# 11: American Pastoral

Philip Roth

'You get them wrong before you meet them,'' Zuckerman says of ''people'' in general, ''while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again.''

Zukerman has a particular image of Swede Levov, a high school legend. Roth dives into the Swedish life and we learn that all is not what it seems. His daughter Merry, grows into an angry teen-ager and blows up the post office. She then goes underground and the Swede and his wife, a former Miss New Jeresy (she would hate to be described like that), suffer. Suffer was a capital S.

What do you do if your child becomes a murderer?

The book is considered a classic, a "tour de force". I think that Roth writes very well, but I did not come under his spell. I think this might a book for a different generation, but still a pretty good read.

# 10: The Last Shot

Dacry Frey

Another one of my passions - Sports. In the vein of Hoop Dreams (a fantastic movie), this book is about the struggles of a couple of high school ball players in Coney Island.

A couple of tidbits:
- the importance given to basketball in the community, it is almost all they have
- the quality of play in the pick-up games on the court known as "The Garden", this is a public court, but with snap-back top quality rims.
- the poverty
- the difficulty for these young kids to score even a 700 on the SATs (you get 400 for writing your name)
- these are tough lives, and it is pathetic that basketball seems to be the only solution. Does it do more harm that good? It is hard to say .. it really might. But who I am to say.
- the focus on succeeding, how hard they work, and the mom who forces her son to stop seeing his girlfriend, since he may lose his focus. It isn't right to have so much pressure at such a young age.

Towards the end of the book, Stephon Marbury, freshman phenom at the time, makes an appearance. A cocky kid, # 4 or 5 in the line of potential Marbury's that have all failed, he is the weight of all his family on his shoulders - amazing to read this account of him while he was 14 or 15 and knowing that he made it, he is an all-star in the NBA and has made millions.

# 9: The Plot Against America

Philip Roth

After seeing so many of his novels in the top 20 American novels of the last thirty years (NY Times), I decided to give this one a try. The novel touches upon one of my favorite subjects - "What if " scenarios. In this book, Charles Lindenberg beats FDR and is elected president of the United States in 1940. The plot is driven by the fact that Lindenberg is basically a Nazi sympathizer and takes the United States down an isolationist and anti-Semitic path. Young Philip Roth, as the narrator, reveals how this affects his middle class Jewish family in Newark. The anti-semitism increases at a slow but believable pace, reaching the level of pogroms and deaths.

I enjoyed the novel, I think the Roth writes very well and makes this alternative history quite real. I do feel like the ending was hurried along .. with a resolution that sort of arrives out of nowhere. Other than that, I would say that it was quite and enjoyable read.

As a matter of fact, I am in the middle of American Pastoral and will report on that soon.

Random thoughts about the book:
- ability to enter a kid's mind and make it very real
- the righteousness of Mr. Roth, and his unshakeable believe in being "American"
- the cousin jacking off in the basement
- the complicate politics of race and religion, and how even it can tear a family and a nation apart
- the traitor rabbi, doing what he thought was right, but eventually allowing atrocities to be committed
- the complexity and realness of the characters .. Roth brings them to life and makes them three-dimensional