to read things that are annoying, even harder still to follow.

Because of the way in which this story is structured, the story is told in a non-linear manner—or at least loosely non-linear. The story jumps around to depict scenes at various points in the life of the Swede, but this is handled very poorly. In many cases, there were late additions to the story that were never mentioned before, or were only passingly mentioned, only to become very relevant later on. One cringey example is a character named Vicky, who is a black woman who worked at the Swede's factory. She was spontaneously introduced after recounting the Swede being accused of racism by his daughter. Vicky was the token black women in his life who stood by his side during the riots of the 60s, proving that he was not in fact racist. She hadn't been mentioned even once before, but I'm apparently supposed to believe that she is a stalwart friend of his . . . or something. Maybe the ridiculousness was the point. I don't know. But I laughed aloud when this part came.

This happens multiple times. At the very end of the novel, Roth suddenly introduces new character relationships, some of these characters, at best, having been mentioned before in unrelated contexts. Now? They are the Swede and his wife's friends. They have dinner parties, and Roth gives a sudden crash course into the lives and personalities of these characters in the final act of the story, acting as if these people had ever been this relevant up to this point. The effect of these introductions late in the story, combined with the non-linear storytelling, makes the story feel artificial and fake. Why didn't we get a sense that these characters were as important as they seemed to be by the end of the novel? It's because Roth's writing style is stream of consciousness. He literally is making shit up as he goes.

It's about time to address the Zuckerman aspect of the story. This story is actually a frame story . . . kind of. Nathan Zuckerman is the man who tells the story of the Swede. He grew up with the Swede, and he idolized him from a young age. When he meets the man later in life, he wonders what the man's life must have been like but is stunned by the banality of it. The Swede is twice married, and now has three sons that he is very proud of. Only later, at a high school reunion, does Zuckerman learn about the horrors of the Swede's first marriage. He then does some research and tells the story of the Swede's life as he imagines it.

One of the reasons I pushed through this book until the end is because I thought this frame structure to the story would become relevant in a big way. After all, Zuckerman knows little to nothing about the Swede in real life, so we don't know how much of this story being recounted is actually true. Surely the uncertainty about the events that transpired would play a part in the story some way. Through the themes. Through the characters: especially Zuckerman. But no. I don't see anything. Quite literally, the story never steps outside of the frame and returns to Zuckerman. Once Zuckerman drifts off to imagine the Swede's life, Roth essentially forgets how the story began. The theme seems to be about the senseless nature of violence, that the worst can happen to even the best of us, and for no reason. What does the frame structure contribute to this? Does the uncertainty of Zuckerman's retelling enhance this theme? To my mind, it undermines it.

You might try to defend some of the earlier literary decisions—the discursive stream of consciousness delivery, the lack of immersion, the non-linear presentation—by citing that fact that this is all a recounting by Zuckerman: this is just a realistic reflection of how of story like this would be told. I thought this was the case throughout the whole book. But then I thought about it more. And the story told from Zuckerman's perspective, before he starts recounting the Swede's life, is written no differently from the rest of the story. At the very least, the discursive nature is consistent throughout. As is the lack of immersion—that feeling of living in abstract white space with nothing concrete to grasp. So, Roth did nothing to make Zuckerman's recounting stand out as a recounting.

Prose

The prose is the next part of the novel that I want to cover. This book doesn't just suffer in terms of broader cohesiveness, but also at the finer level. In the TL;DR section I mentioned that this book had overlong sentences, convoluted syntax, and pseudo-profound, indulgent descriptions. I will go through each of those in turn.

I've already discussed at length my problems with long sentences in the Blood Meridian review. There, I acknowledged a nuance: that long sentences are less awful if they don't abuse syntax, like excessively using inserted clauses that break up the flow of the sentence and the delivery of ideas. And Roth was precisely the kind of author I had in mind when I brought up examples of bad long sentences. Here is one example from early on:

Here was Dapper, Dirty, Daffy Mendy Gurlik, not in prison (where I was certain he'd wind up when he'd urge us to sit in a circle on the floor of his bedroom, some four or five Daredevils with our pants pulled down, competing to win the couple of bucks in the pot by being the one to "shoot" first), not in hell (where I was sure he'd be consigned after being stabbed to death at Lloyd's Manor by a colored guy "high on reefer”—whatever that meant), but simply a retired restaurateur—owner of three steakhouses called Garr's Grill in suburban Long Island—at no place more disreputable than his high school class's forty-fifth reunion.

This sentence is more-or-less the quintessential synecdoche embodying everything wrong with the prosework of this novel. This whole block of text is a single sentence. But how many ideas are being communicated in this one sentence? I am counting up to eight ideas being communicated here. I don't think writing has to be reduced to a single idea per sentence, but this is pushing it to the very limit. But McCarthy showed that you can do this and remain coherent if you use polysyndetons to string together your independent clauses. My critique of him was that I thought it was pointless and better communicated by shorter sentences.

For Roth, my criticism is much sharper. Excessive use of long sentences strains my tolerance, but it's the syntax that makes this prose especially awful. In the example above, he breaks up the flow of his sentence and the delivery of the ideas multiple times. And these insertions aren't even short, but as long as, or longer than, the original independent clause. Why? What is the appeal in writing like this? Sometimes, when I am feeling especially introspective, especially so on days where I have nothing to do, I pace around the house tracing wide circles in the flooring—almost as if I were in a race like my time in high school as a cross country contestant running races like a cheetah, feeling the wind at my back—and I would think long and hard about a variety of topics—philosophy, psychology, history, and the rest—and oftentimes I would have to conclude that one such trend or idea or another in common parlance was quite simply nonsense.

Like in my Blood Meridian review, I want to try to rewrite the sentence to see if I can make my criticisms more concrete:

Here was Dapper, Dirty, Daffy Mendy Gurlik. He was not in prison. And I was certain he would be after he'd urge us to sit in a circle on the floor of his bedroom; some four or five Daredevils would have our pants pulled down, and we'd compete to win the couple of bucks in the pot by being the one to "shoot" first. He wasn't in hell, either. I was sure he'd be consigned there after being stabbed to death at Lloyd's Manor by a colored guy "high on reefer”—whatever that meant. Instead, he was simply a retired restaurateur, an owner of three steakhouses called Garr's Grill in suburban Long Island. It was a place no more disreputable than his high school class's forty-fifth reunion.

I broke up the core independent clause in the sentence and instead paired each of the items in the list with the inserted clauses. The core clause is this: "Here was Dapper, Dirty, Daffy Mendy Gurlik, not in prison, not in hell, but simply a retired restaurateur." Everything else in the sentence is added fluff. One option is to keep this core clause and add the rest of the information in separate sentences after this clause, but this would make the information too scattered. As stated above, I decided to break it up, instead, making the list implicit in the paragraph, rather than a sentence. The inserted clauses are then joined with each of the list items they are attached to, to make a sentence or two. This is so much easier to read, it communicates the exact same information, and uses the same diction. Unless you prefer making your prose more impenetrable for no reason other than for its own sake, then I see no reason to prefer Roth's version over the alternative version I provided.

And this is the crux of my issue with "dense prose." "Dense prose" often just means convoluted syntax. It has nothing to do with the substance of the material being discussed, it has nothing to do with diction, it has everything to do with how you structure your sentences. This is precisely what I think of when I talk about bad writing on a line-by-line level.

My dislike of this writing is my opinion. I can ask "why" all day, but the answer is always going to be down to arbitrary preferences. I just find it to be a pointless gimmick, at best, and obscuritanist, at worst.

Up to this point in the prose section, I have only talked about the superficial aspects of the writing. Presumably, the story is communicating ideas, images, and themes with all these words. Roth seems to think that he is, and that it is all so profound. And his fans seem to think so, as well.

I don't find it profound at all. This is not just the selection of ideas, mind you, but the weight of emphasis placed on the ideas and the way he discusses them. He talks endlessly about why the Swede's life might have turned out the way it did. On its own, this can range from interesting to outright banal, but he spends pages and pages going through all the specific examples, rephrasing the same idea over and over and over again. Just. Stop. I get it. You've communicated the idea. Perhaps you could be more creative in how you convey this information, instead of ranting at the reader.

All the philosophical musings in this book are like that of a pothead waxing poetically about the profoundness of the most trivial of things: Look at this chair! The sheer and utter versatility of such an object! Look at this exquisite design, this masterful alignment of the legs, so positioned as to allow a man, or even a woman, to sit upon said chair without tipping over! Oh! To whom must we praise for such an ingenious image brought to life, to put such passion, such energy into this, as if one's life were for that purpose, all for the simple convenience of sitting upon a chair!

Do you think this is an exaggeration? It isn't. This book is loaded with pages upon pages of this. Here is an example:

The smile again. The vulnerability in that smile was the surprising element—the vulnerability of our record-breaking muscleman faced with all the crudeness it takes to stay alive. The smile's refusal to recognize, let alone to sanction in himself, the savage obstinacy that seven decades of surviving requires of a man. As though anyone over ten believes you can subjugate with a smile, even one that kind and warm, all the things that are out to get you, with a smile hold it all together when the strong arm of the unforeseen comes crashing down on your head. Once again I began to think that he might be mentally unsound, that this smile could perhaps be an indication of derangement. There was no sham in it—and that was the worst of it. The smile wasn't insincere. He wasn't imitating anything. This caricature was it, arrived at spontaneously after a lifetime of working himself deeper and deeper into ... what? The idea of himself neighborhood stardom had wreathed him in—had that mummified the Swede as a boy forever? It was as though he had abolished from his world everything that didn't suit him—not only deceit, violence, mockery, and ruthlessness but anything remotely coarse-grained, any threat of contingency, that dreadful harbinger of helplessness. Not for a second did he stop trying to make his relation to me appear as simple and sincere as his seeming relationship to himself.

I don't have a problem with the narrator interpreting and/or speculating about the smile of another person. But look at the sheer volume of words used to do this. It was almost an entire page. A couple sentences would have sufficed. And so, you can imagine how long it took Roth to muse over the core theme of this novel. The novel isn't even a story, but an extended rant like the one above, pondering the senseless nature of violence, but with none of the emotion or the appeal that you would have in an actual story. And the lack of concision is borne of this idea that poetic expression is a substitute for substance. It isn't. Poetic prose can be a good dressing over a story, but don't let it masquerade as the story itself. This is coming from someone who is arguably verbose in his own way, so this says something.

Forgive me for being too forward . . . but this book isn't high-brow. This book isn't profound. Most of it is just whiny, sad-sackery bullshit. It's a series of tedious diary entries written by a grown-ass man; a grown-ass man whom I can only stereotype as someone who masturbates to the sound of his own voice.

Theme

Finally, I want to talk about the theme of the story. Specifically, I want to talk about how it was delivered. Every review I see of this book talks about how depressing and pessimistic it is. Some even say that it is hard to read because it is so sad. I've already stated the theme: the senseless nature of violence and the unfairness in which a person's life can be destroyed by it.

Call me a cynic, but the theme isn't really that profound. What compels people to think that the universe is anything but indifferent to human affairs anyway? Why is it so difficult for people to understand that there is no inherent link between morality and the causal order of the universe?

More to the point, this book did a terrible job making me invest in any of the characters. I didn't even feel mildly bad for any of them. I didn't even think the Swede's life was that bad, all things considered.

Partly, I think my reaction was primed by the book I read right before this one: Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn. Flynn's book did a far better job immersing me in the lives of the characters, getting me to feel what they felt. In that book, a mother finds out that her fifteen-year-old son has been accused of something horrific. She learns that the parents in town are meeting up to talk about the incident—and to defend her son, she goes to the meeting. There, she is accused of being a terrible mother, that she was irresponsible and drove him to act out. And all of this is within the context of her being an exhausted single mother of four, with a deadbeat father nowhere to be seen, and her home about to be foreclosed upon due to lack of money. This scene was perfectly executed, with Flynn immersing us in the perspective of the mother, depicting her life and struggles beforehand, and then raining hell when the scene finally hits.

American Pastoral's execution was awful, and it is all downstream of the structural problems that I mentioned above. There is no scene immersion. There is no linear delivery of the events, creating the necessary build up to any of the emotionally impactful scenes at the end. Instead, we just experience everything from afar. Going in, I imagined that the story would introduce us to the characters, get us invested in who they are and what they are doing, and then force us to watch as everything falls apart. But instead we're being introduced to characters in the third act that were apparently important from the beginning, and I'm supposed to feel something when I learn that these bonds are fracturing. The entire reason events like the Red Wedding are so impactful is because we see these characters struggle and succeed beforehand, and because we are immersed in their lives and their emotions. None of that was here.

And was the Swede's life that bad? This is a serious question. I'm apparently supposed to feel sick over this, and I agree that the front half of his life was horrific, but we learn at the very beginning that the Swede remarries and goes on to have three sons whom he is very proud of. So, despite the horrors inflicted on him in his first marriage, he managed to move on. But the book never gives the impression that I'm supposed to have this interpretation. Apparently, it's just all senseless and devastating. Just ignore the half of his life that has been good. Could this be the Zuckerman frame, reflecting his pessimism? If so, then everyone has grossly misunderstood the story. But Roth doesn't talk about his story that way, so I think this is just Roth's own irrational pessimism coming forward. The universe's indifference to us should not be confused for hostility.

Conclusion

What does it mean to be a literary great? My theory of values is such that values are subject contingent by their very nature. As such, what we determine to be great is dependent on who is talking. I'm often reminded of this when I read literary fiction, especially the "great" ones. American Pastoral is like Bill Orcutt's abstract art. It seems slapped together. I just don't get it.

Overall, I suffered several aneurisms while reading this. I will give it a 0/10.