American Pastoral (edit title)

Timothy Gray edited the first sentence of American Pastoral Monday, October 12 2009.

• THE SWEDE.The Swede. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood, even to adults just a generation removed from the city's old Prince Street ghetto and not yet so flawlessly Americanized as to be bowled over by the prowess of a high school athlete.

Timothy Gray edited the awards of American Pastoral Monday, October 12 2009.

• Added an award: Pulitzer Prize
• Added category of an award: Pulitzer Prize Fiction
• Added year of an award: Pulitzer Prize 1998

Shelfari edited the description of American Pastoral Saturday, August 1 2009.

• As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swede's 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. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.

Shelfari edited the contributors of American Pastoral Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Philip Roth: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of American Pastoral Thursday, July 16 2009.

• THE SWEDE. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood, even to adults just a generation removed from the city's old Prince Street ghetto and not yet so flawlessly Americanized as to be bowled over by the prowess of a high school athlete.