SOURCE: Willis, Ellen. “Buy American.” Dissent 47, no. 4 (fall 2000): 108-11.

In the following review, Willis disagrees with Podhoretz's overly affluent view of patriotism in My Love Affair with America.

In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz pronounces American Pastoral Philip Roth's best novel, while confessing his uncertainty that this is a disinterested aesthetic judgment, because the novel's political implications resonate so well with his own views. At first this scruple struck me as misplaced. Though I agree with Podhoretz on little else, I was blown away by American Pastoral, which taps into the potency of the American dream—and the poignancy of American naiveté—on a level that transcends ideology. Contemporary fiction has offered few characters as compelling as Roth's protagonists, the New Jersey-Jewish star athlete and successful businessman, whose blond good looks inspired the nickname “Swede,” and his Irish, ex-beauty-queen wife, who raises cattle. (Their daughter, who...