SOURCE: "The Trouble with Swede Levov," in New York Times Book Review, April 20, 1997, p. 8.

[In the following review, Wood berates the slow pace of American Pastoral, but praises its prose and combination of rage and elegy. Noting similarities between Pastoral and John Updike's In the Beauty of the Lilies, Wood comments on both novels' treatments of national history and their "mind-numbing realism."]

Who would have thought Nathan Zuckerman would fall in love with normality, with the all-American life? With the old idea of the melting pot as order and progress, a pacified history in which resentment and misunderstanding fade away across the generations? With Thanksgiving as a form of ethnic truce, where the Jews and the Irish hang out together as if no one had ever crucified anyone? This is, after all, the garrulous, manic hero of five Philip Roth novels, and the subtle fictional critic of Mr...