SOURCE: Boxwell, D. A. “Kulturkampf, Now and Then.” War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 12, no. 1 (spring/summer 2000): 122-35.

In the following essay, Boxwell praises The Human Stain, believing the novel aptly explores the historical, political, social, and cultural forces working in American society in the late 1990s.

The dust jacket to The Human Stain announces the basic premise of Philip Roth's salvo fired “in a time of cultural warfare, with ‘the persecuting spirit’ on the rise, a president is hounded over a sexual affair, a professor loses his job over a single word, and the nation succumbs to an ‘ecstasy of sanctimony.’” While Roth does not actually use the phrase “cultural warfare” at any point in the novel, he doesn't need to. As I write, in the summer of 2000, we are so immersed in the war, reminded of it daily in the run-up to...