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...contrast to “American Pastoral,” Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” has room for love, purpose, and human heroism despite being set in a post-apocalyptic world. “The Road” centers on a father and son who try to survive while traveling through a ravaged American landscape that has been destroyed by some unspecified disaster. Both the inner and outer lives of the father and son are essential to the novel’s message. The external scenes where the pair hide from...
...commercial as well as critical success. Given McCarthy’s elegant minimalist style and simple, episodic plot, I wondered how this post-apocalyptic novel was capable of capturing the national imagination. It was only after attempting to read Philip Roth’s 1997 novel “American Pastoral,” however, that the merits of “The Road” became apparent. One can learn important things from a novel without even finishing...
Though I only read the first section of Roth’s novel, I was immediately overwhelmed by its heavy fog of exhausted and demoralized irony. “American Pastoral” is replete with characters who lack consequential or connected outer lives, and who also lead hollow and phlegmatic inner lives. These characters are trapped in listless, “nether lives,” in which neither their exterior jobs nor their interior fantasies and dreams inspire them...
Roth harshly ironizes the suburban middle-class conception of the “American Dream.” The comfortable amenities of bourgeois existence have drained the characters of meaningful “substrata” as well as worthwhile exterior vocations. While Roth successfully dramatizes how American values leave his characters trapped in hollow nether lives, all the reader is left with is an aftertaste of tired irony. None of the characters share any significant connections with other people. “American Pastoral” shows a bitter landscape of spiritual aridity in which Roth?...
Davis took the opportunity to speak about a significant new addition to the MFA emerging from its recent renovation: a new American Wing, which is set to open in late 2010. This new effort will showcase works from North, Central, and South America in a chronological manner to evoke a sense of exploration and engagement in its visitors. “However you explore this wing, we do hope you will find something of great interest to you,” Davis said...