Within three short years, Philip Roth published three novels, an unofficial trilogy. The first, American Pastoral appeared in , followed by I Married a Communist in With The Human Stain , which came out in , the trilogy was complete. The novels are tied together by many things. Each has the same narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, who is also a character in his own right. Zuckerman has appeared in many other Roth novels, though in no way do these three constitute a Zuckerman trilogy.
Zuckerman is too reserved a presence in them. The three novels in question follow a similar trajectory in time, from the 's to the 's, with Zuckerman putting the pieces together in the 's, after the dramas are over. The set-piece events of this period β World War II, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the impeachment of President Clinton β dovetail with the lives of the characters, such that fictional characters seem to inhabit a real historical past.
But this is not historical fiction. It is not War and Peace , where one sees the past through the eyes of Napoleon as well as through his foot soldiers. In addition to having the same narrator and to being historical in bent, each of these three novels ends in personal tragedy, the loss of professional position, the loss of security, the loss of family, the loss of whatever it is that the three protagonists struggle to build up in life.
Newark, New Jersey is anything but a generic place in American literature, and it is Newark that binds American Pastoral , I Married a Communist and The Human Stain into a trilogy.
The trilogy begins in Newark and is dominated by Newark. In it, Newark is the most solid geographical and cultural point. Newark is the center from which these novels radiate, the signpost of reference in a country enamored of change, though Newark itself is hardly changeless in these books.
