Here, direct connection between Zuckerman and the Swede ends until many years later, as they diverge into separate lives. After Dawn completed her pageant tour, the couple announced that they wished to get married. She got as far as earning the title of Miss New Jersey. To earn a scholarship for her brother, she enlisted in Miss America competition. raised in a working class church going family. In college, he met his future wife – a beautiful Irish Catholic girl, Mary Dawn, from Elizabeth, N.J.
After the war ended, having served as a drill instructor at Parris Island, he returned to his hometown to attend a local college and to join his father’s business. Graduating high school near the end of WWII, Seymour “The Swede” signed up with the Marines. Weequahic – a residential district in uptown Newark Seymour’s father, Lou Levov, grew a successful business from humble beginnings – a ladies’ glove manufacturing factory near downtown Newark. The Levovs were a well to do family, residing on Keer avenue in the more affluent section of Jewish Weequahic. Excelling in high school football, baseball, and basketball, he became a legend in his community and beyond. For his Nordic looks he was nicknamed “the Swede” While attending the Weequahic High School he displayed extraordinary athletic abilities. was uncharacteristically blue eyed, tall, blond, and handsome. Seymour Levov- born a second post-immigrant generation, in a Jewish family, in Newark, N.J. Z uckerman, a writer, and a classmate of Seymour’s younger brother Jerry, narrates from his own early experiences: In this work, he begins at or near the end of the lives of the two central characters – Seymour “The Swede” and his daughter, Merry (Meredith).Īlthough the entire novel is a work of fiction, there are two narratives intertwined – events as ‘witnessed and retold’ by Zuckerman, and events recreated by him based on additional research and an attempt to interpolate between what was known to him. Like many modern writers, Philip Roth does not use a linear time narrative, but moves the reader from one period to another, and then back again throughout the novel. He uses his alter ego – a fictitious writer by the name of Nathan Zuckerman as the narrator (in other Roth novels as well)
The author used personal experiences and real places to a great extent. where Philip Roth himself grew up in the ’40s and ’50s.
The novel is set in and around the city of Newark, N.J. The novel had a strong impact on me, not only due to the tragic irony at the core of the narrative, but because it captured turbulent times in America with which I am closely familiar. And after re-reading the novel for the second time, I felt the need to write a more comprehensive review. Notwithstanding comments about his self-promotion (most writers are of a similar mold to get published and receive awards), he remains one of the late Twentieth Century greats. When looking up Philip Roth I was saddened to learn that he died in 2018. “ The expected is among the rarest of all occurrences” (after William Carlos Williams)