The Plot Against America
 Dust jacket of first U.S. edition | |
| Author | Philip Roth |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | alternate history |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | September 2004 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 0224074539 |
| OCLC | 56804910 |
The Plot Against America is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternate history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh.
Plot introduction
The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels. The narrator and central character in the novel is the young Philip, and the care with which his confusion and terror are rendered makes the novel as much about the mysteries of growing up as about American politics. Roth based his novel on the isolationist ideas espoused by Lindbergh in real life as a spokesman for the America First Committee and his own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The novel depicts the Weequahic section of Newark which includes Weequahic High School from which Roth graduated.
Inspiration for the novel
Roth has stated that the idea for the novel came to him while reading Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s autobiography, in which Schlesinger makes a comment that some of the more radical Republican senators of the day wanted Lindbergh to run against Roosevelt. The title appears to be taken from that of a communist pamphlet published in support of the campaign against Burton K. Wheeler's re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1946.
The novel depicts a United States in the 1940s that was antisemitic. Roth had written in his autobiography, The Facts, of the racial and antisemitic tensions that were a part of his childhood in Newark, New Jersey. Several times in that book he describes children in his neighborhood being set upon simply because they were Jewish.
Literary significance and criticism
Roth's novel was generally well-received. Jonathan Yardley of the The Washington Post, exploring the book's treatment of Lindbergh in some depth, calls the book "painfully moving" and a "genuinely American story."[1]
The New York Times review described the book as "a terrific political novel" as well as "sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible."[2]
Blake Morrison of The Guardian also offered high praise: ""The Plot Against America creates its reality magisterially, in long, fluid sentences that carry you beyond scepticism and with a quotidian attentiveness to sights and sounds, tastes and smells, surnames and nicknames and brandnames -- an accumulation of des petits faits vrais -- that dissolves any residual disbelief."[3]
Writer Bill Kauffman of The American Conservative, an opinion magazine founded in 2002, criticized its portrayal of increasing American antisemitism, in particular among Catholics, and for the nature of its fictional portrayals of real-life characters like Lindbergh, claiming it was "bigoted and libelous of the dead", as well as for its rushed ending, featuring a drastic and odd resolution to the political situation reminiscent he asserted of a deus ex machina.[4]
Many supporters and critics of the book alike took it as something of a roman à clef for or against the Bush administration and its policies[5], but though Roth is opposed to the Bush administration, he has denied such allegorical interpretations of his novel.[6]
In 2005, the novel won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History[7] and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction given by the Society of American Historians[8].
Historical figures
There are several historical figures depicted or mentioned in The Plot Against America:
See Also
Notes
- ^ Yardley, Jonathan. "Homeland Insecurity". The Washington Post. October 3, 2004. p. BW02
- ^ Berman, Paul. "The Plot Against America". The New York Times. October 3, 2004.
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/oct/02/fiction.philiproth/print
- ^ Kauffman, Bill. "Heil to the Chief". The American Conservative. September 27, 2004.
- ^ West, Diana. "The unnerving 'Plot'". Townhall.com. October 11, 2004.
- ^ "Best Fiction" The Telegraph 8 Dec. 2004
- ^ List of Sidewise Award Winners
- ^ List of winners of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize
External links
- "Lucky Lindy Unfortunate Jews", Christian Science Monitor
- New York Times review by Michiko Kakutani