Let’s not compare the two.  They’re nothing alike.  

Yes, I’m still reading American Pastoral. It’s not a quick read. Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral.  His writing is very dense.  Nothing is left out.  He writes about a thing until there is nothing more to say about it.  His vocabulary is enormous and he uses it. The word jeroboam has shown up, and though I’m tempted to insert the word into my everyday conversation, I probably won’t.  

I come back to earth when I read the first chapter of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.  The first chapter is very sparsely written.  It is about the marching soldiers and the dust and the leaves.  More on this subject later.