The Plot Against America

Roth plays with post modern concepts in such novels as Operation Shylock, blurring the line between fiction and reality, between character and identity, and in The Plot Against America, he takes yet another post modern bugaboo, and runs with it. This time it is the alternate history, where he re-imagines a facist American in the late 30's and early 40's. Roth seems intent on recapitulating much of 20th century literature. His Zukerman novel's are Marlowesque frame tales, very in keeping with High Literary Modernism, while his books in the late 90's and early 00's dip into the grab bag of post modern tricks. But Roth's strength as a writer (his genius) make these moves seems less shallow then lesser writers. He takes a well worn literary clichés and makes them his own.

About the persecution of the Jews in Europe and the possibility of the United States being infiltrated due to Charles Lindberghs affiliations with the Nazi party before the US became involved in the war. Complete fiction, but I found it very interesting

What if Charles Lindberg had challenged and defeated FDR in 1940? How would having an adamant opponent to involvement in World War II and (possible) Nazi sympathizer in the White House have altered history? What if the British and Soviets had received no assistance in materiel and food while they were waging the Battle of Britain and in the run-up to Stalingrad? What if a President Lindberg appointed raving ant-Semite as secretary of the interior? And had morally backed the Wehrmacht as a means of rooting out Communism?
Those are among the questions posed in this novel told form a Jewish boy's perspective.
What's fascinating is that this scenario would not have been impossible, or even highly unlikely. The Republicans of that day challenged Roosevelt as a "warmonger" and Lindberg was famous in his opposition to intervention as he pushed a policy of "America First" (sound familiar?). They just had drab candidates running on this platform; a hero like Lindberg would have added pizzazz to the ticket that could have sent FDR back to retirement in Hyde Park.
But I like these kind of historical "what-ifs." If Hitler had continued his campaign against the RAF instead of switching to attacking cities, the British would have seen their air force disintegrate as it was on the brink of doom when Hitler switched targets. A few more weeks of concentrating on air bases would have eliminated serious opposition from the RAF, which would have made the Royal Navy impotent to prevent a cross-channel invasion. The Germans could have sunk British warships at will with no opposing pilots in the air, sailed an armada over and landed paratroopers and glider forces in England and decimated the British army, which still was in shock from Dunkirk.

I read "The Plot Against America" several years ago, when it was brand new. I have no bias against 'contrafactual history' as a genre, but in this case I found Roth's imagined events far less interesting than the real events of the same years, as reported imperfectly and incompletely by journalists and historians, and Roth's fictionalized characters far less complex than their real-time protoypes. As a corollary to the idea that "truth is stranger than fiction," I might have said that "fiction has to be more fascinating than truth in order to deserve my reading time."

Like many other reviewers, I also thought the writing was clumsy and the narrative plodding.

But really, the voltage of this novel was supposed to come from a sense of urgency, a sense that a racist/nativist party actually could arise and seize power in America, a painful sense that what "Lindbergh" represented in the novel was a prediction of how such a "fascist" turn in America might not be inconceivable some time in the future after all. Honestly, I didn't feel any such sense of urgency when I read the book. I thought America, like England after the 17th Century, had weathered such challenges, had survived its worst impulses in the era of apartheid, had finally achieved the kind of stability through diversity of interests that Madison predicted in the Federalist Papers. I have been complacent.

That was before Sarah Palin...

Scary premise but it could happen anywhere in the world at any time. Anti- Semitism never disappears, it's very often just below the surface. For that reason, Israel must always exist as a safe haven for Jews everywhere.

This book is evocative of what is happening today. Roth's sentences ring with truth and are a reminder of how swiftly things can change almost overnight. It is always informative and darkly thrilling to read a writer whose words almost predict our future. Roth saw the potential for the rise of an America First movement to rise up and shake the foundations of our democracy. Roth has always been our preeminent writer who tackles big ideas.with style and verve. His gravitas is on full display here.

The narrator of this novel, whose name is Philip Roth, lives in Newark with his family consisting of his father, an insurance salesman; his mother who has been president of the local PTA; his older brother Sandy; and a cousin Alvin, who from time to time lives with this Newark family. They are a fairly contented family, spending most of their time around other Jewish families in their tightly knit neighborhood until the aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, as the Republican candidate, beats Roosevelt for president in 1940. Both Lindbergh and his wife's views about the "Jewish Problem" are now well documented although when I was growing up in the rural South, what I always heard about this man was that he had flown solo across the Atlantic and that the Lindberghs' young son had been cruelly kidnapped and murdered.

A lesser writer might have made this novel into a diatribe against anti-Semitism but not Mr. Roth. Some of his Jewish characters are not very good people, or at the very least misquided while decent Gentiles abound as well. Aunt Evelyn would certainly fall into the misquided and silly category. On the other hand, Mr. Cucuzza, the Italian who moves his family into the apartment below the Roths, is a good man who responds to tragedy the way good people do, as well as Mr. Mawhinney, the Christian from Kentucky who rescues the young Seldon after his mother has been killed. The narrator's parents are both strong and heroic. There is a particularly moving scene in the chapter entitled "Loudmouth Jew" when the father refuses to be cowed by anti-Semitic treatment in both a hotel and a cafeteria.

What Mr. Roth does so well is convey the utter fear that existed in the Jewish community, particularly as seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. And the plot takes interesting twists as well.

At the end of the story, Mr. Roth gives a "true chronology" of the major figures he writes about here so the reader can check out information on Lindbergh, Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Walter Winchell and others. Mr. Roth is more than kind to Franklin Roosevelt, both in the novel, where he is portrayed as a peerless hero, and in the historical information Roth selects to include about Mr. Roosevelt. He omits the sad history of the S. S. St. Louis that left Hamburg, Germany on May 13, 1939, carrying 937 Europeans, many of them Jews, who were fleeing Nazi Persecution. The ship was not permitted to land on U. S. soil. Apparently two personal appeals were sent to President Roosevelt, but he did not respond. While I certainly think Mr. Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, his actions or failure to act in this instance was not his finest hour.

In this book, history veers off course for two years (1940-1942) before falling back on track. In 1940 crack aviator Charles A. Lindbergh is elected President on an isolationist Republican platform, and things go pear shaped for the young Roth family of Newark, New Jersey. President Lindbergh quickly reaches an agreement with Hitler to prevent war between the two powers, but of course people worry about any secret protocols to the agreement, mainly concerning the fate of America's Jews. I won't go deeper into the plot, but to say that it is plausible. The country had significant working-class Polish, Irish and German minorities and was ruled by a anglophile elite with deep genteel antisemitic leanings. Isolationist sentiment was by no means confined to the lunatic fringe. In fact, even in WWI there was deep resistance over American involvement. It is certain that an attractive, telegenic candidate like Lindbergh (compared to the ridiculous Wendell Wilkie, a Costello-look alike and well known lover of Madame Chiang Kai Shek) might have made a difference in 1940.

The novel is indeed the most personal of Roth's so far. His portrayal of his stoic, honorable father, his strong, decent mother, his talented, ambivalent brother and his rebellious cousin all ring true. Roth's young alter ego is an egotistic fantasist, who is also a top-notch narrator. There are some common themes from his previous work, notably the American Pastoral trilogy. The representation of evil derangement is female. There is an honorable Jewish man buffeted by changes he cannot control or even understand. Nasty consequences follow from minute causes. Lirical descriptions of New Jersey working class life and scenery abound (a welcome respite from all the ridiculing of the Garden State in the movies). The book is also an enjoyable read. There is plenty of action, dialogue, intrigue and description.

So why are some people so critical of it? The book is obviously asking for trouble when it straddles into alternate-history territory. Roth was presumably surprised to learn how many readers like this sort of thing (witness the success of Harris or Turtledove) and how strongly critical they are of serious novelists who stray into their neighborhood.

But I liked this book, and there's no reason why you shouldn't, too. It is a plausible story, with well-rendered characters and a nice pace.

Make no bones about it, Roth has animus against Charles A. Lindbergh, who in The Plot Against America, uses his cheap jingoistic rhetoric, convincing the American public during the 1940 presidential election that he loves America more than FD Roosevelt. Championing himself with fear and a friendship with Adolph Hitler, he creates a poisonous atmosphere for all of America, not the least of which are the Jews who come under heated persecution, isolation, and discrimination.

What's most poignant about this novel is the way Roth has--either consciously or unconsciously--drawn parallels between his fictional creation of Lindbergh with George W. Bush. Both are fear-mongers, both use either/or fallacies in their speeches ("You're either for us or against us."), both resort to demagoguery, both rely on unconvincing macho posturing, both stubbornly ignore the valuable advice of their political advisors, both are intoxicated by their own sense of destiny. Thus we're faced with the question: Did Roth write this novel as a subversive way of critiquing George W. Bush? I honestly don't know, but this question and the exploration of the manner in which a president's dysfunctional qualities have a rippling effect on the country make this an urgent topic.

So why only four stars, not five? Sorry to say, there's some filler here. At 362 pages, the novel is paced too slowly. There are peripheral characters, a World War II vet amputee for example, who get too much time here. The novel should have come in a lean, mean 200 pages. For an example of one of Roth's more gem-etched taut novels, take a look at his masterpiece The Dying Animal.

A very interesting novel, makes you wonder how the world would be today if FDR lost the elections and Lindbergh won. A very good read. For further reading I would recomment SS-GB by Len Deighton. The book is much better than the series.

Very interesting "What if?" novel. Liked the actual historical pieces and how Jewish community would have felt had this actually taken place. Like in any controversy not all of the Jewish community would have responded the same way. Characterization puts the reader right in the middle of the action.

Read the plot synopsis. Roth's writing has never been finer, conjuring up images so well you hear every sound and smell every aroma. It takes some effort, however, to believe an anti-Semetic government such as he describes could actually take over America, but if you're willing to go on the ride, it's a great read. Until the ending, that is, which is so foolish and contrived I'm surprised a writer of Roth's reputation succombed to this all-too-frequent weakness of modern novels.

I suppose Roth is trying to warn us of the need to safeguard our civil liberties. Even as a Gore/Kerry voting liberal, I think he overstates the problem.

Tough to beat Roth for introspective self-deprecating humor in the face of sometimes harrowing personal and historical events.
One feels as though a place at the family table has been reserved for the voyeur reader.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana's famous observation about historical memory might serve as the motto of The Plot Against America. This novel is based on the premise of a Republican defeat of Roosevelt in the key election of 1940. Instead, the popular national hero Charles Lindbergh is elected, and America begins to "tilt" towards Nazi Germany in its war against Britain. The Plot Against America brings to life a nightmare vision of an America gone haywire in its elevation of its own safety above all else, including the ideals upon which the country was founded. It does not take a gigantic leap of the imagination to read this book as a warning for present-day America. I think it stands particularly as a warning to those of my fellow American Jews who seem to have forgotten the history of the America First committee, Father Coughlin, and the others of that era, and were all too happy to scapegoat the Jews as the embodiment of everything that was cowardly, selfish, unpatriotic, and "un-American".

The Plot Against America is no mere political parable, however. Like many of Roth's novels, this book is primarily about individual moral choice. The central character, provocatively named Philip Roth, is a seven or eight year old child, obsessed with building his impressive stamp collection. (FDR was an avid stamp collector, and this hobby was then very popular, particularly with young boys). He is the child of a plain-spoken, relatively uneducated father, a man of simple dignity drawn lovingly and convincingly by Roth, who for all the pride he takes in being an American (one of the best chapters, early in the book, is the obligatory family trip to Washington D.C.), is completely unprepared for the wave of overt anti-Semitism that sweeps across the country with the election of Lindbergh. He is also the child of a mother who is forced to use every ounce of her very considerable strength and wisdom just to enable her family to survive. There is a cousin who is severely wounded for unexpected reasons after volunteering to fight alongside the British in the Canadian army, and a Rabbi who embodies everything a religious leader should not be (Roth seems to take a dim view of the rabbinate in a number of his books, which may be one reason he is held in such enmity in some Jewish circles). But the central choice Philip must make involves a kid his own age, Seldon Wishnow, who looks up to and clings to Philip, but who is perceived by Philip as an annoying dorky loser. The scenes in which the enormous consequences of Philip's choice unfold are set in an alien heartland America, far from the cocoon-like safety of Philip's family and community. And the stakes are much higher than anything that could have been imagined by an eight year old child.

Although the ending is the weakest part of this novel (and historical fiction based on an alternate reality is notoriously difficult to end), The Plot Against America gathers momentum early and is great page-turner almost to the end. If you are interested in history, politics, and the moral choices we face both as individuals and as a nation, check out this book.

Roth's masterful writing gets in my way of appreciating his storytelling in most of his books that I have read. Not this one--the tour de force of his premise eclipses the monumentality of his style, rendering it accessible to me in the horror of the story. The excerpts of contemporary speeches and articles at the end of the book brutalize the fragility of our complacency, igniting current political events (March 2016) in parallel anxiety. I bought this copy for a friend, to incite awareness of the conflagration we face above our confidence in our own exceptionalism and superiority as a people and a society. Good reading to you!

The Plot Against America is narrated by the author as a young boy mostly during the year 1942. His family has been living in a Jewish enclave in New Jersey where they have experienced a degree of prejudice but have lived peacefully. As the Lindbergh administration forges alliances with fascist regimes, anti-Semitism quickly escalates and becomes violent. When the brutal administration falls, the threat recedes, but lasting scars remain on the family and the country.

This is an absolutely fascinating "what if" view of history, and a beautifully written account of a family in crisis, seen through the eyes of a child.