Philip Roth has without doubt been one of the most important writers of fiction in the United States during the latter part of the twentieth century. Philip Roth collects new essays by noted Roth scholars on three essential novels appearing in recent years, American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain (2000), and The Plot Against America (2004). The volume illuminates Roth's multilayered perceptions of twentieth-century America as a place, a culture, and an idea that shapes its inhabitants in profound ways. Focusing on such topics as ethnicity, gender, race, the family, trauma, history, and narrative form, the essays collected here offer fresh readings of Roth's penetrating explorations of American selfhood. The contributors probe this American Jewish writer's insights into the paradoxes of freedom and self-determination, the politics of identity, especially as defined by racial or ethnic affiliation, and the possibilities available for self-definition and transformation within the context of American history and culture.

Series Preface \ Acknowledgments \ \Introduction: Roth's America \ Part 1: American Pastoral \ Introduction to Part 1 \ 2 "What was not supposed to happen had happened and what was supposed to happen had not happened": Subverting History in American Pastoral, David Brauner \ 3. The Critique of the Pastoral, Utopia, and the American Dream in American Pastoral, Andrew Gordon \ 4. America's Haunted House: The Racial and National Uncanny in American Pastoral, Jennifer Glaser \ Part II: The Human Stain \ Introduction to Part 2 \ 5. Race, Recognition, and Responsibility in The Human Stain, Dean Franco \ 6. Possessed by the Past: History, Nostalgia, and Language in The Human Stain, Catherine Morley \ 7. "The Pointless Meaningfulness of Living": Illuminating The Human Stain through The Scarlet Letter, Gabrielle Seeley and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky \ Part III: The Plot Against America \ Introduction to Part 3 \ 8. Just Folks Homesteading: Roth's Doubled Plots Against America ,Brett Ashley Kaplan \ 9. My Life as a Boy: The Plot Against America, Elaine M. Kauvar \ 10. Autobiography and History in The Plot Against America, or What Happened When Hitler Came to New Jersey, Timothy Parrish \ Collected Notes \ Works Cited \ Further Reading \ Notes on Contributors \ Index