“American Pastoral” by Philip Roth

This is a grotesque Jewish-American bildungsroman of sorts. Roth’s novel depicts the inner and outer nature of man and his utter infathomablity to other humans. We are completely alone in this world, incomprehensible to even those closest to us, all the while going through our own lives. We, humans, are utterly unknowable to each other. “The Swede had got up off the ground and he’d done it—a second marriage, a second shot at a unified life controlled by good sense and the classic restraints, once again convention shaping everything, large and small, and serving as barrier against the improbabilities—a second shot at being the traditional devoted husband and father, pledging allegiance all over again to the standard rules and regulations that are the heart of family order…. He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again…. Stoically he suppresses his horror. He learns to live behind a mask. A lifetime experiment in endurance. A performance over a ruin. Swede Levov lives a double life…. The brutality of the destruction of this indestructible man. Whatever Happened to Swede Levov…. And in the everyday world, nothing to be done but respectably carry on the huge pretense of living as himself, with all the shame of masquerading as the ideal man.”