In a New York Times review of TheHuman Stain Michiko Kakutani argues that it takes "all of Mr. Roth's favorite themes of identity and rebellion and generational strife and refracts them not through the narrow prism of the self but through a wide-angle lens that exposes the fissures and discontinuities of 20th-century life," which is a way of saying that the novel reflects virtually a catalogue of major social concerns of the United States in the twentieth century with the exception of the environment and energy conservation. Whether race, the private conduct of politicians, political and social consciousness in the academy, violence (in sports, marriage, politics, higher education, or society at large), posttraumatic stress syndrome, the nature of work, and the possibilities of economic advancement for members of the "lower" classes, literacy and illiteracy, this work has much to say.

The novel's themes revolve around or...