The Plot Against America

Later in his career, Philip Roth went through a very productive period, and this book is one product of that period. This book is extremely well done and even plausible. I recommend it to all readers of fiction.

This is a novel. I know it is all fiction. And yet ... Philip Roth is a Pulitzer Prize winning America writer, his body of work spanning more than five decades. His style is not fancy. You won't remember an artistic turn of phrase or the poetic resonance of the words. But you remember the story, just as I remember some of his short stories in "Goodbye Columbus" which I read in the 1950s. His style has developed through the years. It's richer now, more abundant with words. There is one constant though. And that is his love for story. In this unique novel, Mr. Roth takes us back to Newark, New Jersey in 1940. Narrated by a Jewish 10-year old boy, we get a sense of his non-religious Jewish neighborhood and the peaceful lifestyle of his family, born in America and loving their country. Of course they all know who Charles Lindbergh is. But they never thought it possible that he be elected President of the United States. His anti-Semitism is legendary but this is, after all, America. It shouldn't really matter that the President admires Hitler and starts signing pacts that promise to keep America out of the war in Europe. We follow all this through the eyes of the young boy who watches with wonder the goings-on around him. His 14-year old brother joins a youth group and spends his summer vacation in Kentucky to become more Americanized. His older cousin runs away to Canada to enlist and returns as an amputee. His aunt marries a rabbi who is dazzled by Lindbergh and even goes to Washington to a reception for a well-known Nazi. His father, who is an insurance agent, refuses to be transferred to mid-America. And his mother tries hard to keep the family from turmoil. Though all this, there is a feeling of foreboding, and I felt I was right there, inside the young boy's head, as he experienced the events going on around him. No. There are no concentration camps or gas ovens. And no, the horror can in no way compare to the experiences of the Jews in Europe. And yet, every time I picked up the book I felt chills. Some of it could be linked to politics today but that, of course in the eye of the beholder. This is fiction. But then why does it ring so true. This is not a pleasant book to read. Mr. Roth is better in setting up the scene than he is in completing the story. Towards the end the twists and turns of the plot are a little convoluted and preposterous. But I sympathize with the writer's challenge because he's writing about an historical event that didn't happen and trying to make it real. And so I do not fault him for this. Instead, I applaud this rather unique novel which kept me awake at night thinking about what could have been.

Philip Roth gives us the America of his youth, growing up in Newark in the late 30's, with parents who are achingly proud and hopeful to be Americans and at the same time fully aware of the anti-Semitism of the time that could, with a turn of fate, lay waste to all their dreams. While the plot device of the election of Charles Lindbergh over FDR is such a turn of fate, a catastrophic one for Philip and his family, the heart of the book is a powerful family drama. His father is the tragic hero of the piece, his mother is admirable and richly drawn. His brother is in adolescent and political rebellion; his cousin idealistically goes to war; Philip is seven years old and confused. We are given clues that, as terrible as things are, the world as we know it will not end. What drives the story is Roth's imagining of his own family in this crisis. It is not a jump to think of any family that assumes some level of safety and wakes up to a world run by thugs who want to do you harm. Roth's family is Jewish; the Holocaust has not yet happened, but the pogroms of Europe are only a generation removed. This is a fine book. The public characters are as interesting as the private ones. Some may find the premise too simple, and this book does lack the complexity of "American Pastoral". I think it is as artful. It is written on a smaller scale, and every detail is right.

With his latest masterful novel, Philip Roth has written a very personal story about his pre-WWII childhood in Newark, NJ. The twist is that the world he paints is significantly different from what was then reality. Charles Lindbergh, dashing American hero for piloting the first transatlantic flight a dozen years earlier, has defeated FDR in his bid for a third term in 1940 to become the 33rd President of the U.S. The Republicans are in charge, and Lindbergh's sole charter is to keep the U.S. out of WWII. An isolationist in real life, Lindbergh was known for his anti-Semitic sentiments, and Roth creates a revisionist history by building his case for an America that turns against its Jewish citizens. He has meticulously assembled archival materials, such as Lindbergh's actual radio address in which he accused the British and the Jews of trying to force America into a foreign war. The result is a world that seems at once outlandish and logical and what ensues seems as horrifying as it does eerily plausible. Roth could have developed a more standard political thriller with his "Twilight Zone"-like concept and painted a broad landscape of a democratic people altered by fascist leadership. But this novel is no simple polemic about the dangers of a fascist America and its consequences on current generations. It is much more a remembrance almost like Woody Allen's "Radio Days" or Barry Levinson's "Avalon", complete with colorful relatives and local neighborhood characters with names that come out of comic books. The seven-year old Philip has a brother he idolizes even as the brother slowly turns into a Lindbergh-abiding Fascist, a proud father who is being eroded personally and professionally by Jewish persecution and a stoic mother who can only stand by and observe in fear. The fictitious political atmosphere does not engulf this family as much as it insinuates itself into their lives through unexpected acts of fear and desperation. Nonetheless, the book does make a profound statement about the reduction of civil liberties for the sake of national security, an issue that confronts us today when one considers the various tactics being weighed to fight the war on terrorism within the boundaries of our country. If anything, Roth has written a book that slams such means as racial profiling to eliminate supposed undesirables, as conservative extremist Michelle Malkin would have us believe to be the only option in her salacious treatise, "In Defense of Internment". "The Plot Against America" is a serious-minded, often lugubrious novel by a master author who writes in such a natural, detailed style that his alternative world reverberates with a deep sense of his own identity. Following Roth on roads not taken will challenge many readers, roads so painfully pot-holed that they refuse to believe would ever exist, but I can assure you the journey is revelatory albeit an often troubling one. This is ultimately a triumphant novel that will not disappoint fans of