SOURCE: A review of American Pastoral, in Christian Century, December 17, 1997, pp. 1202-03.

[In the following review, Fodor asserts that Roth's American Pastoral is interesting not only due to its treatment of "earlier, seemingly simpler times in American history, but also because Roth uses his story to examine the failures of American idealism in public life."]

In 1960 Philip Roth wrote, "The American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's meager imagination." It's hard now to imagine what horrors Roth had in mind during what now seems the halcyon Eisenhower epoch. In his 22nd novel, Roth looks back on the transition from what his characters nostalgically remember as the "American pastoral" of the '50s...