Book Club Connection by Susan LoTempio

The awards pile up

    Philip Roth is in the news this week, not just because we're featuring his "American Pastoral" in April, but because he has won the first PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

The award comes with a prize of $40,000 and will be given every two years.

Saul Bellow, of course, is the author of "Henderson the Rain King," "Herzog" and "The Adventures of Augie March." Bellow died in 2005.

According to an item in the New York Times this week, Roth's novel "Everyman" was inspired in part by the death of Bellow.

"How could I be anything but thrilled to receive an award bearing Saul Bellow's name," Roth was quoted as saying.

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?

April's new book ...

   ... is Philip Roth's "American Pastoral." And if you're going to read it and join the discussion on this blog, get ready for one heckuva literary ride.

The novel is long, dense, fascinating. It takes dedication to get to the last page, but you'll be glad you did.

Roth is considered one of America's best novelists, but there is one thing true about his writing style readers either love or hate: No detail, however tiny, is left unexamined.

The pages of description - ranging from how to make fine leather gloves to a street in Newark, New Jersey - can leave readers exhausted.

Roth's characters are prone to endless internal dialogue. But they are also real - people you are likely to know, who suffer in ways you can relate to.

That's all I'm going to say about "American Pastoral" for now. But if you are reading it, or have already read it, please join in the discussion: What did it do for you?

Don't miss Andrew Z. Galarneau's story on "American Pastoral" in today's Life & Arts section.