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Article: Tragedy and farce in Roth's: the Human Stain.(Philip Roth)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Philip Roth has called his recent three novels "a thematic trilogy." They all deal, he explains, with the "historical moments in postwar American life that have had the greatest impact on my generation": the McCarthy era, the Vietnam War, and 1998, the year of Bill Clinton's impeachment (McGrath, "Interview" 8). (1)
In American Pastoral (1997), a handsome, honest, hardworking businessman and Jewish athletic hero, Seymour ("Swede") Levov, is mined by the actions of daughter Merry, an anti-Vietnam War activist, who "brings the war home" to folks in New Jersey by setting off a bomb in the local post office. In I Married a Communist (1998), a radio actor, Ira ...