How pastoral is it?

  What critics have said about Philip Roth's "American Pastoral," the April pick of The News Book Club:

  " 'American Pastoral' invites comparison with John Updike's 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.' The chief difference is that Mr. Updike's novel ends in a secular apocalypse, the last act in the story of the death of a Christian God, while Mr. Roth's ends in the imagination of ruin, the death of a Jew's dream of ordinariness. The difference is not extreme, although both both stories are." - Michael Wood, the New York Times, April 20, 1997

"A big-picture book, it aspires to naturalist traditions that pit irrestible social forces against hapless souls. Clearly, this time around Roth wants to dodge the much-leveled charge of navel-gazing." - Albert Mobilio, Salon, April 25, 1997

"Sometimes he pounds his message home with a sledgehammer, but Roth writes so well he can make even a sledge sound lyrical. This is his third novel in four years; the others were awarded major literary prizes. 'American Pastoral' is again a triumph, the work of our best American novelist at the peak of his powers." - Bob Hoover, Pitttsburgh Post-Gazette, April 27, 1997.

  Actually, "American Pastoral" won Roth the 1998 Pulitzer Prize. Did it deserve it?

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