The Plot Against America (Vintage International)

Philip Roth continues to challenge us in his novels with pithy concepts (the classic 'Portnoy's Complaint', 'Goodbye Columbus', 'The Dying Animal', 'The Human Stain', 'American Pastoral' etc - about 25 in all) written with such acerbic verve, wit, and investigation that he keeps his readers questioning 'how much more can there be?'. In THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Roth appropriates facts from American history, and in doing so provides a new form of insight into the plight of the Jews at the time of World War II. To add credibility to his revised version of history he places his story in the household of the Roths - his own family, where he as Philip is the youngest member living in Newark, New Jersey, sensing the storms of being Jewish in America. Though his family is wholesome and thoroughly 'American', they are aware of the degrees of isolation: wealthy Jews appear miscegenated whereas middle class and lower class Jews are ghettoized. It is 1940 and FDR as President is deeply concerned about Hitler's encroaching activities in Europe and Japan's mirror image conquests in Asia and the pacific. Roosevelt is encouraging assisting Allied Forces to protect Russia, France, and England against the march of Nazis and Fascists. At the same time aviator hero Charles Lindbergh has captured the hearts of Americans not only with his flying feats but also with the famous tragedy of his son's kidnapping. Lindbergh (along with Henry Ford and others) has publicized connections with Hitler and is encouraging the United States, still shaken by the losses of WW I and the Great Depression, to stay our of Hitler's war in Europe - isolationism. It is at this point that Roth's postulate begins: by means of well-paced and documented incidents, Roth has Lindbergh defeat FDR and become the 33rd President of the US. Once in office Lindbergh develops alliances with Hitler, initiates means of anti-Semitic segregation with what appears to wiser Jews to be a means of eliminating American Jews much as Hitler is decimating European Jews. How the Roth family weathers this period of time and terror is the crux of this beautifully constructed, wholly credible novel. THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is not solely about pogroms and 'What if it happened here': Roth uses this matrix to explore the bonds of family, of friendship, of ethnic individuality, of commitment, of tackling fear for survival at the personal level. Though we as the readers know how WW II ended, Roth convincingly introduces new variations to the equation and in doing so has created a suspenseful story that introduces characters whom we grow to love and others for whom we can acknowledge pity for paths inadvisedly taken. This is a story of history revisited from a different vantage, told through the lives of some of Roth's more unforgettable characters. Wisely at the end of the novel, Roth recapitulates sources, facts, the actual histories and outcomes of all the people he uses in THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA and in doing so provides a succinct and intelligent Coda that is refreshingly helpful in appreciating the 'novel' he has written. A worthy read!

I have long been a fan of Philip Roth, ranking his first book,"Letting Go" as one of my very favorite. "Portnoy's Complaint," " When She Was Good," "The Breast," "Goodbye Columbus," were all worthwhile investments of my time. And "The Great American Novel," well, who knew a book could be so funny? And yet somewhere around "The Ghost Writer" or maybe it was the Zuckerman Trilogy, perhaps "Sabath's Theater," I wandered away. His novels seemed now, well, bitter. And increasingly absorbed with his ethnicity and the diminishing capacities of age. I honored an old loyalty with "American Pastoral" which, while good, didn't really dispel the mood that seemed to have settled about him. So I began "The Plot Against America" with some trepidation. From reviews I knew the basic plot and feared that it might be more zionist screed than a work of literature. And so I am happy to report that the old Roth is back, light-handed, deft, at the very top of his form. Some of the credit surely belongs with the real events for which he creates a parallel story line - they themselves were so fantastic as to make Roth's alternate reality plausible. The book's characters, FDR, Fiorello LaGuardia, Walter Winchell, Henry Ford and others were all larger than life figures before Roth ever set pen to paper. A non-fiction tale about the Nazi villains, about Charles Lindbergh and others who populate this book would read like the wildest imaginings if we didn't have the unambiguous historical record. The story takes as its theme what would have occurred had Charles Lindbergh, hero of the 1927 Atlantic crossing, used his popularity, his innate isolationist bent and his unfortunate anti-semitic beliefs to best FDR in the 1940 presidential election. As Roth tells his story it is through the senses of a nine year old protagonist named, clear enough, Philip Roth. That choice helps greatly to blur the line between fact and fiction since many of facts of this child's life were Roth's own. This book is, in part, autobiography. But that choice also informs the book's tone with a sense of wonder and revelation as the child comes alive to a sense of the world's wonder and venality. Roth's gifts as one of the foremost observers of human nature are on full display as the child watches both his parents and himself make choices they cannot justify nor avoid. Roth's time rupture is over a span of just two years as facts merge again with the fiction by 1942 and the Allies go on to defeat the Axis powers. To some degree the minimal nature of the bubble Roth has created accounts for the novel's power - it would have been such a small change in events as we know them to have had history turn out so radically different. To consider how similar conditions were in the US and Germany in the 1930s - economic catastrophe the prime breeding ground of demagogues - is to wonder at how we managed to escape Germany's fate and to make Roth's telling all the more believable. To know, as every sentient being must, that human cruelty knows no geographic border, no unique planetary alignment, that genocide could, too, happen here. To share some of the credit for this novel with real life is in no way to minimize the authorial talent on display here. Philip Roth is one of the most talented, prolific writers of the past fifty or so years. Reading this novel was immensely enjoyable.

I learnt about this book prom a recent article in the New York Review of Books. That article drew an uncanny resemblance between the plot line of this book and the antics of the newly elected Donald Trump. The NYRB article pricked my interest and so I purchased a Kindle copy. As an Australian much of the political detail of 1940's America was unknown to me. So even though this book is a work of fiction it is also an insightful "history" of those times. But the lasting impact this book will have on me is the feeling of how racism is so easily aroused in peoples who have lived previously in harmony. The way the Roth family are catapulted out of their quiet suburban lives into a life of fear and uncertainty. And why? Because they are Jewish! The "stars" of this book are clearly Herman and Bess Roth; the way each rises to handle the wave of anti-sematism bought me close to tears on several occasions. A truely great read and highly recommend. Regards, Peter

Pour les anglophone, le titre de ce livre traduit en français étant "Le complot contre l'Amérique". C'est une fiction vraiment originale et très attachante. Même s'il s'agit d'une fiction, je pense que ce livre permet de comprendre comment une famille juive pratiquante peut se sentir menacée par l'extérieur....

A real good read for lovers of "what if" scenarios. Also draws some good paralells to what is going on today in some "modern" democracias.

Through an imagined America, Roth depicts what really existed at that time under the surface of a republic, the so-called “land of freedom”. The anguish of the caracters is so devastating and profoundly exposed.

This is an astonishing book written by an author whose works I have been meaning to read for some time. For me, it is a classic, American novel which provides as much to think about as 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'The Grapes of Wrath' It is a counter-factual novel which conducts a thought-experiment looking at what would happen if the United States of America had elected the aviation expert / celebrity and renowned anti-Semitic, Charles Lindbergh in 1940. This aspect of fiction is set amongst all the factual events that led up to and followed this election. Lindbergh of course, was the famous aircraft pilot who flew the Spirit of St Louis from America to France and was the pioneer of modern aircraft travel. It discusses the story of the kidnapping of his son and his voluntary exile to Europe where he becomes aware and interested in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Following his election, upon which theories as to why this happened are discussed towards the end of the novel, America sees a slow build up of anti-Semitism across the country starting with minor indignities which the protagonist family experience on a trip to Washington DC to full-blown pogroms and massacres. Roth's main characters are himself and his own family. He places them all at the centre of the story and we see the events through the seven-year old Roth himself. This gives us a fascinating insight once again (just as Harper Lee gives us through the eyes of Scout Finch) into how ordinary families, people and children can have their lives affected, influenced and turned upside-down by the decisions of those with power and authority. We are shown in great detail how this ordinary Jewish family, and most notably, the father, are turned from being people who embrace American life and culture and who fully feel American and celebrate being American, to feeling outsiders in their own country. We see how a totally unqualified man can become President on the strength of his celebrity and his method of appealing to the general public's xenophobic fears. Reading this in the build-up to the Trump / Clinton election provides an unnerving context that Roth could not have foreseen in 2004 when this book was written. This book is a wonderful, thought-provoking read and while it clearly has its disturbing scenes, it is not without moments that are touching and humorous. You sense that it will become more relevant as years go by as humanity continues to embark on its journey to self-destruct. It belongs on the list of those books that all should read at some point in their lives. Never has there been a better time to do so.