The 1950s, the decade of the Red Scare and suburban ticky-tack, was a time of collective sedation. Philip Roth's new novel, Indignation, is set in 1951, and it is appropriate that the book's first and longest section is titled "Under Morphine." Though its 19-year-old narrator, Marcus Messner, believes he is telling his story posthumously, he is merely one of the era's many living dead. The action in Ambrose Bierce's 1890 story...