Philip Roth's fiction has often explored the human need to demolish, to challenge, to oppose, to pull apart. Now, writing with deep understanding, with enormous power and scope and great storytelling energy, he focuses on the counterforce: the longing for an ordinary life. Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant, postwar America. He has a beautiful wife - Miss New Jersey 1949 - ...
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Philip Roth's fiction has often explored the human need to demolish, to challenge, to oppose, to pull apart. Now, writing with deep understanding, with enormous power and scope and great storytelling energy, he focuses on the counterforce: the longing for an ordinary life. Seymour 'Swede' Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant, postwar America. He has a beautiful wife - Miss New Jersey 1949 - and a lively, precocious daughter, Merry. She is the apple of his eye until America begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s and Merry grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise. With vigorous realism, one of America's most esteemed writers takes us back to the conflicts and violent transitions of the 1960s. This is a book about loving - and hating - America. It's a book about wanting to belong- and refusing to belong - to America. It sets the desire for an American pastoral - a respectable life of space, calm, order, optimism, and achievement - against the indigenous American berserk.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Size: Octavo; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997. PAPERBACK. Advance Reading Copy / Uncorrected Proof. 423pp. In printed paper wraps. Spine is uncreased, binding tight and sturdy; text also very good. Light shelfwear. Light age-toning. Ships from Dinkytown in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Size: 6x1x9; Houghton Mifflin Company; Boston, 1997. Hardcover. First Edition. A Very Good, black boards and black cloth spine with gilt lettering on spine, binding sturdy and intact, small crease top corner page 379/380, couple of small scuff marks on fore-edge, mild rubbing along board edges, in a Very Good, some handling/scuff marks to panels, mild edge/corner wear, couple of creases top rear flap corner, Dust wrapper. A nice, clean and unmarked copy. 8vo[octavo or approx. 6 x 9 inches]. 423pp. We pack securely and ship daily with delivery confirmation on every book. The picture on the listing page is of the actual book for sale. Additional Scan(s) are available for any item, please inquire.
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Seller's Description:
Good. 1st edition 1st printing-binding slightly out of square-some staining to closed page edge-otherwise dust jacket and cover fine-binding strong contents clean now in mylar cover-enjoy.
A Spectacular journey through the last half of the twentieth century, through the eyes of one man. He seemed to have everything....but you've got to read it to truly understand the experience. I finished it in record time, just spellbound.
I'm now a Philip Roth devotee.
ARthestrong
Feb 18, 2010
DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK
To me it encompasses the ennui and moral bankruptcy of 21st century American life as did the film "American Beauty" starring Kevin Spacey. It is sad and funny and true.
