154 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
implications of his career as a relatively sma ll-time internationa l cap-
italist. In pursuing neoliberal free-market methods, Levov believes
he is also advancing the quaint causes of American libertarian-
ism. This conceit reverberates with Otfried H ö ffe’s description of
Aristotelian heroes, who, “blinded by self-righteousness, perceive a
complex situation in a simplistic way and err for that reason.”^63 B u t
to gain a deeper understanding of the contours of this “self-righ-
teousness,” it is first necessary to analyze the professed “American
values” Zuckerman conspicuously takes apart in the novel.
Embedded in these values is the benign trope of the American
pastoral idyll, with its evocation of naturalism and simplicity. The
American pastoral trope is most potently rendered through the
symbolic figure of Johnny Appleseed, the legendary “pioneer” and
conservationist, who brought apple-growing to vast areas of eigh-
teenth-century America. From a young age, Levov becomes enrap-
tured by the myth of Appleseed (who was a genuine historical figure)
and emulates him throughout his adult life. For Levov, Appleseed’s
success is quintessentially American in that he is culturally and
religiously ambivalent (at least to Levov’s knowledge, although his-
torical facts prove otherwise): “[He wasn’t] a Jew, wasn’t an Irish
Catholic, wasn’t a Protestant Christian” (p. 316). In a manner consis-
tent with the country’s cosmopolitan-leaning myth that ethnic and
historical roots are immaterial to American success, Levov believes
that the man “was just a happy American. Big. Ruddy. Happy. No
brains probably, but didn’t need ’em—a great walker was all Johnny
Appleseed needed to be” (p. 316). Levov also admires Appleseed’s
propinquity to “nature,” or, in Zuckerman’s words, his “huge, spon-
taneous affection for the landscape,” an aspect of the character that
resonates with the American naturalist tradition crystallized in the
works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathanial Hawthorne (p. 316).
However, in the Johnny Appleseed/Levov complex, we f ind an exag-
gerated version of the kind of trite, sentimental, and ontologically
restrictive elevation of the pastoral ideal that Emerson praised in
his close friend, Henry David Thoreau. In his extended eulogy to
Thoreau, Emerson describes a man with “robust common sense,
armed with stout hands, keen perceptions and strong will [... who
commanded a] simple and hidden life,” words that echo the heroic