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American Pastoral | Introduction

American Pastoral (1997) is the twenty-second book by Philip Roth, one of the leading twentieth-century American writers. This long novel, which is almost mythic in scope, explores the course of American history from the late 1940s, which Roth’s narrator and alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, regards as a golden period, to the social upheavals that marked the 1960s and early 1970s. The focal point of the story is a Jewish character called Swede Levov, an outstanding man in every respect—brilliant athlete, successful businessman, devoted husband and father—whose only goal is to live a tranquil, pastoral life in rural Old Rimrock, New Jersey. But his rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter, Merry, gets caught up in the anti-Vietnam War movement and plants a bomb at the local post office, killing one person. Swede’s idyllic life is shattered forever, and for the rest of his life, as the novel zigzags its way back and forth in time, Swede tries without success to understand what went wrong. How could such a thing have happened? In his searching examination of how confident, post-World War II America gave way to the violence and disorder of the 1960s, Roth explores, with depth, understanding, and compassion, issues such as the nature of community and belonging, Jewish assimilation, father-daughter relations, familial loyalty and betrayal, and political fanaticism.

American Pastoral Summary

Part 1: Paradise Remembered

Chapter 1
American Pastoral begins in Weequahic, a middle-class area of Newark, New Jersey. The narrator, Philip Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, recalls his high school years during the late 1940s. In particular, he recalls Seymour Levov, a Jewish boy seven years his senior, who was Weequahic High School’s star athlete during the early years of World War II. Everyone called Seymour, “the Swede” or “Swede,” and he was widely loved and admired. Swede joined the Marines in 1945 and became a drill instructor. After college graduation, he married Dawn Dwyer, a Catholic woman and former Miss New Jersey.

Zuckerman recalls that in 1985 he went to New York to watch the Mets and happened to see Swede. He introduced him to his companions as the greatest athlete in the history of Weequahic High School. Ten years later, Zuckerman received a letter from the Swede in which Swede said he wanted to meet Zuckerman for dinner in New York. He wanted to talk about his father, who recently died at the age of ninety-six and had “suffered because of the shocks that befell his loved ones.” Flattered, Zuckerman agreed, and they met at an Italian restaurant. But the Swede talked mostly about his three sons and did not mention his father. Zuckerman was frustrated at being unable to penetrate the Swede’s bland exterior. He wanted to know what lay behind the man’s polite, smooth manner.

Chapter 2
Zuckerman reports on an enjoyable forty-fifth high school reunion, for which he drove three hours from his home in western Massachusetts. He meets his old friend Mendy Gurlik, and they discuss the fact that twenty members of their class are now dead, two of them from prostate cancer, which Gurlik fears, and which Zuckerman has already had. Zuckerman also meets Ira Posner and Alan Meisner, and they recall their high school days. Then Jerry Levov, Zuckerman’s old classmate and Swede’s younger brother, unexpectedly arrives at the reunion.

Chapter 3
Jerry informs Zuckerman that Swede died of prostate cancer only a few days earlier. Jerry speaks appreciatively of his brother’s generous nature and his skill at running his business manufacturing ladies’ gloves. But the Swede’s life was destroyed, according to Jerry, by his daughter, Meredith, known as Merry. Merry was sixteen years old when in a protest against the Vietnam War in 1968, she planted a bomb in the post office at Old Rimrock, the village five miles from where the Levovs lived. The explosion killed a doctor who happened to be there. After that, Merry was known as the Rimrock Bomber. Jerry says that the Swede brought her up in a permissive way, in keeping with the times, but she resented it. The bomb put an end to the charmed life the Swede had led up to that point.

Jerry recalls a moment two years earlier when he found the Swede, who always maintained his placid exterior, sobbing in his car outside a restaurant. Swede told him that Merry, who had gone into hiding after planting the bomb, was dead. Jerry believed that Swede had always known where she was and had been going to see her. Jerry hated Merry and told his brother he was better off without her.

Jerry tells Zuckerman more about Swede’s life. Dawn, in Jerry’s view, was never satisfied with what Swede provided for her, and Merry was afflicted with a stutter. Swede took her to speech therapists and psychiatrists, but nothing seemed to help. His reward was that his own daughter started to hate him. Jerry wonders why such a thing would happen to a man like Swede.

Intrigued by Swede’s life, Zuckerman decides to write a book with Swede as the main character. He wants to delve into the man’s character and discover what he was really like.

As the narrative returns to the reunion, Zuckerman meets Joy Helpern, and they recall a hayride they took together when they were in high school. As they talk, Zuckerman continues to think about Swede. He guesses that what Swede had really wanted to tell him about in the restaurant was not his father but his daughter. This was the great wound in his life that the Swede could not get out of his mind despite the fact that he had rebuilt his life with a second wife and three sons.

Joy tells Zuckerman details of her life as a girl that he had not known about, but then Zuckerman continues his speculations about what went wrong in Swede’s life and how his desire to live a utopian, “American pastoral” life had turned into its antithesis, the “violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral.” As he dances with Joy, he contemplates the wider historical question of how Swede had become “history’s plaything.” Zuckerman thinks of the transition in U.S. society from World War II to the 1960s and the chaos created by the Vietnam War.

He begins in his mind to write the book about the Swede, imagining himself into the other man’s life. He first creates a scene in Deal, New Jersey, at a seaside cottage when Merry is eleven. Driving back from the beach, Merry asks Swede to kiss her the way he kisses her mother. After an initial refusal, her father kisses her passionately on the mouth. He later wonders whether this one lapse is the cause of their subsequent suffering.

Zuckerman then reconstructs Merry’s early life. When attempts to cure her stutter fail, Merry starts eating junk food, and by the time she is sixteen, she is very overweight. She becomes politically minded, opposing the Vietnam War and renouncing her family’s middle-class values. She starts to fight with her parents. Swede argues with her about her Saturday afternoon trips to New York, where she sometimes stays overnight. After Merry rebells... » Complete American Pastoral Summary