Good? Bad? The Binary of Life and Death Also Applies to Book Reviews and Computer Programs, Probably

“I hope this was a free choice book. I’m sorry, I can’t believe that a teacher would assign Pynchon in high school,” my dad says to me as I walk downstairs in the morning. "That stuff is dense.”

I kind of agree with him. Vineland was a tough read. Almost every other sentence was an allusion to something obscure, and for every reference I picked up on, there were three or four I did not. Often I would understand that something was an allusion, but not know what it was alluding to or how to look it up, as it was often a concept or an event clearly drawn from something that I obviously don’t know.

Large sections of the book, such as the meandering chapters detailing the ins and outs of DL, Takeshi, Vato and Blood, Vond’s henchman Roscoe, and Serena, seemed to be more of an expansion of themes and concepts rather than actually important to the storyline. By the time I arrived back in 1984, it was hard to remember the circumstances in which I left.

And yet, thematically, that worked well for Vineland. The past would unexpectedly become the present, drawing attention to the relationship between the two. Every character’s life becomes like a massive scrapbook of past memories that builds upon itself, triggering emotions, making connections and shaping them into their present selves. The attention to absolutely pointless detail is kind of jarring sometimes, but it almost makes it more true to life. It can be amazing sometimes, how you could barely remember the Statue of Liberty from your first trip to New York, but you can very clearly remember a weird bird feather on the sidewalk. Sometimes its the weird details that stick in people’s heads for years, and the inclusion of this not only helps to develop a scene and characters but also ties into this odd trait of memory without seeming forced or hackneyed.

Pynchon’s writing in general also seems this way. I like his work because, in some ways, it feels more organic and natural than the work of other authors. The way he structures a plot can feel messy and bizarre, but never “wrong.” And yet even though his writing seems natural, I tend to think of his stories as existing in some sort of parallel universe. As I read the book, I imagined it taking place in some alternate version of American history, and not our own. Though the book reads organically, the theatricality of many of the events, such as the divine retribution dealt upon Bud Scantling, the man who tried to silence Frenesi’s father Jess by toppling a tree over on to him, as it is revealed that he had died in an automobile accident after driving into a truck filled with wood chips, and Brock’s demise, caused by the government he devoted his life to. Yet for all its structural oddities, this book does not lack a heart. The focus on family as a walking history and a living connection to an individual’s past, is made clear, as the final scene of the book takes place at a reunion of Frenesi’s family. This book lacks the paranoid tone that often pervades novels that are rooted in politics.

Vineland was a good book. A plot summary would be too convoluted, but since the very first few flashbacks, it was pretty easy for me to zero in on “dealing with the past, whether actively or passively” as a theme. But I read that other article about fascism in Vineland, and it was clear that whoever had written it had seen the political forces at play in Vineland to be the most important theme. I think the relationship between reactionary and radical politics is probably the second most significant theme I noticed about the work. To someone with a larger knowledge of politics during this time period, the political and cultural themes may have been more relatable and easily understandable, but because I wasn’t able to connect with those, less historical themes took precedence in my personal analysis.

Do I think I understood the book? No, but I think I understood it enough to realize that I wasn’t going to understand it on the first read. There are too many different themes to focus on in a single reading, too many little details that take a second or third go to fully experience. Still, I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for an AP English class because of how complex it is (and the amount of time it would take to “fully” analyze it), but it would be nice to read it alongside other people who could possibly expand on some confusing allusions or just understanding it in general.

I feel like this novel invites analysis: there are books that I can read without looking too deeply into literary devices, but even when reading Pynchon for pleasure I have to think about it more seriously than I do with other novels. Like I mentioned before, when analyzing a Pynchon book, it isn’t necessarily about whether or not your analysis is wrong as much as it is about what you decide to analyze. While I think this novel invites discussion of politics, I wouldn’t say that I believe it to be a purely political novel. I thought it was more about relationships in the midst of, or should I say in spite of, political restructuring. I did not really discuss the cultural ramifications of the novel that are tied into the politics of Vineland as deeply as I tried to discuss politics and the past, but I think that that would be what I would be drawn to on a second read.

Overall, good book. The plot was insane, with Thanatoids, cults, ninjas, the Mafia, pot farmers, Native Americans and the DEA. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys long flashbacks, weirdly placed funny anecdotes and recent American History

What Else? Beyond the Past, Beyond Cultural Implications: What is a Person?

What makes a person, a person? I have already spoken on the sad truth of individuality in the world of Vineland. Unfortunately, because these characters are presented to us as individuals defenseless against the forces of society and their own pasts, we are forced to see them as nothing more than pawns in the hands of whatever greater power exists in this world. Even Frenesi turns her back on 24fps, her anarchist film collective, for the alluring yet bleak conformity of Brock Vond, representative of the government. Like her mother Serena, a born Communist, she was a leftist at heart but a self-proclaimed lover of a man in uniform. Frenesi is a person drawn from the traits of both her mother and the greater world around her, raised to fight, raised to shake her fists at the injustices of the world, and yet, in the face of all that, Vond is irresistible to her. It's deeply ironic that she becomes a government snitch out of love, as love, clearly associated in the novel with the bygone days of the sixties, is in opposition to the informant heavy culture of the eighties.

It’s a theme seen throughout the novel. The Thanatoids are alive only because of their inability to let go of the past. They congregate together in ghostlike towns such as the one DL and Takeshi stumble upon, Shade Creek, and spend their days glued to the television screen. They feel no emotions besides the ones keeping them from dying. A common one is revenge: a desire to make right the evils of the past. It is a commentary on the futility of everyday life: Thanatoids are so powerless in life (for example, the Vietnam vet Ortho Bob) that even in choosing death, do not even have the power to make that choice. This could also be interpreted as a commentary on the brainwashing quality of media. Tying back to the quote from the other blog posted in a previous entry, just because the government wasn’t legitimately surveilling its citizens around the clock and restricting their every movement doesn’t mean that the ubiquity of media wasn’t harmful. The endless consumption of media creates stagnation. The messages seen repeated over and over on a screen lodge into our psyche, and become a part of how we rationalize our world. A Thanatoid’s reality has effectively been replaced by the falsified reality of television.

Individuality in this book, which I believe to be critical of reactionary governments (framing Vond as the antagonist and the Wheeler family as the main cast of protagonists speaks for itself), is seen not as wrong but as impractical. Within a society that values conformity, someone who sticks out is going to be smacked down a few notches to create a uniform culture. The freewheeling political turmoil of the sixties had been repressed, shown both with Zoyd’s reliance on the government for money and Frenesi’s relationship with the embodiment of facism, Brock Vond. 

Even though the shadow of totalitarianism hangs over the Californian coast, the constant flashbacks are both a reminder that our upbringing may be responsible for who we are, but also, even though our past can be instrumental in our present and future, understanding that your past belongs to you and you alone is an assertion of free will, of creativity, of introspective thought. Prairie’s search for her mother is out of a desperate attempt to reconnect with that past, to gain that sense of self that comes with understandment and acceptance of her roots.

So, what is a person, at least in Vineland? A veritable cocktail of political, societal and personal forces, pushing a person forward and backwards at the same time. You can run all you want, but you can't escape your past, you can't escape your government, and most importantly, you can't escape yourself.

Fascism In Vineland, Or, I Don't Know Anything About The Political Environment of The 80's

In order to get a better handle on the political ideologies discussed in Vineland, I read an article online at this website:

http://www.notbored.org/vineland.html

that explained some of the political connections in a more in depth way. Though there are a lot of connections in this article, like Biblical allusions and bird motifs, that I did not pick up on in my reading and therefore I am not going to discuss here, I was specifically interested in the allusion to the novel 1984 that this article talks about. A particular line sticks out to me:

“Pynchon clearly believed that, just because the year 1984 didn't bring actual "telescreens" into every home in the country, this didn't mean that Reaganism wasn't an American form of fascism.”

This suggestion is crucial to a greater understanding of what Pynchon’s message in the novel is.

Many of the characters in this novel, in fact almost all of them, seem to be almost one-dimensional, acted upon by outside forces instead of their own will. Whether it be their own past, like DL, the ubiquitous and alluring world seen through a television screen, like Hector, the threatening anonymity of organized crime, like Takeshi, DL, and the Wayvones, or the decisions of another (Frenesi), like Zoyd, the storyline of Vineland is often driven by vague entities not quite explained. The characters are seen as somewhat helpless in the face of concepts that extend beyond themselves.

The character of Brock Vond is a person who embodies both the tightly wound control and nagging insecurities often associated with fascism. The centralized power of total fascist control is often preceded by a period of doubt and confusion, much like the turbulent sixties gave way to the reactionary

Brock was introduced formally bizarrely late into the novel for someone with such power over the central plotline, which further ties him to the concept of a faceless and oppressive authoritarian society. However, as we begin to know Brock, we see him as less of a machine and more of a human, able to make mistakes, able to be afraid. His individuality strips him of the power of anonymous control. In the end, he is nothing more than a cog in a machine, a powerful one perhaps, but just another person navigating the ravages of time, unable to escape his past.

Godzilla, Ghosts and Gunmen

It seems as if the novel has taken a broad side track. At the wedding party, Prairie’s business card attracts a mysterious woman called Darryl Louise, or DL for short. She is somehow acquainted with Frenesi, and this alone allows Prairie to trust her. They leave the party and go stay at the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives, a hideaway in the California mountains for female ninja practitioners. Once a bastion of technique and disciplehood, it has sold out and become a resort for New Agey Valley executives who want to “reinvent themselves” and teenagers who want mystical powers with little work.

DL spends a long time discussing her history with her family, her sensei in Japan, her connection to Frenesi, and her connection with Takeshi. Throughout a particularly long chapter interspersed with brief snippets of dialogue that occur in the present between DL, Prairie and Takeshi, who had arrived to meet DL and the girl about halfway through the high-intensity story of their meeting.

Though at first, the book seems to lack focus, it basically hinges along stories of the past. Characters like Brock Vond, who have not appeared in the present narrative, have been floating around in the periphery of these vast stories, stretching across continents. In search of a focused narrative, little to no elements introduced are actually significant in any way. Things seem to be thrown in “just because,” for instance, Takeshi works for a laboratory in Japan that is decimated by a giant footprint. At first thought to be a scare tactic inflicted by some market rival, the footprint (using some bizarre foot-to-brain analysis technology) is proved to have been created by a living creature. This is often implied to be a Godzilla-like creature, who is referenced at Takeshi and Zoyd’s first meeting. During the invasion of Zoyd’s flight, he begins to play the title theme from “Godzilla: The King of the Monsters” just as a disguised Takeshi comes up to him and asks for help. It is implied that Takeshi is being hunted down because of his knowledge of this event.

Elements such as pop culture, the media, Anarchism VS Fascism, organized crime (both Mafia and Yakuza), ultraviolence, revenge, family, and death are often repeated again and again throughout the large sections of the book focused on the past. Though the primary focus seems to be on the influence of the past on the present, the book also provides commentary on the changes in these beliefs over the course of decades, through the political upheaval of the Sixties throughout what is referred to as the Nixonian Repression throughout the influx of modern fascism found in Reagan’s politics. Characters like Takeshi, DL and Zoyd are hunted by massive networks of insidious power. It does not seem to matter whether or not their pursuers are government agents or Mafia/ Yakuza operatives. They both hold the same type of power, one that seemingly transcends the passage of time because of the fact that the ideas that drive both factions are not reflections of solitary people. Their drive for revenge carries throughout time because it exists in more than one person. Pop culture references, such as movies, bands or songs, are almost like place markers, a way to pinpoint the passage of time (which, in this book, often seems to happen atypically, skipping around at random and filling in the blanks when least expected) within a singular moment of time, and whatever that entails.

The repetition of these ideas suggests significance, but what else does this book have in store?

The Beginnings

As someone who has read a bit of Thomas Pynchon, I was pretty excited to start reading Vineland. Like some of his other books, it centers on a wide cast of characters that seem to float in and out of the storyline, as the main plotline is brought up, fleshed out, forgotten, reconnected back to the story, and lost again.

Our story focuses on an aging relic of the 60’s, Zoyd Wheeler, who jumps through a window each year in order to receive his disability pension, running into an old pursuer, Hector Zuniga, who informs him that another old nemesis, the sinister and quite possibly insane D.E.A. agent Brock Vond is also after him. We slowly learn that Zoyd is a single parent, collecting his pension in hopes of supporting his young teenage daughter Prairie. We also learn that Frenesi, Zoyd’s ex-wife, is a sore subject for him, (possibly a source of some sort of unfinished business), currently in the Witness Protection Program, and somehow also connected to Brock Vond. Prairie, Zoyd’s spunky daughter, has never met her mother, but the emotions she feels, at once apprehensive and excited, at the very mention of Frenesi’s name, exposes a deep desire to meet her.

When Brock Vond comes to town with an army of soldiers, storming the peaceful Vineland, Zoyd and Prairie part ways as they try to escape whatever fate awaits them at the hand of the government. So far, I have not heard any more about Zoyd Wheeler’s whereabouts, even though he was presented as the primary character throughout the first few chapters of the book. Prairie, however, followed her boyfriend, Isaiah Two Four, down the California coast to a wedding gig.

Already, the structure of the book is unusual. Within the chronological plotline, the characters have only travelled around California. Yet this book spends just as much time moving backwards in time as it does forward, creating a sort of paradox where very little actually seems to happen amidst the heavy backstory. Entire chapters consist of flashbacks triggered by a seemingly insignificant moment. As Prairie turns to leave, Zoyd hands her a business card for a man named Takeshi Fumimota, who is in the Karmic Adjustments trade. Rather than just explaining the circumstances that lead to Zoyd getting his hands on the business card, an entire chapter is devoted to the trans-Pacific flight that lead to his final moments with Frenesi that lead to a new job as an on-flight musician for a shady airline company that lead to a terrifying invasion of the plane by a dark aircraft full of heavily armed elite fighters halfway through a flight that lead to Zoyd protecting a suspicious figure from the mysterious invaders who gave him the business card as a token of his gratitude.

It is too soon in the book to identify any themes, but the focus on the past is difficult to ignore. Each character’s backstory is elaborated on to a degree that almost becomes pointless, as the tales of their past (often used in literature to justify current motivations) is ultimately given more focus than the actions of the characters in present time. What could this mean? Only more time will tell.

I didn't feel like writing Ideological Conflict pt. 2 so here are some thoughts on the American Dream

As I come to the end of American Pastoral, I still feel like I am really far away from grasping the novel as a whole.

I'm not really sure how to word this, because that doesn't sound right. I understand the main themes of the novel fairly well: we've got the whole traditionalism vs. anarchy, unconditional love, community, the passage of time...I could go on. I think I understand how these themes interconnect enough to say I understand the message of the book.

It's really more along the lines of: This book feels intensely personal. Every page is like reading another person's thoughts to yourself. I get the feeling that every sentence contains something critical, that the book is like a strand of DNA, or a million piece puzzle. I can talk about the themes, I can talk about the characters, but I feel like the scope of the book is too much for a single person. It's hard to believe a single person wrote it, until I think about how interconnected it all is and then I realize it just has to come from one guy's crazy, brilliant brain.

Honestly, Philip Roth wrote a masterpiece. It goes beyond just themes, and literary techniques as a whole, to the point where I'm literally freaked out by how realistic and organic everything seems at times.

The end of the book was not exactly shocking to me. I could feel the divide between Swede (who refused to believe in the disintegration of his own American Pastoral brought on by Merry's actions; even after finding her living in squalor and her admission that she and her anti-establishment group killed more people, he still heaps the blame on those around her and cannot view her as anything more than the smiling, laughing girl she used to be) and the rest of the world coming to a head throughout the majority of the book. And yet it still seemed so cruel and shocking to read.

Swede is at a dinner party with his wife, and through the course of the night he learns that not only is his wife having an affair with someone who is at the dinner party, she is planning to leave him. On top of that, a woman who he had once had an affair with admitted to sheltering Merry in the days after the Rimrock bombing, and little else.

The novel ends with Swede undergoing the realization that he is sitting in a room full of people who have completely betrayed him. The innocent trust that has characterized him throughout the novel has failed him. His dream, his ancestor's dream, his whole life, is shattered.

The denial of the American Pastoral has been foreshadowed throughout the entire book (the section names, for example). Swede's traditionalism, just like Merry's anarchism, is steeped in idealism. Swede believes in the innate goodness of people who he loves. He wouldn't love them if they weren't good, right? When faced with direct confirmation that someone he loves is evil, he immediately blames it on something else. He wasn't raised to handle imperfection, turmoil and betrayal, because he never acted in a way that induced this sort of behavior.

If you work hard and treat others well, you will succeed. Swede has followed this for his entire life. When Merry's behavior creates the first crack in his facade, he tries to rationalize it as some fault of his own, and when he cannot figure out where he went wrong, he denies any part he had in her behavior and therefore, denies her behavior as a result of her own judgement. It's the evil anti-Americans who turned her against me, he thinks, because it is either denial of evil or denial of the very principals that govern his life.

Until the dinner party.

"The old system that made order didn't work anymore. All that was left was [Swede's] fear and astonishment, concealed by nothing."

Just as Merry's self-righteous anarchism fell to the abuse, murder and abject poverty she experienced as a young radical, Swede's idealism is destroyed by the end of the novel. When he is finally confronted with evil from every direction, the picture perfect scene of a happy wife, a smiling daughter and a lovely house on a hill disintegrated. Swede's traditionalism fell to the realizations that mankind is evil and his American Dream is unachievable. The American Dream never existed in the first place. Generations of Swede's family built their lives upon the faraway promise of full assimilation, of the power that comes from success. Swede reaches it, he can almost touch the elusive dream, but what happens when he realizes that it's an empty promise?

Ideological Conflict pt 1

A particularly poignant passage from around the middle of the book strikes me as a continuation of the concept of traditionalism VS anarchism, and the summation of a lot of themes in the book.

Swede details his experiences as a young adult beginning with his christening as "Swede" in freshman year basketball practice to his experiences in the army as a young adult. In a contrast to Zuckerman's somewhat alienated existence detailed in earlier chapters, Swede is fully immersed in the culture and feel of America. He lives and breathes it. While he has tried as hard as one possibly can to see how Merry could despise this country so much, he feels that hating America is like hating a part of himself.

His whole family history is based upon the struggle to assimilate and to be able to feel as American as their neighbor, to live the American dream. The hard work of his ancestors has all lead up to him, a former high school athlete and successful businessman with a Christian wife in a beautiful mansion in a secluded New Jersey town.  He intends to savor his success, not only because it feels good but also it is because his success relates to something bigger than himself. He works hard, but he loves the life that he has been given and is grateful for his family for giving him this opportunity.

To Swede, the American Dream isn't just a concept, it is the central drive that not only got him where he was but also pushed his father forward, inspiring him to work hard so that his son would have more opportunity than he does, just as his own father had done. The American dream is so closely linked to his family that hating it is almost the same thing as hating his family. It hurts him to realize that Merry understands this and still reviles what he holds so dear.

It is interesting to me that Merry represents a break in the chain of the "immigrant mentality" seen so clearly in Swede and his relatives. I think that a fair amount of her problems are related to Swede and not her mother as many in Old Rimrock assume. Does a total integration into society signify that the next generation will be able to shun the society that gave them the privilege they have? It is interesting how Roth frames the dynamics of this switch in ideology. It's sort of a 'you can't miss what you never had' situation. Does this occur in real life?

Swede will never be as wholly Jewish as his peers growing up but he will never be able to erase the part of him that will always remain a product of that environment and the immigrant mindset, making his clinging to the American dream and total assimilation all the more tragic because he will never truly embody the American pastoral. He can come close, and he can look and act as if he is already there, but the very fact that he is so drawn to this concept of "being an American" is indicative of an outside perspective that cannot be erased.

Stay tuned for Ideological Conflict pt. 2, which will examine the unconditional love a father has for his daughter and probably some other stuff as well!

AP Worthy?

This blog entry is dedicated answering the question of "Is American Pastoral an AP level book?"

So, is it worthy? I think so. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Multiple, complex themes

Throughout the course of the novel so far, I have noticed many themes. Some I have already discussed include time, community, aging and nostalgia. One huge theme that should have been more apparent (as it is alluded to in the title of the book) is traditionalism / the pursuit of the American dream VS. anarchy / rejection of the American Dream. Swede's family was once immigrants, and he takes great pride in the fact that he is running a business built from scratch by his relatives and making enough money to give his children all the opportunities the world has to offer. What good does this do, however, when his daughter rejects the hand that feeds her?

 In the eyes of his ancestors, he has done everything right; he works hard, married well and is highly valued in society. He has finally overcome his "outsider" status as a Jewish man and become completely integrated in American society. Yet Merry sees this not as a hard-earned accomplishment but as a submission to "the man."

The generational gap between Merry and Swede is most obvious in their views of America. Swede views being a typical American as a goal, something to strive for. Clearly, he still carries a bit of the mindset of an immigrant, struggling to assimilate in a society that promises equal opportunity yet so rarely delivers on it. 

Merry believes that America is an unjust and amoral corporate nightmare sucking the lifeblood out of its citizens and turning them into slaves to the dollar. Clearly, her privileged upbringing allows her to see America as a get-rich-quick, war-mongering hellhole in all its cynical glory while never having to resort to the hope of the immigrant. 

This fundamental clash in ideals is why, as much as Swede loves his daughter, they will never truly understand and accept each other. 

2. Unusual structure

It's not exactly uncommon to see books broken into sections. Usually, however, there is a fairly apparent reason as to why the author chose to break up the book in that way. I cannot fully analyze the structure because I am only finished with two out of three sections of the book. It was difficult, however, for me to comprehend the transition between the first and second section because both were talking about the same scenario in third-person perspective. This leads into my third point,

3. Ambiguous narration

To sum up an idea I previously had in an entry: Is this still Zuckerman's (a first person narrator for the first section of the book) retelling of Swede's past? Or is this a different, third person narrator? I would assume the switch in sections and prompt dismissal of Zuckerman's character would mean that this is another narrator speaking. It is difficult to say, however, because Zuckerman's imagining of Swede's relationship with his daughter captured some very private moments that I assumed to be speculation but are further developed in the third person narrative. 

Either Zuckerman, who was barely friends with Swede when they went to school together, is omniscient or he is super good at guessing. Or he's just telling a story (Because he is a writer) and none of this is what actually happened.

I like reading the book alone, but I think having further analysis and more people to bounce ideas off of would be very helpful in understanding deeper meaning in this book. The complexity of this novel makes it more than appropriate for an AP class. 

Gloves, Capitalism and Other Things That Remind Me Of My Fugitive Daughter

This reading section took me through a large part of American Pastoral's second part, entitled The Fall. 

The beginning of this section doesn't strike the reader as anything particularly different from the end of the last section called Paradise Remembered, which was basically Zuckerman taking facts that Swede's brother Jerry told him and spinning them into a crazily detailed tale of how beloved Merry Levov became the infamous Rimrock Bomber, and her father's subsequent questioning of his behavior around her. 

It soon becomes noticeable, however, that Nathan Zuckerman is no longer present in the story. We are living out events as they truly happened; we are able to understand the truth as Swede sees it and nobody else. The mysteries of our silent hero seem SO CLOSE to being revealed.

But what if Zuckerman is still narrating? Perhaps the switch between the two sections was supposed to be a more clear-cut transition, letting the reader know that the story has completely switched out of the frame of Zuckerman's reality. But perhaps not. The events in Zuckerman's narration from before match up with some intimate details of the relationship between father and daughter that would certainly not have been known to him, like the time she strangely kissed him on the lips as they were coming back from a day at the beach, or the time they watched the self-immolation of the monks on the evening news, or even her love for his glove factory. Is he that good of a storyteller? Is he a mind reader or something? Probably not. 

Well, whoever is telling this story, whether it's fact or fiction, characterizes Swede slowly but excellently. The chapter opens on Swede giving a guided tour of his glove factory to a woman named Rita Cohen who is writing her graduates thesis at Wharton on the Newark leather industry. He describes the process in detail, talking for pages and pages about the EXQUISITE craftsmanship that goes into each and every glove; how his workers were trained from the ground up to become artisans, masters of the trade. 

Rita is impressed with his love for glove-making, calling him truly passionate. Swede basically feels as if he has been shot through the heart. He is still listing off different tips and tricks to Rita as they wander back to his office, but the list in his mind is replaced with rapid fire thoughts about Merry, and whether or not she is safe, and his wife Dawn's mourning and the hell he cannot escape. 

It is only when they return to his room that Rita admits she isn't actually a Wharton student and that she knows where Merry is. This sets him off on a wild-goose chase, as newly hostile Rita requests larger and larger favors of Swede. He complies, of course, desperate to see his daughter once more. It all ends up with the two of them in a hotel room as Swede holds a briefcase filled with money and Rita begs to have sex with him. He ends up running away, and by the time he calls the FBI with new information on his daughter's whereabouts, Rita has left with the cash. 

These chapters characterize Swede as a man who is desperate for closure. Years pass randomly in the book, and time seems to lose all meaning in the grips of such a catastrophe. The general store is rebuilt, under new ownership, and Old Rimrock slowly begins to forget about the accident, yet to Swede the tragedy is still fresh. He wants his daughter's affection so badly that he keeps his factory in Newark so that she will not see him as another capitalist exploiter. He stays up late at nights talking to an apparition of Angela Davis, speaking of himself as if he were a changed man, a man worthy of the love of his radical daughter, and pretending to accept her praise of Merry's philosophy. He tries so hard to push his quiet capitalistic dream to the side for the impossible: a chance to see her again. It kills him to do it, to separate himself into a man who loves his work and a man who loves his daughter. But he sees his big brick house on a hill, where Merry was once one, and three, and five, and in his mind she is still one and three and five and playing on the swings and he and Dawn are watching her happily. Any possible return to this American Pastoral is worth the suffering that makes up his everyday life.

A Merry Little Bomb

I just finished the first of three parts of the novel. This section was entitled "Paradise Remembered." The last journal entry I did was focused on the heroic figure of Swede, a beacon of hope for all the other Jewish kids growing up in Newark, who is both wholly Jewish and All-American. His character is explored further in this section, as well as the character of the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman.

Zuckerman meets Swede for lunch in a small Italian joint in New York City. He picked up on a note of sensitivity in the letter Swede wrote to him, and is eager to unravel his opaque persona. Swede, however, reminisces on the old Newark before it became the crime-ridden ghost town it currently is, his father, the glove-making business he inherited from his father, and his three accomplished young sons, who clearly take after their father. Feeling bored, Zuckerman tries to provoke Swede into diving a little deeper, only to be met with casual responses and gentle sidetracks back to his favorite topic: his family. 

Zuckerman would have considered the lunch a complete waste of time had it not been for Swede's announcement that he just undergone a surgery for prostate cancer. This strikes a chord with Zuckerman, for he had been keeping the secret of his debilitating battle with the same cancer from everyone he knows. While he chooses not to share this fact with Swede, he wonders how this blemish on an otherwise perfect life affected him. Did this confrontation with impending mortality change Swede in some strange, underlying manner? It doesn't matter if it did or not to Zuckerman. He expected to be writing a tribute to the deceased Mr. Levov, while also gaining insight into Swede. The lunch, however, was boring, leaving him nothing to work off of and shattering his image of the all-American hometown hero. Swede seemed to him to be a shallow vessel that looked good, worked hard and treated people well, but with nothing existing beneath the surface pleasantries.

Over the next few chapters, Zuckerman's opinion of Swede begins to change. The next scene focuses on Zuckerman's class reunion in 1995. Through the chapter, ideas of community, nostalgia, aging and time intertwine with each other. A class reunion setting seems to invite nostalgia. Zuckerman spends pages and pages detailing his experiences with childhood friends, remembering every idiosyncracy. The community built at their high school is still intact, as other students call their class 'the smartest group of people [they] ever worked with.' The event is not one for outsiders, as a second wife of Zuckerman's friend is bothered by all of the in-jokes that seem to be shared with the entire graduating class. He explains that, well, he can't explain it, that's just the way that it is and the way that it always had been.

Zuckerman is aware of the communal bonds tying him to his old friends, but with the added years of life experience comes a strange disconnect from those he once knew so well. He develops this by referring to those he knew in their class by both their name and the ages of their children and grandchildren, of which he has none. The differences in their lives give their conversations a new honesty, as when he is talking to an old crush named Joy. She admits that the reason that she did not date him was because she was embarrassed of her family situation, and ends up crying over lost time. The element of time present in both the inevitable aging of himself and his peers and the nostalgia-drenched stories of their time together trap Zuckerman's narrative in some sort of world where time has no effect, somehow grounding him firmly in the future yet switching effortlessly back into the past. 

To summarize, the class reunion was filled with a bunch of people trying to affirm and deny their past selves in various ways, giving the night a weird atmosphere because of the fact that nobody could really tell if it felt like time passed or not. Also, if you didn't grow up in Newark during the forties then you probably should find another way to spend your night because the folks at the reunion don't understand how to explain their pasts to outsiders. 

The story takes a sharp turn when, out of the blue, Swede's younger brother Jerry shows up for the reunion and tells Zuckerman that Swede has just died from prostate cancer. He also reveals a crack in the surface of Swede's pristine life that Zuckerman could not uncover: the existence of a daughter Merry who is a total black sheep in the family. Going against the life of ease that her pristine upbringing brought her, she became a radical antiwar activist and bombed a post office during the height of the Vietnam War, killing a doctor who was dropping off his mail. She subsequently went into hiding, protected by Swede in an act that mystified his family. How could he love such an evil brat? 

Zuckerman now understands the ramifications of the letter Swede sent him. Swede was the American dream: a hard working boy who looked good and acted humbly. Yet, this was almost a burden, as he felt obligated to uphold the title of "Hometown Hero." He had done it all, and yet there was this one flaw in his otherwise perfect life: the unhappiness of his daughter Merry, who suffocated in the pristine environment she was raised in and rebelled against her parent's stoic traditionalism and ends up a murderer. Yet, he can't stop loving her because he sees her flaws not as a reflection of evil, but a personal failure. Where did he go wrong? Why wasn't he the perfect father? He hides this with a new wife and new children to be proud of, but as he receives a fatal diagnosis, the surface of denial he was living off of begins to disintegrate, leading him to question, for the first time ever, the naked cruelty of life.