Mourning the “Greatest Generation”: Myth and History in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

Abstract

In a 1973 interview about his satirical book The Great American Novel, Roth describes 1960s as a demythologizing decade in which the very nature of American things yielded and collapsed overnight (Great American Novel 90). A self-described member of most propagandized generation--a product of World War II rhetoric, Cold War containment, and mass media--Roth at that point views in terms of a Cold War battle over realm of social imaginaire, a struggle between benign national of itself that a power prefers to perpetuate, and relentlessly insidious, very nearly reality ... that will not give an inch in behalf of that idealized (90) Over 20 years later, in aftermath of Cold War, Roth revisits this battleground in American Pastoral, at a time in popular when Roth's most propagandized generation has been elegiacally remythologized as members of Tom Brokaw's the greatest generation. I would argue that in American Pastoral, Roth, in guise of his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, returns to a consideration of sixties, but with a less satirical, more elegiac voice. At center of American Pastoral is Swede Levov, benevolent Jewish American liberal Roth describes as fettered to (5) during apogee of US Cold War hegemony--between World War II and Vietnam War. (1) Roth pits Swede Levov as a true believer in the benign national myth of American pastoral against his 16-year-old daughter Merry, a militant radical who articulates what Roth describes as counterpastoral impulse, demonic reality ... that will not give an inch in behalf of that idealized mythology. Encapsulating this struggle in a private family drama, Roth examines assault against both historical and literary metanarratives that constitute American mythic ideal, interrogating a consensus ideology reflected in a modernist of history and literary theory. Critics have focused their readings of American Pastoral on its counter-pastoral puzzle--that is, on question that haunts Swede Levov: How did Merry become angriest kid in America (279)? In pondering cause for Merry's left-wing militancy, some scholars read novel as Roth's implicit apology for his earlier liberal perspective, while others read it as his defense of that perspective. In their discussions of novel, both Edward Alexander and Timothy Parrish invoke Irving Howe's famous 1972 essay Philip Roth Reconsidered, in which Howe perceives Roth's attacks on middle-class suburbia as pandering to 'liberated' suburban children (79) and argues that Roth, denying himself a vision of major possibilities (72), has a thin personal culture, one that cannot fully access either his Jewish heritage or great sweep of democratic idealism and romanticism of mainstream of American culture (79). Despite his lifelong socialist commitments, Howe was at odds with intellectual left of sixties, criticizing those he saw as helping to perpetuate excesses of decade. According to neoconservative Alexander, Roth in American Pastoral implicitly acknowledges truth of Howe's critique of left, for Roth's novel is the existential realization of Howe's criticism of moral and political style of New Left ... of sixties (184), and Merry, chief villain, is perfect embodiment of leftist dabblers who turn against their overly indulgent liberal parents, naively spout politically radical creeds, and succumb to their fascination with violence. Timothy Parrish cites Howe's criticism of Roth's thin personal culture but argues that novel, through Zuckerman, explores the deleterious consequences of forsaking one's Jewish origins (87). Both Alexander and Parrish perceive Roth/Zuckerman/Swede as revaluating their earlier liberal, postmodern stances, acknowledging both their liberal naivete and power of father's voice. …