How long does it take to read American Pastoral?
American Pastoral by Philip Roth takes about 7 hours 55 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Part of American trilogy
Next: I Married a Communist
About 7 hours 55 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1997. 432 pages, about 118,800 words.
16 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 12 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 55 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 57 minutes |
The page count is the median across 30 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Seymour "Swede" Levov, a blond high school sports star from Newark, New Jersey, grows up to run his father's glove factory and marry a former beauty queen. He builds what looks like an ideal American life, with a loving family and a grand house in the countryside. The turbulence of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War and unrest in the cities, begins to intrude on that comfort. The story is told by the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who meets Seymour's brother at a 1995 school reunion and then imagines the Swede's life, once the Swede has died.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: facelift surgery, Vietnam War, Marines, Jewish Americans, History, Pastoral fiction
