SOURCE: Bachman, Andrew. “America from the Waist Down.” Tikkun 15, no. 6 (November 2000): 61.

In the following review, Bachman views The Human Stain as a compelling reflection of culture, politics, and society in America in the late 1990s.

In his quest for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Philip Roth may now be able to claim that he is not only a great writer—he's a prophet to boot. In the opening chapter of his recent novel, The Human Stain, Roth casts vice-presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman as the righteous protector of American values and sexual ethics in the midst of the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998.

Not much was made of Lieberman's cameo in the novel when it appeared earlier this past summer, most certainly because Vice President Gore had yet to pick him as his running mate—a move most observers have applauded as a brilliant strategy for helping Gore...