SOURCE: "A Postwar Paradise Shattered From Within," in New York Times, April 15, 1997, pp. Cl1, C14.

[In the following review, Kakutani praises American Pastoral, lauding the books sensitively observed cast of characters and calling it "a fiercely affecting work of art."]

Back in 1960, Philip Roth gave a speech in which he argued that American life was becoming so surreal, so stupefying, so maddening, that it had ceased to be a manageable subject for novelists. He argued that real life, the life out of newspaper headlines, was outdoing the imagination of novelists, and that fiction writers were in fact abandoning the effort to grapple with "the grander social and political phenomena of our times" and were turning instead "to the construction of wholly imaginary worlds, and to a celebration of the self."

These remarks—made even before John F. Kennedy's assassination and the social upheavals of the 60's magnified the...