American Idyll
The "American Dream" is said to pave the way to happiness for the individual. So why is this mess still not working?
In the eyes of Nathan Zuckermann, who guides us through Philip Roth's literary world as an alter ego, Seymour Levov was the embodiment of the textbook ideal of the American high school student. A Jewish chahon with Nordic features and an incredible talent for sport, nicknamed "The Swede", he was a model for many of his fellow believers of where the assimilation of their ethnicity should lead in the "land of unlimited possibilities". As the heir to the gloved empire of his overbearing but hard-working father, Seymour had everything a middle-class son could think of in the post-war conjuncture. Behind the glass, he displayed prizes for record home runs and touchdowns, a Miss State for a wife, and a determination to continue the craft of his ancestors until he became to the local community what Kennedy was to the nation. Look, don't be surprised if something squeaks! At a class reunion after x number of years, where Nathan's search begins, it becomes clear that even with the Swede, life has not been a cakewalk. What went wrong, and how much of it was his wayward daughter's fault?
One of the most famous novels by the relentless chronicler of American morality, who unfortunately never won a Nobel Prize, was made by Ewan McGregor as his directorial debut (2016). He cast himself in the lead role and gave the role of the terrorist Mercy Levov to Dakota Fanning.
They wrote about the book:
The Swede's collapsed idyll is the tragedy of a man who was not prepared for tragedy. He let himself be too influenced by others: his highest interests were the wishes of others, and he never showed even the worst side of himself, as if he had none at all.
- Law
A uniquely written work exploring the passions and feelings of [the protagonist] as he tries to understand and get to know his daughter, culminating in his realisation that we can't really say anything with certainty about others.
- vaseliteratura.cz
Philip Roth
(1933-2018) A graduate of the University of Chicago, he was shaped by the close-knit Jewish neighborhood of his native Newark, New Jersey. He ate them so much that he rolled up his sleeves, sat down at his typewriter and laughed at them in his short story collection, Goodbye, City C. and in the novel Let It Happen What Happens. And when Life magazine hailed his fourth prose work, The Portnoy Complex, as a breakthrough in January 1969, it earned him, along with lawsuits for obscenity, the widespread perception that America now had, along with Bellow, Heller, and Malamud, another Jewish provocateur in the business of exposing the foibles of human nature. And even more unbridled. The hero's erotic obsession is also mirrored in the readerly rewarding pun The Breast and in Nathan Zuckerman's cycle of bitterly satirical escapades that began with Elév. The author's ridiculously heroic alter ego is also featured in, among others. in the novel Prague Orgy - made into a film in 2019 by Irena Pavlásková - reflecting Roth's ties to Czechoslovak dissent and his support among publishers in the West. The modern American-Jewish classic has won key overseas prizes (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Faulkner Prize of the PEN Club, etc. ), the first winner of the Czech Franz Kafka Prize (2001) and a long-time US Nobel Prize nominee. From his work we are preparing audio versions of his later novels American Idyll and The Human Stain.
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| Code: | AK1I221 |