SOURCE: "Raging Roth," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 4, 1997, p. 2.

[In the following review Eder briefly compares John Updike's novel In the Beauty of the Lilies to Roth's American Pastoral.

Those two dray horses of American fiction, one dapple and one bay, one Protestant and one Jewish, are still plodding along in odd and paradoxical tandem: the dappled John Updike a step or two before the darker Philip Roth.

A year ago, Updike brought out his American saga, In the Beauty of the Lilies. It was evocative and somber. Now Roth comes with his counterpart saga, sardonically entitled American Pastoral. It is somber and raging.

Updike killed off his longtime protagonist and story-bearer, Rabbit Angstrom, several years ago, not requiring him for Lilies. Nathan Zuckerman is required for American Pastoral. Impotent and incontinent after a prostate operation and 70 years old, he has lost some of his obsessions...