Word: pastoralã
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...extremely disappointed that The Harvard Crimson published a book review (“Studying ‘American Pastoral?? to Understand ‘The Road,’” Theodore J. Gioia, Feb. 23, 2010) written by a reviewer who had not even finished the book! It is completely unacceptable for any newspaper, especially one associated with an academic institution, to publish such a review...
...American Pastoral?? is my favorite novel of all time, and Theo grossly oversimplified a very small portion of it. Philip Roth does anything but portray the American Dream and suburban life as a straightforward, dismal existence. Perhaps if the reviewer had read further, he would have appreciated the Swede’s reaction to his daughter blowing up the local post office. Roth definitely explores the “inner and outer lives of the father and [daughter],” for which Theo praises Cormac McCarthy...
...novel and have reflected on it for years after my first reading. Coincidently, I began to read McCarthy’s “The Road” and never finished it; however, I would never write a review without completing it. Give “American Pastoral?? a chance and don’t be so lazy...
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...
...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’s sardonic probing almost dehumanizes his characters. The overbearing irony of Roth’s enervated vision of America might easily fatigue his reader...