Ep 39: Going Berserk in the American Pastoral

Send us Fan MailIn 1997 Philip Roth entered a brilliant late phrase of a career that no one really saw coming. While certainly one of the greats of later twentieth century American fiction, he was widely seen as spinning variations on his favorite fixations, sex and women (not necessarily in that order). But with American Pastoral he took on history and into the lives of solid citizens a force of violent disorder he called "the berserk." For most of his life Seymour "Swede" Levov seems gifted by God: a handsome, celebrated athlete, a proverbial hero to New Jersey Jewish communities seeking mainstream assimilation. But then one day in 1968 his teenage daughter Merry commits an act of violence reminiscent of those fabled homegrown terrorist bombers the Weathermen, and suddenly the lives of the Swede and his dreamboat wife Dawn are sucked into the maelstrom of the radical 1960s. Widely considered one of Roth's greatest accomplishments---despite some persistent questions about narrative form and the digressive lack of dramatizing---American Pastoral finds Roth poking at that national myth of self-making, the American Dream (a term we hate!), and asking where such a thing as the American idyll truly exists.  All opinions are the hosts' own and do not reflect the points of view of their employers, publishers, relatives, pets, or accountants. All show music is by Lobo Loco.  The intro song is “Old Ralley”; the intermission is “The First Moment,” and the outro is “Inspector Invisible.”  For more information visit: https://locolobomusic.com/.