Uncommon
American Pastoral
1997 novel by Philip Roth
American Pastoral
American Pastoral is a 1997 novel by American novelist Philip Roth. Its protagonist, Seymour "Swede" Levov, is a successful Jewish-American businessman and former high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, which in the novel is described as a manifestation of the "indigenous American berserk". It is the first in Roth's American Trilogy, followed by I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000). The framing device in American Pastoral is a 45th high school reunion attended by Nathan Zuckerman, who is the narrator. At the reunion, in 1995, Zuckerman meets former classmate Jerry Levov who describes to him the tragic derailment of the life of his recently deceased older brother, Seymour "Swede" Levov. The second part of the novel consists of Zuckerman's posthumous recreation of Seymour's life, based on Jerry...
Open boosters, collect cards and trade them. Free to play.
Play for free