American Pastoral

Just finished American Pastoral. So I was surprised by the ending. I was expecting to be surprised but not in the same way. On the cover,or on the "acclaims" page one of the critics mentioned something along the line that Roth is compassionate to his characters. I agree to some sense, but not totally. When I got to the end, the first thing I thought was: This guy is a freaking literary terrorist. He functions like Merry does in the story, I have never read anything where a writer so lovingly and attentively build up these characters and their world with such care and detail only to bring them down with such glee in the end. He was joyingfully destroying his characters. I don't quite understand why though? It is tragically comical, or comically tragic or both, but I don't understand why he has to do that? Why are we in the point of view of a character who is laughing at this family at the end of the book? Roth was extremely cruel in my opinion. The narrator of the story makes this quite clear in the opening and I have never forgotten that the whole thing is a re-creation of this person by the writer narrator, but still, I don't understand the point of the book? Why this crazy manic ending? Don't understand, and I doubt I will. Besides, I believe that Roth is trying to write a tragedy here (in the classic Greek sense of it--fatal flaw and fall from greatness all that), which I have always found slightly..how shall I put it..I've always felt this form of tragedy really wicked and dark. Because it doesn't really cause readers to share pain, it is a displacement of it. I end up thinking: sure am glad as hell, I'm not that guy. Wow. That's crazy. Poor guy. Glad it's not me. There is something gleeful in this kind of tragedy and I'm just not a fan of. You tsk tsk at Othello. You tsk tsk at the Swede.

Still, it is admirable how Roth is able to move through time. He is a master at it. Flashback and back again. Flashback within flashbacks. Flashbacks after flashbacks.