Philip Roth Knihy

Bucky Cantor, dvadsaťtriročný židovský chlapec z Newarku, vyštudoval univerzitu a stal sa učiteľom telocviku. Píše sa rok 1944, Buckyho nevzali do armády, lebo je silne krátkozraký, a tak si cez prázdniny privyrába ako vedúci a športový organizátor detského ihriska. Pokojnú atmosféru dní naruší ochorenie jedného z detí a čoskoro sa ukáže, že mesto je postihnuté epidémiou detskej obrny, pomerne často so smrteľnými dôsledkami. Bucky situáciu ťažko znáša, lebo sa s deťmi medzičasom zžil, a okrem toho mnohé z nich pozná zo svojho jednoročného pôsobenia na škole. Nevie pochopiť ľudskú bezmocnosť zoči-voči zákernej chorobe, a búri sa aj proti Bohu, ktorý čosi podobné dopúšťa.

Príbeh o zrážke idealizmu so životnou realitou, navyše sťaženou problémami dospievania. Píše sa rok 1951. Kórejská vojna vstupuje do druhého roku svojho trvania a mladý Marcus Messner odchádza na provinčnú vysokú školu v Ohiu. Pochádza síce z prímorského a veľkomestskejšieho Newarku, ale cíti potrebu dostať sa čím ďalej od domova. Dusí ho láskavá, ale dotieravá a ťaživá starostlivosť vlastnej rodiny, a najmä otca, židovského mäsiara, priam hystericky posadnutého obavami z nebezpečenstiev číhajúcich na dospievajúceho syna. Posledných 25 riadkov knihy tvorí osobitnú kapitolu s titulom „Historická poznámka“, kde sa konštatuje fakt študentskej a černošskej revolúcie (trošku menej zamatovej ako iné, ale naozaj len trošku), ktorá v Spojených štátoch zmietla Rothom opisovaný starý svet. Lenže, bohužiaľ, Marcusovi Messnerovi to už nepomohlo.

Najnovší román Philipa Rotha je intímnym, no univerzálnym príbehom straty, ľútosti a stoicizmu. Ústrednou postavou je úspešný komerčný umelec z newyorskej reklamnej agentúry, otec dvoch synov z prvého manželstva, ktorí ním pohŕdajú, a dcéry z druhého manželstva, ktorá ho zbožňuje. Má za sebou tri stroskotané manželstvá. Na dôchodok odchádza do prímorského mestečka, kde sa venuje celoživotnej túžbe - maliarstvu -, ale ani to ho napokon neuspokojuje. Zhorší sa mu zdravie a napokon sa stáva človekom, akým nechcel byť. Podľa kritiky je tento román spoločná skúsenosť, ktorá v každom z nás vzbudzuje strach.

Po Rozhorčení, ktoré bolo príbehom mladosti, vlastne ešte len dospievania, vracia sa Roth k problematike, ktorou sa zapodieval v románe Everyman/Ktokoľvek - k starnutiu, strate telesných, ale najmä duševných schopností a vedomiu blížiacej sa smrti. Tentoraz je hrdinom človek-individualita, neopakovateľný a s nikým iným nestotožniteľný, celebrita, slávny divadelný a filmový herec Simon Axler, ktorý sa vo veku šesťdesiatich piatich rokov stane obeťou psychickej krízy - odrazu nie je schopný hrať, stráca uveriteľnosť, dôveryhodnosť, a uvedomuje si to nielen sám, ale nanešťastie vidia to aj kritici. Prichádza depresia, a to až taká hlboká, že sa rozhodne na mesiac uchýliť do psychiatrického ústavu a po jeho absolvovaní sa utiahne na vidiek. Medzičasom ho opustí manželka, ktorá odíde do Kalifornie dozerať na svojho syna-narkomana. Ten však zomrie na predávkovanie drogami a manželka pred návratom uprednostní rozvod. Hrdina ostáva sám, apatický a nespoločenský.

The best-selling author offers his observations of the physical decline and death of his own father, in a memoir of the love between father and son

Rozhovor Ivana Klímy s americkým spisovatelem Philipem Rothem o české disidentské a emigrantské literatuře, o jejím poslání a lidech, kteří ji tvořili. Rozhovor původně vyšel v The New York Review 12. 4. 1990, česky pak knižně vyšel jako katalog k výstavě Kde domov můj?.

Kniha je jedným z najsilnejších svedectiev o koncentračných táboroch vôbec. Sila Leviho svedectva tkvie v tom, že svoju knihu začal písať ešte v Osvienčime a dopísal ju krátko po návrate do Talianska. Zachytil výhradne udalosti, ktoré sám zažil.

"Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall - of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder."--Publisher's website.

This is the story of Mickey Sabbath, a disgraced puppeteer who, after the death of his long-time mistress, embarks on a raging journey into dionysian extremism, madness and bitter understanding. Philip Roth won the 1995 National Book Award.

Radio actor Iron Rinn (born Ira Ringold), an idealistic Communist and uneducated ditchdigger turned popular performer, emerges from serving in World War II passionately committed to making the world a better place and winds up instead blacklisted and unemployable. On his way to his political catastrophe, he marries the nation's reigning radio actress the exquisitely refined Eva Frame. Their marriage evolves from a glamorous, romantic idyll to tears and treachery. And, with Eve's dramatic revelation to a gossip columnist of her husband's 'espionage' for the Soviet Union, the relationship becomes a national scandal. Set in the heart of the McCarthy era, the story of Iron Rinn's disgrace is a story of cruelty, humiliation, betrayal and revenge; an American tragedy as only Philip Roth can conceive one - fierce and funny, eloquently rendered and deadly accurate.

Set in 1998, with the backdrop of the impeachment of a president, this book shows us an America where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions result in public denunciations and houndings, and where innocence is not always a good enough excuse.

Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella, the first book published by Phillip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture. It won the National Book Award in 1960. ©1993 Phillip Roth (P)2009

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A “magnificent…splendid” novel (The New York Times Book Review) from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral about people living out their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them even risking their lives to change their seemingly irreversible fates. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey, or in a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, or in a church in London's West End, or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank.

Following the wild success of his novel, Carnovsky, Nathan Zuckerman has been catapulted into the literary limelight. As he ventures out onto the streets of Manhattan he finds himself accosted on all sides, the target of admonishers, advisers, would-be literary critics, and - worst of all - fans.

In a novel of alternative history, aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, negotiating an accord with Adolf Hitler and accepting his conquest of Europe and anti-Semitic policies.

When talented young writer Nathan Zuckerman makes his pilgrimage to sit at the feet of his hero, the reclusive master of American Literature, E. I. Lonoff, he soon finds himself enmeshed in the great Jewish writer's domestic life, with all its complexity, artifice and drive for artistic truth. As Nathan sits in breathlessly awkward conversation with his idol, a glimpse of a dark-haired beauty through a closing doorway leaves him reeling. He soon learns that the entrancing vision is Amy Bellette, but her position in the Lonoff household - student? mistress? - remains tantalisingly unclear. Over a disturbed and confusing dinner, Nathan gleans snippets of Amy's haunting Jewish background, and begins to draw his own fantastical conclusions...

WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral—a fiendishly imaginative book that features Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, an accused war criminal, and an enticing charter member of an organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous "One of Roth's grand inventions.... [He is] a comic genius." —The New York Review of Books In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator. With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a wild cast of characters, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, internationally acclaimed author of American Pastoral delivers a fierce tragedy of sexual need and blindness. • "Roth's best.” —Newsweek A fiction-within-a-fiction, a labyrinthine edifice of funny, mournful, and harrowing meditations on the fatal impasse between a man and a woman, My Life as a Man is Roth's most blistering novel. At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying—and failing—to write his way free of it. Out of desperate inventions and cauterizing truths, acts of weakness, tenderheartedness, and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a work worthy of Strindberg.

," . . [a] comic masterpiece, a glittering virtuoso performance. It is laughing-out-loud funny . . ." - Wall Street JournalUnabridged on audio, read by Ron Silver and directed by the author, Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint is the famously outrageous confession made to his analyst by Alexander Portnoy, the Huck Finn of Newark, who is trust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Thirty years after it was first published, Portnoy's Complaint remains a classic of American literature, a tour de force of comic and carnal brilliance, and probably the funniest book about sex ever written. It was recently designated one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library judges."An American masterpiece." -Life

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Nathan Zuckerman returns to New York in the final installment of the renowned Zuckerman series, a novel about love, mourning, desire, and animosity by “one of the greatest living American writers” (San Francisco Chronicle), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral. Alone for eleven years on his New England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age. Walking the streets of New York after so many years away, he quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. Now Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities. Revisiting the characters from Roth's much-heralded The Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an astounding leap into yet another phase in this great writer's oeuvre.

As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes". Little does he realize how prophetic this motto will be - or how damning. For as Philip Roth follows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a ménage a trios in London to the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremely intelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemma of pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggle to make a truce between dignity and desire.

With his fortieth birthday receding into the distance, along with his hairline and his most successful novel, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction - pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. What will it take for the pain to finally leave him alone?

Gill Gamesh, John Baal, Rupert Mundys: If you've never heard of them, it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory. This novel turns baseball's status as national passtime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picturesque heroism and perfidy, and ebullient wordplay.

Nathan Zuckerman is visiting Prague, where intellectuals come searching for Kafta, where misfits who don't submit decently to their misfortunes act out a comedy of manners in decadence. Here Zuckerman meets Olga, and brings home lessons for the American writer - lessons about oppression and resilience, laughter and Kafta, and more.

Dialoog tussen een overspelige man en vrouw, met als onderwerpen o.a. het verhulde antisemitisme van de Britse middenklasse en het spanningsveld tussen literaire schijn en werkelijkheid.

David, white-haired & over 60, is a TV culture critic & lecturer at a New York college. He meets Consuela, a 24-year-old student, daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who puts his life into erotic disorder & haunts him for the next eight years.

Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a giant beetle, the narrator of this fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast. What follows is a funny exploration of the implications of metamorphosis.

Novela amerického autora (nar. 1933), který patří vedle Salingera a Updika k předním představitelům mladší generace spisovatelů. Je to příběh lásky mladého knihovníka a dívky ze zámožné židovské rodiny, kteří na cestě k možnému manželství ztroskotají na nesouhlasu rodičů a zároveň i na nedostatečné pevnosti svého citu.

Jde o výsek z rodinného a osobního života dvou hlavních hrdinů, mladých učitelů na vysoké škole v Chicagu. Jejich společným znakem je zájem a pochopení hraničící až se slabostí pro ostatní lidské bytosti. První román jednoho z nejuznávanějších talentů současné americké prózy (nar.1933), zachycující osobní a rodinný život dvou mladých židovských učitelů na vysoké škole v Chicagu a demonstrující tak na jejich stycích s americkými ženami situaci nesčetných „smíšených“ manželství a „smíšených“ milostných vztahů. Příběh, ve kterém se pod humorným tónem předvádí mnoho žalu a trápení, vyplývajících z neschopnosti řešit složité a vzájemně se křížícícitové vztahy.Přestože se zde autor vyhýbá sociální tematice a zaměřuje se na konflikty osobní, přesto si nelze nepovšimnout, že pozadím jeho děje je Amerika nejsnadnějších kariér a nejpřístupnějšího blahobytu.

Selections from nine novels following Goodbye Columbus, Roth's first book, including Letting Go, Portnoy's Complaint, and The Ghost Writer, chronicle Roth's satiric and sensitive examination of art, life, and personal crisis

Four complete works by Philip Roth in one volume. The complete comic saga of Nathan Zuckerman, his ordeals of conscience, from Manhattan, to Miami Beach, to Czechoslovakia!"Roth has transcended himself . . . . A comic genius . . . Certainly Philip Roth's finest achievement to date, eclipsing even his best single fictions . . . ZUCKERMAN BOUND binds together THE GHOST WRITER, ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND, and THE ANATOMY LESSON, adding to them as epilogue a wild short novel, THE PRAGUE ORGY, which is at once the bleakest and the funniest writing Roth has done."-- The New York Times Book Review"ZUCKERMAN BOUND proves that no one now writing can be funnier and, at the same time, more passionately serious than Philip Roth." -- Time"ZUCKERMAN BOUND shows the author's always ebullient invention and artful prose at their most polished and concentrated." -- The New Yorker

A fictional account of the persecution and suffering of the Jews. It is simple in style and full of dark humour, irony and lyricism. The author served in Moscow as a member of the Czech section of the Comintern but was later expelled from the Communist party. This is his best-known novel.

"The title novella, Goodbye, Columbus, the story of a summer romance between a poor young man from Newark and a rich Radcliffe co-ed, is both a tightly wrought tale of youthful desire and a satiric gem that takes aim at the comfortable affluence of the postwar boom. Here and in the stories that accompany it, including "The Conversion of the Jews" and "Defender of the Faith," Roth depicts Jewish lives in 1950s America with an unflinching sharpness of observation." In Letting Go, a sprawling novel set largely against the backdrop of Chicago in the 1950s, Roth portrays the moral dilemmas of young people cast precipitously into adulthood, and in the process describes a skein of social and family responsibilities as they are brought into focus by issues of marriage, abortion, adoption, friendship, and career. The novel's expansiveness provides a wide scope for Roth's gift for vivid characterization, and in his protagonist Gabe Wallach he creates a nuanced portrait of a responsive young academic whose sense of morality draws him into the ordeals of others with unforeseen consequences.Library of America #157

Originally published: New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Volume 2 in what will be the definitive 8-volume collector's edition of Philip Roth's fiction includes Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang, When She Was Good, and The Breast

Fascinating interviews, essays, and articles spanning a quarter century on writing, baseball, American fiction, and American Jews—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century."An illuminating...glimpse of the theory and practice that have made Roth a major figure in American fiction." — Chicago Daily NewsHere is Philip Roth on himself and his work and the controversies it's engendered. Here too are Roth's writings on the Eastern European writers he has always championed, and so much more. The essential collection of nonfiction by a true American master, Reading Myself and Others features his famed long interview with the Paris Review .

Gabe Wallach, freshly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother's recent death, and thus freed from old attachments, is hungrily seeking new ones. He's drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate in literature, and to Libby - Paul's moody, Catholic-turned-Jewish wife. Gabe wonders: how to reconcile the ordered 'world of feeling' found in books with the anarchy of life, responsible adulthood, and his own love affairs? When Gabe meets Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, she poses the greatest challenge that he, and his moral enthusiasm, will face. Letting Go is Philip Roth's blistering first full-length novel.

In Philip Roth's intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer's highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life. With Primo Levi, Roth discusses the stubborn core of rationality that helped the Italian chemist-writer survive the demented laboratory of Auschwitz. With Milan Kundera, he analyzes the mix of politics and sexuality that made him the most subversive writer in communist Czechoslovakia. With Edna O'Brien, he explores the circumstances that have forced generations of Irish writers into exile. Elsewhere Roth offers appreciative portraits of two friends--the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston--at the end of their careers, and gives us a masterful assessment of the work of Saul Bellow. Intimate, charming, and crackling with ideas about the interplay between imagination and the writer's historical situation, Shop Talk is a literary symposium of the highest level, presided over by America's foremost novelist.

The Facts is the unconventional autobiography of a writer who has reshaped our idea of fiction—a work of compelling candor and inventiveness, instructive particularly in its revelation of the interplay between life and art.

When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process

Primo Levis vidnesbyrd fra Auschwitz er tre af det 20. århundredes allervigtigste litterære værker. Den 13. december 1943 arresteres den italiensk-jødiske kemiker Primo Levi i Alperne og føres til dødslejren Auschwitz. Det er begyndelsen på en grum fortælling, om hvordan man overlever kz-lejrenes ubegribelige brutalitet og meningsløshed, om vejen tilbage til de levendes verden, om behovet for at aflægge vidnesbyrd - om behovet for at blive hørt. De tre værker er en dyster udforskning af det, vi forstår som menneskelighed fyldt med visdom og sort humor på trods. Denne udgave samler for første gang Primo Levis tre bøger om Auschwitz på dansk.

Situé dans les environs de Newark, à l'époque où éclate une terrible épidémie de polio, Némésis décrit avec précision le jeu des circonstances sur nos vies. Pendant l'été 1944, Bucky Cantor, un jeune homme de vingt-trois ans, vigoureux, doté d'un grand sens du devoir, anime et dirige un terrain de jeu. Lanceur de javelot, haltérophile, il a honte de ne pas avoir pris part à la guerre aux côtés de ses contemporains en raison de sa mauvaise vue. Tandis que la maladie provoque des ravages parmi les enfants qui jouent sur le terrain, Roth nous fait sentir chaque parcelle d'émotion que peut susciter une telle calamité : peur, panique, colère, perplexité, souffrance et peine. Des rues de Newark au camp de vacances rudimentaire, haut dans les Poconos, Némésis dépeint avec tendresse le sort réservé aux enfants, le glissement de Cantor dans la tragédie personnelle et les effets terribles que produit une épidémie de polio sur la vie d'une communauté de Newark, étroitement organisée autour de la famille.

Ein kleiner Band mit zwei Erzählungen und einer kurzen Rede Philip Roths anläßlich eines Preises, den er erhielt, entnommen sind die Erzählungen anderen Büchern, herausgegeben wurde diese Zusammenstellung im Rahmen der Reihe "50 Jahre Rowohlt Rotations Romane".

Филип Рот (р. 1933) - признанный классик американской литературы. Это единственный писатель, трижды награжденный премией Уильяма Фолкнера. Самая нелепая и ничтожная случайность может дать трагический поворот человеческой судьбе. Так, и юного Марка череда ошибок, незаметных на первый взгляд, ввергла в кровавый хаос Корейской войны. Череда ошибок и кипящее в нем возмущение.

Ce volume explore cinquante ans d'histoire américaine au sein de la communauté juive de Newark, de l'avant-guerre aux années 1980, à travers une approche non chronologique. L'auteur aborde le mouvement de la contre-culture des années 1960, la guerre froide et la croisade anticommuniste des années 1950, ainsi que le politiquement correct des années 1970-1980. Il imagine également des années 1940 hypothétiques, marquées par la montée du fascisme et de l'antisémitisme aux États-Unis. À travers une critique acerbe de la société américaine, l'auteur analyse les mécanismes d'un individu confronté à l'imprévisible. Les personnages, face à des bouleversements majeurs, voient leurs destins se briser sous l'effondrement des illusions et des certitudes qui soutenaient leurs vies idéales, symboles du rêve américain. Quatre œuvres illustrent l'identité de l'individu pris dans la tyrannie des mythes américains, évoquant un avenir prometteur qui semblait découler d'un passé solide. Chaque génération, en dépassant les limitations des aînés, aspire à jouir pleinement des droits conférés par l'Amérique, à s'émanciper des anciennes obsessions et à vivre sans complexes parmi ses pairs.

Primo Levi's The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories that intertwine the author's experiences in Fascist Italy and Auschwitz with his passion for science. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Raymond Rosenthal and includes an essay on Levi by Philip Roth. A chemist by training, Levi became a profound witness to twentieth-century atrocities. In these poignant reflections inspired by the periodic table, he explores themes from young love to political brutality, using elements as metaphors. For example, 'Iron' honors a mountain-climbing resistance hero, while 'Cerium' recalls improvised cigarette lighters that saved his life in Auschwitz. 'Vanadium' describes a haunting post-war correspondence with his former boss there. Roth's essay features a conversation with Levi, examining his writing process, identity, and the interplay between science, literature, and survival. Levi (1919-87), an Italian Jew and Holocaust survivor, gained recognition in the English-speaking world late in his life and is regarded as one of the century's most compelling voices. The Periodic Table is his most celebrated work, alongside other titles like Moments of Reprieve and If Not Now, When?. Roth, a Pulitzer Prize and Man Booker International Prize winner, adds depth to this edition. If you appreciate this work, you may also enjoy Levi's other writings.

From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich comes a richly layered novel that explores identity, exploitation, and how the burdens of history still shape our lives today.

En 1998, les révélations concernant le président divisent la nation américaine, illustrant la tragédie de Silks, qui cache un secret depuis 50 ans à sa famille.

Die Tatsachen - das sind die faktischen Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen des Autors, aus denen die fiktiven Personen und Handlungen seiner Romane entstanden sind: die Jugend im jüdischen Kleinbürgermilieu, der erste Zusammenstoß mit dem Antisemitismus, die Katastrophe einer Ehe und Erschütterungen durch den Vietnamkrieg. Und mit Verblüffung erkennt der Leser, in welchem Maße die Welt im Roman von Philip Roth der Wirklichkeit entspricht.

Najnovší román Nicole Krauss o hľadaní zmyslu, transcendencie a toho, kam vlastne patríme. Najnovší román (na ktorý si čitatelia museli počkať až 7 rokov) americkej spisovateľky Nicole Krauss sa vo svete stretáva s veľmi pozitívnou kritikou. Nicole Krauss už dávno nie je autorkou pre davy, jej romány nútia čitateľa zapájať predstavivosť i intelekt, keďže dej je často posplietaný v niekoľkých líniách. Nie je to inak ani pri tejto knihe, ktorá v dvoch dejových líniách a ich dvoch hlavných postavách rozpráva o životných krízach a vyrovnávaní sa s nimi a o neutíchajúcej ľudskej potrebe hľadania niečoho, čo nás presahuje.

Philip Roth forteller her historien til Seymore Levov. Ved første øyekast framstår han som en ekte amerikansk suksesshistorie. Han var berømt idrettshelt som ung, giftet seg med en tidligere Miss New Jersey, overtar farens hanskefabrikk, og kjøper seg et stort, idyllisk hus på landet. I 1968 tar Seymores amerikanske drøm brått slutt. Datteren Merry utløser en bombe som tar livet av en uskyldig mann. Seymore er revet mellom farens moralske absolutter og datterens sinte avvisninger, og framstår som en ganske alminnelig mann som helt uventet befinner seg i en vanskelig situasjon. "Amerikansk pastorale" inngår i samme trilogi som "Menneskemerket" (2005).

Er ist Anwalt, 33 und hat nur eines im Kopf: Sex. Ob Alexander Portnoy in der Öffentlichkeit onaniert, es mit einem Stück Leber treibt oder seine Freundin zu einem Dreier nötigt - stets ist er hin- und hergerissen zwischen Begierden, die mit seinem Gewissen unvereinbar sind, und einem Gewissen, das mit seinen Begierden unvereinbar ist. Beim Psychiater lässt er sein verwirrtes Leben Revue passieren. Mit „Portnoys Beschwerden“ hat Philip Roth eine brillante Satire geschrieben und zugleich den Prototyp des Sexualneurotikers erfunden. Vierzig Jahre nach der Erstveröffentlichung hat der Weltbestseller in einer Neuübersetzung nichts von seiner überschäumenden Komik eingebüßt.