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of the dirt in her potted plants and, with mystical knowledge cribbed from Gershom Scholem, brings her to life. Named Xanthippe, after Socrates’ wife, the golem cleans up Ruth’s messes so effectively that she is soon elected mayor of New York; unfortunately, though, like all golems, Xanthippe becomes uncontrollable (in this case, she has an overzealous sex drive). The third section treats literary history, as Ruth, now in her 50s, introduces her new flame to the pleasures of George Eliot, the author of the great Daniel Deronda. Chapter 4 retreats to satirical realism in the era of perestroika, as Ruth hosts a cousin from the Soviet Union who shatters all of the idealistic expectations the Americans have of suffering Russian Jews by hocking tchotchkes at a sporting goods store. At the same time, Ozick lampoons a squishy left-wing Jewish magazine and its founder—a “ferocious entrepreneur” and self-described “sucker for red hair”— who bears more than a passing resemblance to Michael Lerner of Tikkun. After a grisly death, the last story sends Puttermesser to heaven, where she makes up for lost time on earth with an old crush and witnesses the notoriously inept dramatist Henry James “growing rich on the triumph of a play.” Talk about fantasy! Ozick is an acknowledged master of short fiction; she has taken first place in the O. Henry Prizes—one of two prestigious annual American awards for stories—an astounding and unequaled four times (once for “Puttermesser Paired,” the second chapter in this volume). The short form, massaged here into the shape of a novel, suits her: her wild and elaborate diction, broad erudition, and flights of fancy play best in miniature. Further reading: In addition to a handful of story collections and a number of excellent novels—including Heir to the Glimmering World (2005) and The Cannibal Galaxy (1983)—Ozick is well-known for her prize-winning essay collections, in which she can be cranky and obtuse but always witty and fiercely intelligent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104pAmerican Pastoral By Philip Roth HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, 1997. 423 PAGES. The 1960s changed America with—literally—explosive force, and Philip Roth’s extraordinary American Pastoral hinges on the destructive power of one little bomb. The explosion in question, in a post office in a small town in New Jersey, kills a local doctor, but Roth’s main concern is with another, indirect, victim: the bomber’s father. There is nothing wrong with Swede Levov: nicknamed for his blond hair (he’s “a boy as close to a goy as we were going to get”), he is a childhood athletic champ who inherits his father’s glove-making business, marries the non-Jewish Miss New Jersey, and raises his daughter, Merry, in suburban splendor. Somehow, for reasons he can’t divine, Merry grows into a stuttering, hate-filled teen, American Jewish Fiction 142 enraged by the war in Vietnam. Still in high school, she involves herself with radicals—like the real-life teenage Jews who founded groups such as the Weather Underground—and, through an act of unforgivable violence, transforms herself into the infamous Rimrock bomber. The Swede’s life is torn to shreds, and his personal descent into confusion and chaos mirrors that of the city of Newark, where he has his glove factory, and of American idealism as a whole. The first volume of a powerful trilogy of novels focusing on social and cultural phenomena of America in the aftermath of World War II that Roth published late in his career, American Pastoral is nothing short of a masterpiece; it won the author a Pulitzer Prize, among other honors. Much more than a story of radicalism in the 1960s, it is a masterful meditation on the unbridgeable gaps between people, even parents and their children; a lush social history of the glove-making industry; and perhaps the most technically brilliant of Roth’s many impressive fictions. His prose winds through labyrinthine sentences, linking cerebral insights to the expressiveness of vernacular speech, and Roth delves deep into the consciousnesses of his many characters, refracted through the perceptions of his narrative alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The novel’s various elements—which include a long introductory section set at Zuckerman’s 50th high school reunion, and a 100-page, sublimely awkward dinner party—fit together in fascinating ways. Critics have pointed out, for example, that the interest in glove making is paralleled throughout the text in Roth’s interest in surfaces, skins, and outward appearances. This is one novel...

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