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Title: One Long Whine
Review: Phillip Roth is my literary Dick Nixon: the man I love to hate. Whoever it is, the real author or the persona, the guy keeps dragging me in to hear his agonized, self-involved, masturbatory whining, book after book after book."American Pastoral" purports to be a step away from all that. Roth's alter ego, Zuckerman, makes his entrance, and then relinquishes the stage to yet another Jewish main man from Newark, but one who, believe it or not, is a star athlete with blond hair, known to one and all as "Swede." But, wouldn't you know it, you can't take the neighborhood from the boy. Although punctuated by by a string of gratuitous crises, "American Pastoral" is basically one long whine.The maddening fact remains that Roth is a fine writer. And he even puts this talent to good use with his loving and detailed descriptions of the golden age of glovemaking. He should have written an essay or novella on this subject and skipped the rest of the Swede's sorry life.
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