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Nathan Zuckerman
Lou Levov is the Swede’s father. The son of immigrants, Lou grew up in poverty. He worked hard to establish the family business, Newark Maid, and knows everything there is to know about the glove industry, from the quality of leather and the construction of a well-made pair of ladies’ gloves, to the business side of things. Though a lifelong Democrat, Lou is also fiercely protective of tradition and the past. He laments the glove industry’s fall from its former glory, and he goes off on racist tangents about the decline of Newark. When the Swede becomes engaged to the Catholic Dawn Dwyer, Lou disapproves of the interreligious union and tries to get the Swede to break things off with Dawn. He later argues with Dawn over her the religious upbring of her and the Swede’s hypothetical future offspring. Though grating at times, the narration portrays Lou sympathetically, as a man who wants desperately to protect himself and his family but doesn’t always know how. As a character, Lou represents the old respect for America’s institutions that comes under siege over the latter half of the 20th century.
Lou Levov Quotes in American Pastoral
The American Pastoral quotes below are all either spoken by Lou Levov or refer to Lou Levov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
The father was no more than five seven or eight—a spidery man even more agitated than the father whose anxieties were shaping my own. Mr. Levov was one of those slum-reared Jewish fathers whose rough-hewn, undereducated perspective goaded a whole generation of striving, college-educated Jewish sons: a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn’t as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them.
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Chapter 3
Quotes
“My father,” Jerry said, “was one impossible bastard. Overbearing. Omnipresent. I don’t know how people worked for him. When they moved to Central Avenue, the first thing he had the movers move was his desk, and the first place he put it was not in the glass-enclosed office but dead center in the middle of the factory floor, so he could keep his eye on everybody. […] The owner of the glove factory, but he would always sweep his own floors, especially around the cutters, where they cut the leather, because he wanted to see from the size of the scraps who was losing money for him.”
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Chapter 4
Quotes
Not since Merry had disappeared had he felt anything like this loquacious. Right up to that morning, all he’d been wanting was to weep or to hide; but because there was Dawn to nurse and a business to tend to and his parents to prop up, because everybody else was paralyzed by disbelief and shattered to the core, neither inclination had as yet eroded the protective front he provided the family and presented to the world. But now words were sweeping him on, buoying him up, his father’s words released by the sight of this tiny girl studiously taking them down. She was nearly as small, he thought, as the kids from Merry’s third-grade class, who’d been bused the thirty-eight miles from their rural schoolhouse one day back in the late fifties so that Merry’s daddy could show them how he made gloves […].
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“[…] Harry’s father cut it and his mom sewed it, and they went over to the circus and gave the gloves to the tall man, and the whole family got free seats, and a big story about Harry’s dad ran in the Newark News the next day.”
Harry corrected him. “The Star-Eagle.”
“Right, before it merged with the Ledger.”
“Wonderful,” the girl said, laughing. “Your father must have been very skilled.”
“Couldn’t speak a word of English,” Harry told her.
“He couldn’t? Well, that just goes to show, you don’t have to know English,” she said, “to cut a perfect pair of gloves for a man nine feet tall.”
Harry didn’t laugh but the Swede did, laughed and put his arm around her.
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Chapter 6
Quotes
“I’m not the renegade,” the Swede says. “I’m not the renegade—you are.”
“No, you’re not the renegade. You’re the one who does everything right.”
“I don’t follow this. You say that like an insult.” Angrily he says, “What the hell is wrong with doing things right?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Except that’s what your daughter has been blasting away at all her life. You don’t reveal yourself to people, Seymour. You keep yourself a secret. Nobody knows what you are. You certainly never let her know who you are. That’s what she’s been blasting away at—that façade. All your fucking norms. Take a good look at what she did to your norms.”
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Chapter 7
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The only thing worse than their never seeing her again would be their seeing her as he had left her on the floor of that room. Over these last few years, he had been moving them in the direction, if not of total resignation, of adaptation, of a realistic appraisal of the future. How could he now tell them what had happened to Merry, find words to describe it to them that would not destroy them? They haven’t the faintest picture in their mind of what they’d see if they were to see her. Why does anyone have to know? What is so indispensable about any of them knowing?
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“She looks like a million bucks,” his father said. “That girl looks like herself again. Getting rid of those cows was the smartest thing you ever did. I never liked ’em. I never saw why she needed them. Thank God for that face-lift. I was against it but I was wrong. Dead wrong. I got to admit it. That guy did a wonderful job. Thank God our Dawn doesn’t look anymore like all that she went through.”
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Chapter 8
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“But degrading things should not be taken in their stride! I say lock them in their rooms if they take this in their stride! I remember when kids used to be at home doing their homework and not out seeing movies like this. This is the morality of a country that we’re talking about. Well, isn’t it? Am I nuts? It is an affront to decency and to decent people.”
“And what,” Marcia asked him, “is so inexhaustibly interesting about decency?”
The question so surprised him that it left him looking a little frantically around the table for somebody with an opinion learned enough to subdue this woman.
It turned out to be Orcutt, that great friend of the family. Bill Orcutt was coming to Lou Levov’s aid. “And what is wrong with decency?” Orcutt asked, smiling broadly at Marcia.
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“[…] I sometimes think that more has changed since 1945 than in all the years of history there have ever been. I don’t know what to make of the end of so many things. The lack of feeling for individuals that a person sees in that movie, the lack of feeling for places like what is going on in Newark—how did this happen? You don’t have to revere your family, you don’t have to revere your country, you don’t have to revere where you live, but you have to know you have them, you have to know that you are part of them. Because if you don’t, you are just out there on your own and I feel for you. I honestly do. […]”
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Chapter 9
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But whether he was or wasn’t running the show no longer mattered, because if Merry and Rita Cohen were connected, in any way, if Merry had lied to him about not knowing Rita Cohen, then she might as easily have been lying about being taken in by Sheila after the bombing. If that was so, when Dawn and Orcutt ran off to live in this cardboard house, he and Sheila could run off to Puerto Rico after all. And if, as a result, his father dropped dead, well, they’d just have to bury him. That’s what they’d do: bury him deep in the ground.
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Yes, the breach had been pounded in their fortification, even out here in secure Old Rimrock, and now that it was opened it would not be closed again. They’ll never recover. Everything is against them, everyone and everything that does not like their life. All the voices from without, condemning and rejecting their life!
And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?
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Lou Levov Character Timeline in American Pastoral
The timeline below shows where the character Lou Levov appears in American Pastoral. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...parents had re-created […].” Nathan’s parents, born in New Jersey, were no more American than Lou and Sylvia Levov, and no more cultured or mannered. Mrs. Levov was a devoted mother...
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Whereas Nathan’s father was a chiropodist, Lou Levov, the Swede’s father, got rich in the leather business, manufacturing ladies’ gloves. The Swede’s...
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Lou Levov struck out on his own and founded Newark Maid Leatherware a few years later....
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...account was a later and even greater success, which came from a chance encounter between Lou and Louis Bamberger at a dinner for city commissioner Meyer Ellenstein. A higher-up at Bam’s...
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...before he was set to be discharged, he became engaged to an Irish Catholic woman. Lou Levov reportedly made the trip out to the base and didn’t return until the engagement...
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...their encounter at Shea Stadium years ago. Then he gets to the point: his father (Lou) died last year at age 96. The Swede wants to write a tribute to him...
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Chapter 3
Jerry continues, describing his father, Lou, as “[o]verbearing.” He recalls how Lou moved his desk into the middle of the factory...
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Chapter 4
...ground up.” When he was just starting out, the Swede says to Rita, his father (Lou) made him sweep the floors, then learn to cut from Harry. Harry would say that...
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...quality of work at Newark Maid diminishes markedly, in large part due to employees’ indifference. Lou Levov repeatedly begs the Swede to hurry up and move the business elsewhere before subsequent...
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Lou hired “schvartzes” (Black people) despite his colleagues’ warnings, and he “treated them like human beings.”...
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Chapter 5
...the old days, the best of whom would go on to work at the factory. Lou Levov would bring home the families’ finished gloves for his wife, Sylvia, to inspect for...
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Chapter 6
The Swede remembers sitting with Lou Levov and watching a TV news special about the search for the underground Weathermen—all middle-class,...
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...all, is an important cardiac surgeon. How can he feel inferior? Jerry also claims that Lou Levov always let the Swede off easy. He let him “slide through” at every point...
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Chapter 7
...but Dawn hasn’t had to worry about entertaining them—they’ve been glued to the TV screen. Lou Levov writes letters to committee members about how they should have known Nixon was crooked...
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The narration flashes back to years before, when during the Vietnam War, Lou started sending Merry copies of letters he wrote to President Johnson, wanting to curb her...
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Lou tries to reason with Merry, arguing that the Levovs all feel the way she does....
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Merry and Lou go back and forth arguing about which political figures are and aren’t fascists. When Merry...
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...when she was a little girl. The Swede urges his mother to stay strong—for Dawn. Lou urges his wife to “control [her]self” and stop asking about Merry, but he loses his...
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Sylvia reminds Lou that “even in ordinary families,” sometimes children go away and don’t want to see their...
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...Currently, she’s troubled by a letter she has kept hidden in her purse, written from Lou to Jerry’s second wife, Susan, from whom Jerry has recently separated. Sylvia secretly took the...
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Alone, Sylvia confides in the Swede that she doesn’t know what to do. Lou resents Jerry’s creating a second broken home. She knows Lou and Jerry will get into...
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Later, Lou remarks on how great Dawn looks. He was against her face-lift at first, but he’s...
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In addition to Sylvia and Lou, the Levovs are also having Bill and Jessie Orcutt—Dawn’s architect and his wife—over for dinner....
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...He points out the Morris Canal, which the Swede connects not with Morristown, but with Lou Levov’s oldest brother, Morris. At just 24, Morris had opened a shoe store with wife....
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...They can live how they like. And it took some doing to get there—a doubtful Lou Levov had tried to pressure them into moving into a suburban development in South Orange.
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When the Swede first mentions moving to the countryside to Lou, Lou warns the Swede it will cost a fortune to heat the hulking, antique mansion...
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...refuses to back down and goes ahead with the move to Old Rimrock. He knows Lou is right—prejudice still exists. But Old Rimrock is a civilized place, and religion doesn’t need...
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...come out here for that stuff.” Even when he was younger, when he would accompany Lou to temple on High Holidays, Judaism never registered with the Swede. He didn’t understand what...
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...to paint it only charged $2,000 and threw in the gilt frame for free. When Lou sees Orcutt’s painting, he’s aghast it cost $5,000—and he assumes the painting is not even...
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...outside, looking out into the distance where Dawn’s herd used to graze. With him are Lou Levov and Jessie Orcutt.
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...the Swede looks on as Jessie rambles on about her history of horseback riding to Lou Levov. Lou interrupts her to clarify some of the terminology, reminding Jessie that she’s talking...
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Chapter 8
...the Swede’s best friend in high school, and he and Marcia come for dinner whenever Lou and Sylvia Levov come up from Florida. Barry is now a law professor at Columbia.
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...in for their so-called moral piety, for “mak[ing] a hit out of” a smutty film. Lou grumbles about the movie and goes off on a long tangent about how Black people...
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Lou continues his rant, eventually voicing the point he was apparently trying to make from the...
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Lou turns to Dr. Shelly Salzman, a kindly family physician, for help. Shelly pauses and mildly...
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Meanwhile, Lou continues to condemn Deep Throat as a symptom of the country’s moral degrade. If the...
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...the ongoing fight and wants to tell Marcia to just cut it out already—arguing with Lou will just invigorate him. Dealing with Lou is an ordeal for everyone. The Swede, for...
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Chapter 9
...Sheila can still run away to Ponce when Dawn and Orcutt move in together. If Lou Levov drops dead as a result of all that, “they’d just have to bury him.”
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...and the Salzmans. The Swede lies and tells Dawn he was taking a business call. Lou and Jessie aren’t outside. Sylvia explains that they “went somewhere together.”
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Bill Orcutt tells the Swede that Lou has taken Jessie into the kitchen to eat a slice of fresh pie the right...
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...with Merry, he’ll kill her. He can drive and get Merry now, but what about Lou? The man would die if he were to see Merry in her present state.
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...his father, but it was the one time that mattered. And the marriage had proven Lou correct: in raising Merry as neither a Catholic nor a Jew, she became “first a...
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The Swede members how he secretly brought Dawn to the factory to meet with Lou, to try to resolve their differences. He pleaded with Dawn not to mention to Lou...
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The Swede next recalls Lou’s discovery of Merry’s baptismal certificate—Dawn had done it in secret, with her mother, and she...
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The scene returns to the meeting between Dawn and Lou at the factory that the Swede arranged before he and Dawn married. Lou grills Dawn...
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Lou asks what Dawn’s parents say about Jewish people. Dawn at first just says that when...
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...explains that it’s about washing away original sin so a child can get into heaven. Lou says he can compromise and allow the baptism, but he draws the line at First...
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Eventually, though, Lou caved. Dawn and the Swede were married, and Merry was born and secretly baptized. Until...
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Just then, the Swede hears Lou shout, “No!” from the kitchen, and he is certain that Merry has come home on...
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The others run into the kitchen to find Lou standing beside the table with blood on his face. His face is blank as he...
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...looks completely unaware “that she ha[]s overstepped a boundary fundamental to civilized life.” Jessie missed Lou’s eye by less than an inch. Marcia remarks on Jessie’s good aim for being so...
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