“GOODBYE, AMERICANA, HELLO REAL TIME”: THE DEATH OF IDEALISM IN PHILIP ROTH’S AMERICAN PASTORAL
“GOODBYE, AMERICANA, HELLO REAL TIME”: THE DEATH OF IDEALISM IN PHILIP ROTH’S AMERICAN PASTORAL

Summary/Abstract: “Goodbye, Americana, Hello Real Time”: The Death of Idealism in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Philip Roth’s 1997 American Pastoral is a textbook illustration of failed cultural transmission: the transference and transformation of values, idea(l)s and information in the lives of Seymour Levov, his family, his community prove to be governed by loss, misrepresentation and gradual decline into disorder. Far from delivering the romanticized version of life in the Jewish neighborhood that the title implies, the novel captures a disenchanted Americana, wherein idealism and radicalism clash against the background of the ideologically fractured 1960s. While ‘the Swede’ apparently initially embodies the (super)hero, middle-class American Dream, American Pastoral chronicles America’s evolution after World War II, which is captured as a mixture of convention and rebellion, both stemming from clashing political ideologies. This paper examines the book’s polarizing discourses, keeping an emblematic passage in mind: “Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”

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