Reading Rainbow: Indignation by Philip Roth

Prior to furtively reading this*, the only other Philip Roth I had read was American Pastoral, which I wrote about here. While the scope was certainly broader in the case of American Pastoral, it was a much more laborious read than Indignation.

*I was in the midst of books for the aforementioned book club (spoken of here) and have still yet to finish the first book that was selected, Midnight's Children, but breezed through this in between reading Slaughterhouse-Five and The Fall.

Clearly Indignation does not have the pedigree that American Pastoral did--one of them won the Pulitzer, the other did not--but the reading experience was quite a bit more refreshing*. For starters, the first-person point-of-view narration from the standpoint of Roth's protagonist, Marcus Messner, forces the reader to begin to empathize with the character. As Marcus's father becomes increasingly overbearing and paranoid, we project ourselves into that situation. When he leaves Newark for the fictional setting of Sherwood Anderson's arguable "Great American Novel" Winesburg, Ohio, Marcus begins to become increasingly paranoid and finds trouble balancing the rigors of dedicated studying with a personal life that is growing more and more complicated as Olivia Hutton walks into his life.

*A sentiment that was likely driven just as much by the fact that I was laboring through Midnight's Children at the time.

Now, there is a bizarre turn at about page 75 that I'm not going to get into so as to preserve the surprise, but needless to say this was a turn that caught me so off-guard that I had to put the book down for a couple of minutes just to gather myself. That's all I'll say to this matter.

Now, being set in the 1950s and Marcus being of college age, the ongoing Korean War and the prospect of being drafted if Marcus doesn't remain in college is looming over his head like the Sword of Damocles. It is with so much riding on Marcus's success that his principle-driven self-destructive tendencies and inflexibility put him at risk.

The effortlessness with which Roth tells this story comes through in the ease with which one reads it. Unlike American Pastoral, which was very good to be sure, Indignation actually left me looking forward to opening up the next Roth novel I happen across (probably The Plot Against America).

But don't take my word for it...

Reading Rainbow: American Pastoral by Philip Roth

For reasons that are entirely beyond explanation, American Pastoral marked my first foray into the writings of Philip Roth. I majored in English. I read fairly heavily--certainly by today's standards. When I am moving at my best reading clip, I read about a book per week. Yet I had never read anything by "the greatest living American author".

Whether or not that oft-attached modifier is apropos, I have yet to come to decide for myself, but American Pastoral had enough going for it that I can at least see the grounds by which one may make that argument and not be insanely off base.

American Pastoral tells the tale of how a senseless act of violence can ruin a family. It picks up as Nathan Zuckerman (Roth's alter-ego) is attending his 45th high school reunion and happens to have recently crossed paths with Seymour "Swede" Levov, the blond-haired Jewish high school sports god from his youth. The Swede lived a pretty charmed life and did everything right. He married Miss New Jersey. He successfully took over his father's business when he came of age and moved out to the Jersey countryside to raise his family. At the reunion, Nathan discovers that The Swede died shortly after the two had met and that in 1968, the Swede's daughter had set off a bomb in the idyllic small town of Old Rimrock, killing one in an attempt to bring the war home

From there on, Zuckerman explores the Swede's past in an ultimately futile search to bring reason and understanding to his daughter's act of violence, which is--in totality--senseless.

There is a love that Roth clearly has for all of his characters. An impartiality, too. His journey into the destruction of the American dream is stirring, heartbreaking, and mesmerizing. While his prose does occasionally run long, with adherence to standard sentence structure furthest from his mind both in the writing and editing phase, his thoughts never get so labyrinthine as to prohibit the reader from coming out on the other side. It certainly is not light reading, but it never gets anywhere near the laborious nature of, say, Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce.

American Pastoral took me a little longer than I would have liked, but I certainly do not intend to put off reading the next Roth book I have picked up recently, The Plot Against America, even with the knowledge in hand that it may not be the quickest of reads. So if you have not read American Pastoral, I think it works well.

But don't take my word for it...