American Pastoral

Zuckerman attends his 45th high school reunion. Composing notes after the fact for a speech he never delivers, he ruminates on post-war America—an “industrious” place that encourages its youth to take advantage of all the opportunities that come with growing up in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. He laments the disappearing intimacy of America’s urban neighborhoods, where communities are so tight knit that everyone knows everyone, down to the most minute detail. For Zuckerman, the reunion is a moment frozen in time where the past and present converge and mortality can be denied, temporarily. There, he meets up with Mendy Gurlik (they commiserate over dead classmates and their own infirmities) as well as Ira Posner, who recalls being inspired by Zuckerman’s father (Zuckerman remembers none of it). Finally, as the reunion is winding down, Zuckerman notices the presence of Jerry Levov.

Zuckerman and Jerry catch up, comparing who they were to who they have become (Zuckerman finds Jerry overly sure of himself). When Zuckerman mentions his dinner with the Swede, Jerry tells him he’s died of cancer. He memorializes his brother as “noble” behind the façade of conventionality. He claims that his brother was “raked over” by unforgiveable family members—his father, his wives, and especially his daughter, Meredith (Merry), who bombed a post office during the Vietnam War. The bombing shattered the Swede’s perfect, unquestioned existence. Twenty-five years later, overwhelmed with grief, he confided to Jerry that Merry was dead. Unable to forgive Merry for destroying his brother’s life, Jerry sees her death as something to celebrate.

Zuckerman spends several months writing the Swede’s story but decides not to send it to Jerry, who, he’s convinced, will find the characters “[a]bsolutely off.” Despite his meticulous research, Zuckerman concludes that Jerry would probably be right. No one person’s perception of another can ever be entirely accurate.

He understands that the Swede had the misfortune of getting exactly what he wanted—to be the hero—with all the burden that entails. He realizes in retrospect that his assessment of the Swede as bland and shallow was a naive misjudgment; below the surface lay terrible pain, which he buried for the sake of his family. He reflects on his own post-war generation, driven to make good on the sacrifices of their immigrant parents, viewing upward mobility as a multi-generational project. With a single act of violence, he thinks, Merry destroyed her family’s generational momentum. The Swede, whose life until that moment had been picture-perfect, was ill-equipped to deal with the radical imperfections that befell him.

Zuckerman’s story of the Swede’s life begins when Merry is 11. She stutters, and despite the Swede’s best efforts to treat it without judgment (unlike his wife, Dawn), he inadvertently mocks her one day. Then, as if in apology, he kisses her too amorously, a moment of “intimacy too enjoyable to swear off and yet not in any way to be taken seriously” (91). Zuckerman imagines that the Swede, in his search for meaning behind Merry’s betrayal, might latch on to this moment—and his subsequent emotional distance—as his grand transgression, punishable henceforth by a life of pain.

When Merry is young and in the throes of her worst stuttering, he takes her to a psychologist who suggests it’s a “choice,” a ploy to get attention. In the end, nothing—not the psychologist, speech therapist, or her parents—helps. At 16, Merry grows overweight and angry, focusing her rage on Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. She renounces her family’s bourgeois lifestyle and resolves not to let the stutter become the focus of her life. Her rebelliousness alienates her mother in particular, but the Swede argues that, as parents, they must continue to be firm and keep communication open. She begins associating with activists in New York. Fearing these associations, the Swede suggests she organize protests in her own town of Rimrock. After seemingly endless fights, she takes his advice but then proceeds to blow up the post office.