even if there was a collectively agreed-upon burgeoning cultural truth happening at this very moment -- which there isn't -- it'd be ridiculous to sit down and try to capture it in fiction.  the best any writer hopes for is, as tod points out, a good story, told well and convincingly, about the precise characters who comprise it.  if a larger, edgier, more universal story gets told in the process, great! another thing hal ignores (and a lot of us tend to forget) is that when roth was first published (in fact, for at least his first three or four books and even well up through Portnoy), much of american jewry DESPISED him.  rabbis sermonized about how awful roth was.  he was demonized, boycotted, spat upon.  difficult truths about who and where we collectively are as jews, as human beings, as mortals: usually not a hit at your mom's book club.