In his 1960s manifesto," Writing American Fiction," Philip Roth takes a look place of writers in contemporary American society and evaluates their tasks w that culture. He argues that reality has outpaced-and out-fictionalized-fic Highlighting a couple of outrageous but nonetheless real news items, stories would fit quite nicely within an engaging fictional narrative, he concludes the American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands fu in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of America reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of em barrassment to one's one meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that ar the envy of any novelist.(176)

For the young Roth writing in i960, having acquired an impressive critical su with his first book" Goodbye, Columbus" and Five Short Stories, the imagina world of the purely artistic paled in light of the nitty gritty newspaper and t sion news stories occupying most of the media attention and making them available to even the most basic readers.