The Plot Against America

Πραγματικά ένα πολύ δυνατό βιβλίο που με απορρόφησε τόσο ώστε το τελείωσα σε δυο μέρες (αφού έτυχε και το επέτρεψαν και οι υποχρεώσεις).

Πρόκειται για μια εναλλακτική ιστορία που πραγματεύεται το σενάριο μιας προεδρίας ενός απομονωτιστή (και ύποπτου για τις διασυνδέσεις του με το φασισμό) του διάσημου αεροπόρου Λίντμπεργκ. Το βιβλίο επικεντρώνεται κυρίως στις αγωνίες και την οπτική ενός μικρού παιδιού μιας απλής εβραϊκής οικογένειας στο Νιούαρκ, στην ουσία αποτυπώνοντας παιδικές του μνήμες από την εξαιρετικά αβέβαιη και δύσκολη περίοδο των αρχών του Β' ΠΠ. Παράλληλα όμως από τις σελίδες περνάνε πολλές εικόνες των ΗΠΑ της εποχής, χρωματίζοντας έναν εξαιρετικό πίνακα ως σκηνικό για την ιστορία.

Η αληθοφάνεια της ιστορίας και των ανθρώπινων τύπων που περιγράφει είναι ανατριχιαστική και μοιραία σκέπτεται κανείς πόσο εύκολα θα μπορούσαν να είναι διαφορετικά τα πράγματα. Παράλληλα το θεωρώ και ως ένα μήνυμα, απαραίτητο στις ημέρες μας, για το πόσο εύθραυστη είναι η δημοκρατία και πόσο εύκολη η απώλεια των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων, ιδίως όταν οι πολίτες μια χώρας κατηγοριοποιούνται (πχ σε μειονότητες). Και σε αυτό το βιβλίο βλέπει κανείς να επανέρχονται τα θέματα της απληστίας των οικονομικά ισχυρών, του υποκίνησης του φανατισμού, της αδυναμίας των πολιτών έναντι στις οργανωμένες επιθέσεις στα δικαιώματά τους και πολλά άλλα που ταλανίζουν και τη σημερινή εποχή.

Το συστήνω ανεπιφύλακτα στους λάτρεις της ιστορίας (όχι μόνο της εναλλακτικής) και του ιστορικού μυθιστορήματος αλλά και σε όσους προβληματίζονται από τις αναλογίες που όλοι βλέπουμε να υπάρχουν μεταξύ της εποχής μας και προηγούμενων εποχών.

n  

"There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it - hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty and madness everywhere"

n
Could this book be any more eerily topical? And not just in the US ('America First') but here in the UK where Brexit-madness has split the country, has brought a horrific latent xenophobic and small-minded 'Little England' isolationist agenda back into public life, and where Boris Johnson has refused to reveal a security services dossier on Russian interference in electioneering just before winning a landslide election... Roth's 2004 counterfactual novel may be set in the 1940s but it has a frightening resonance with today.

What I think Roth does so well is to keep events relatively low-key and, thus, convincing - there isn't the melodrama of more popular forays into similar alternative history scenarios (Fatherland is the one that immediately comes to mind). And my edition of the book contains an excellent appendix which shows how closely Roth sticks to reality with regard to Lindbergh, Ford etc... right up to the point at which Lindbergh becomes president in place of Roosevelt in the fictional 1940.

Set against the frightening scenario of an increasingly extremist and overtly anti-Semitic America is the coming of age story of young 'Philip Roth', aged about 6-8 in the book. The extended Roth family and their neighbours add both a personal, intimate dimension to the book's politics and are also a microcosm of the wider world. There is charm here and care, but also division and tragedy.

The book isn't flawless: it's slightly strange that anti-Semitism doesn't expand to other forms of racism given the time and Nazi racial ideology, though the KKK do make a somewhat token appearance at the end. And the end itself feels like Roth wrote himself into a corner and has to pull off a 'with one bound he was free' conclusion. Nevertheless, the final image of poor Seldon being absorbed into the Roth family is the perfect juxtaposition to the external violence, brutality and hatred that drives so much of the plot, and there's a lovely irony that it's the devastation of Pearl Harbour that brings America back from the brink.

A thoughtful, clever, spookily prescient novel that perhaps gains in relevance - and serves as a warning - more today than when it was conceived and written.

Roth imagines a world where Lindbergh became President in 1940 and then proceded to collaborate with the Nazis. He says this has nothing to do with George Bush, but I found it impossible not think of parallels. Like all late Roth, very nicely written.

I have had a lot of very rude, mean things to say about Philip Roth here on Goodreads but this one was compelling and like Maxwell House coffee good to the last drop. In the rare cases where Philip Roth could drag his attention away from his withering penis he could come up with something well worth our time (Nemesis is another one). As you know this is an alternative history* novel in which the USA ditches Roosevelt in 1940 and elects the tall blond flyboy adventurer Hitler-loving Charles Lindbergh. After which, for Jews, things fall apart rapidly.

My GR friend Dave Schaafsma summed it up :

Could an isolationist, racist fascist become president of the US of A? Nah, it can’t happen here.

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis indeed wrote It Can’t Happen Here which sounds very like an early version of this one. (You know, I read Main Street and Babbitt, both great, and I thought that was enough of Sinclair Lewis – I think that might have been rash!) So the idea of the USA taking a Wrong Turn is not a new one.

Some reviewers boggled at the idea of American voters in 1940 switching from the immensely popular democrat FDR to the glamorous media star Charles Lindbergh and his one solitary policy ("A vote for me is a vote for peace, a vote for Roosevelt is a vote for war" repeat repeat repeat). Whether you find this plausible or ridiculous might relate to exactly when you read this book – pre-Trump or post-Trump? Pre-6th January last year or post? TPAA presents American democracy being tossed aside in one fell swoop, as the Enabling Act did in Germany. The current version of the attack on democracy is more bewildering, more like an army of soldier ants munching away at things like voter registration, local election laws, TikTok conspiracy channels, and the insidious rise of the concept that we have no shared reality, that instant scepticism is the only reaction to all news, and that the need for proof of any assertion is something only a child would ask for.

Roth, through the eyes of a 7 to 9 year old boy called Philip Roth, takes us on an enormous journey of just over 2 years (1940 to 1942). A lot of things happen. This review could be very long. So just a couple of last observations :

1)tIt’s true that TPAA presents us with a version of the American non-Jewish people who are gagging to be let loose on those Jews to teach them a lesson. The cavalier disregard of democratic values is one thing but the wholesale onslaught of violence against a specific racial minority is another thing. It could be seen as way too bleak a picture. And in the very raggedy end of the book, (spoiler alert) Pandora’s box is shown to be able to be crammed shut again, with all the devils shoved back inside. It was a little neat and hasty.

2)tAfrican Americans might possibly read this account of Jews fearing and then suffering simmering then violently erupting antisemitism and say well, our community has been suffering ten times worse than this for centuries. Let me tell you about the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921…


Still, a most interesting read for 2022.



***


*Some reviewers say that this makes The Plot Against America science fiction, and that mainstream authors should not loftily condescend to write sf when the whim takes them. I agree with that last part, but alternative history isn’t science fiction. No science is involved!

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So after a month of election obsession here in Chicago, I find my schedule of book reviews in complete chaos: nearly 20 titles read now, all of them awaiting essays, and with me still continuing to read new books on a daily basis. I thought I'd start this week, then, with a whole series of recently read books that I don't have that much to say about, either because of being older titles or not very good or whatnot; and I thought I'd start this list as well with the best book out of all of them, American literary treasure Philip Roth's 2004 masterpiece The Plot Against America, which believe it or not is actually the very first book by Roth I've ever read. And man, what a doozy to start out with, because it so perfectly captures the entire zeitgeist of the Bush years, despite the plot being a science-fictiony "alternative history" one; because, see, for those who don't know, what this book posits is a world where Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh becomes President of the US in 1940 instead of Franklin Roosevelt, and instead of going to war actually works out a non-aggression pact with the Axis powers. And then the story itself is told as a personal memoir, with the main character being Roth himself as a small Jewish child in New Jersey "living" through the events.

It's a brilliant concept, executed even more successfully precisely because of no melodramatic things taking place; under Roth's genius speculative mind, no Jews are actually rounded up into concentration camps under a Lindbergh administration, but merely a national air of hostility created towards them, a government-approved disdain for Jews that clearly affects the emotional well-being of Roth's tight-knit Jewish community in an industrialized mid-century New Jersey. And that's why this is such a magnificent statement about the Bush administration, a sneaky one that you might not even realize at first -- because Roth's whole point by using this fantastical premise is to show that you don't need out-and-out pogroms in order to create a discriminatory society, that you don't need goose-stepping stormtroopers in the streets in order to have a fascist-friendly nation. It's a fascinating book, one with a delightfully surprising ending, a novel that really floored me when I read it a few weeks ago; in fact, about the only complaint I have is that large sections of it are overwritten, and that Roth has a habit of delving into the minutiae of certain scenes in simply too much detail. Other than that, though, it comes highly recommended, and I believe is destined in the future (along with such titles as Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Max Brooks' n  World War Zn) to be one of the essential titles of the early 2000s, one of the books that will help explain to future generations just what it was like to live under the Bush regime. Needless to say, I am now eagerly looking forward to tackling more of this remarkable writer's ouevre.

Simply put: a devastating reading experience! Roth's whale of a 'what if' tale is all the more powerful because it's all so plausible. And it's written with the precision of a scalpel. I wasn't that far into the book when it seemed, with its almost-breathless sense of urgency, to demand my attention. That feeling was solidified with the gut-punch sentence that closes a very sturdy Chapter One.

The book was published in 2004, when George Jr. was POTUS. Roth stated that his intent in writing the novel had nothing to do with anything that may have, in any way, been in the air politically at the time. He had been reading the unpublished galleys of historian Arthur Schlesinger's autobiography. In it, Roth came across info re: radical [R] senators who wanted Lindbergh to run against FDR (going for his third term). The author became inspired.

Now, of course, 'The Plot...' is being viewed as prescient - for the startling elements that mirror what happened to all of us in 2016. But, when asked about that, the author responded: "It is easier to comprehend the election of an imaginary President like Charles Lindbergh than an actual President like Donald Trump. Lindbergh, despite his Nazi sympathies and racist proclivities, was a great aviation hero ... Trump is just a con artist."

But that doesn't make 'The Plot...' any less scary. Regardless of his genuine hero status, Roth's depiction of Lindbergh is still a scorching (and apparently justified) reflection of egomania. To say nothing of the worshippers: the more-than-significant number of Lindbergh supporters are shown to be just as rabid, myopic and vocal as the Thing-lovers that we now hear and read about every day.

What makes 'The Plot...' a... little... easier to bear (in a way) is that its main focus is on a single family. Still, it's also the Lindbergh fever - and the wave of antisemitism that accompanies it - that serves to challenge the family (as well as partially tear it apart).

The book comes with a Postscript which affords details of actual personalities and events, clarifying where fact leaves off and Roth's fiction begins. But there is absolutely nothing false about the novel's ideological or emotional content.

And, for much of it... just substitute Putin for Hitler and it's the same nightmare.

SideNote: The 6-hour HBO adaptation (2020) is surprisingly faithful and, I suppose, about as good as could be expected. The book is still better but I was nevertheless impressed.

Enough has been written about this book and there is little need to rehash the plot. But I think most of the negative reviews are way off the mark. This is a gripping novel about civil courage, the fallibility of public opinion, and selfish vs. selfless motives. The type of anti-Semitism described in the book are, to me, a metaphor for the creeping legitimacy of racism and intolerance that are pervading the U.S. today.

This is a "What if?" novel that seems plausible. The resignation that many Jews felt under the fictitious Lindbergh regime was, as Roth so perfectly writes, that "they'd found no alternative but to accept that the guarantees of citizenship no longer fully extended to them..." For me that quote sums up the tragedy of so many who live amongst people who declare that this is the best, most free nation in the world. Too many Americans understand what Roth conveys in this story, these deeply held views don't stand up to the reality of their everyday lives.

n   “La storia è tutto ciò che accade dappertutto.”n

La Storia con le virgole spostate è quella scritta al condizionale.
Ecco che il “Se” da ipotesi si tramuta in strada laterale aprendosi a paesaggi sconosciuti.
Così Philip Roth, meraviglioso autore ormai affermato, ha deformato la visione del suo stesso passato.

E’ il 1940 e il piccolo Philip ha sette anni quando la paura entra in casa Roth nel quartiere ebraico della periferia di Newark.
Il terrore per un bambino è quello di sentire le voci tremanti dei genitori che sussultano di fronte all’impensabile.

Mentre in Europa si assiste impotenti all’ascesa nazista, l'idolatrato Charles Linderbergh usa la sua popolarità per fare discorsi antisemiti ed isolazionisti e questa è Storia realmente accaduta.
Quello che lo scrittore immagina è una piega diversa che ribalta le prospettive ed ecco che invece delle parate che accompagnano festose i soldati pronti per il fronte, chi scappa per andare in guerra è additato come traditore; invece del credo inculcato dei Pionieri di una sola ed unica bandiera portatrice di verità e salvezza per tutta l’umanità, si stringono patti con Hitler per restare spettatori in prima fila.

Quello che rimane uguale è l’odio per l’Altro.
Un romanzo da alcuni lettori giudicato faticoso. Per quanto mi riguarda ne sono stata risucchiata.

La storia immaginata da Roth deforma gli eventi ma è resa preziosa dallo sguardo di un bambino che cerca in tutti modi di sottrarsi a questa vista di un mondo che si sgretola in tutte le sue certezze.


” È vero, c’è un complotto, e io faccio volentieri il nome delle forze che lo animano: isterismo, ignoranza, rancore, stupidità, odio e paura. Che spettacolo ripugnante sta dando il nostro paese! Dappertutto falsità, crudeltà e follia, e tra le quinte la forza bruta in attesa di darci il colpo di grazia”