SOURCE: Krupnik, Mark. “Stain of Sanctimony.” Christian Century 117, no. 25 (13-20 September 2000): 920-21.

In the following excerpt, Krupnik draws a connection between the events portrayed in The Human Stain and those occuring in the American political scene during the late 1990s.

Philip Roth's powerful new novel [The Human Stain] takes place during the time when news of Bill Clinton's misconduct with White House intern Monica Lewinsky dominated dinner parties and casual conversations. Roth tells the story of a professor of classics who is drummed out of his job by a pack of faculty jackals. The author wants to make vivid a parallel between the scapegoating that destroys a professor and the scape-goating that all but destroyed a president. The persecutors are politically correct, which in the context of American higher education is left-liberal or “progressive.” But for sanctimonious intolerance there is not much to choose between the haters on...