Word: pastorale
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This spring an unusual and virtually simultaneous blooming of senior novelists is taking place. Norman Mailer (see following review), Saul Bellow, the mysterious Thomas Pynchon and a seemingly perennial Philip Roth all have new works scheduled for publication. American Pastoral (Houghton Mifflin; 423 pages; $26) is Roth's fourth offering...
Roth's three previous books--Patrimony, Operation Shylock and Sabbath's Theater--won leading literary prizes, which is no small achievement in the contentious world of book awards. American Pastoral could make Roth's record four for four.
You will search the shelf of contemporary fiction long and hard to find a parental nightmare projected with the emotional force and verbal energy that Roth brings to American Pastoral. Every time she passes a young woman, Mary Dawn hopes it is her daughter. Hope, in fact, is no help...
The stakes have definitely increased since Alexander Portnoy's mother had a conniption 50 years ago about her son's eating food that wasn't kosher. Never before has Roth written fiction with such clear conviction. Never before has he assembled so many fully formed characters or shuttled so authoritatively...
And yet, in a curious way, heaven is AWOL. This is not to say that Americans think death ends everything or even that they doubt heaven's existence. People still believe in it: it's just that their concept of exactly what it is has grown foggier, and they hear...