The Plot Against America
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"'The Plot Against America is an epic built - painstakingly, passionately, near perfectly - of the small structures of the particular. A dark, humane masterpiece. Roth is at the peak of his powers' The Times"
Book Description
'The Plot Against America isan epic built - painstakingly, passionately, near perfectly - of the small structures of the particular. A dark, human masterpiece. Roth is at the peak of his powers' The Times
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel drew a lot of literary praise and a fair amount of political flak when it first appeared in 2004. Philip Roth has done outstanding biographical and autobiographical books before (like 'Patrimony' and 'The Facts') and he's even mixed fiction into seemingly autobiographical books to good effect too, (see the horrifying and hilarious 'Operation Shylock'). Still, 'The Plot Against America' is maybe his most remarkable fusion of fiction and autobiography so far.
This book is mainly the first-person reminiscences of a character called Philip Roth about growing up in early Forties' Newark, but not in the early Forties dominated by F. D. Roosevelt. Instead, in this alternative history, Charles Lindbergh ran as Republican Presidential candidate in 1940 and successfully challenged FDR for the Presidency. Once installed, President Lindbergh reaches an accord with Hitler and passes a series of measures seemingly designed to disperse and isolate America's Jewish community. (In an appendix, Roth reprints some damning remarks from the historical Lindbergh that make the imagined course of the alternative Lindbergh Presidency seem sadly plausible.) The screw tightens very slowly and the escalation of widespread anti-Semitism in a democratic country is made to seem all too convincing.
Some critics leapt on Roth for supposedly offering a short-range satire on the America of George W. Bush and his aides but 'The Plot Against America' isn't really about Bush, or any individual - it's much more about how fragile democracy might be against determined opposition from within. There are a few odd things here - the ending of the book seems rushed and contrived, and sometimes a lot of information gets beamed at the reader in a way more like that of a lecture than a novel. Still, 'The Plot Against America' is an astonishing use of alternative history, even alternative autobiography, and one of Roth's best and most inventive books.
This book is mainly the first-person reminiscences of a character called Philip Roth about growing up in early Forties' Newark, but not in the early Forties dominated by F. D. Roosevelt. Instead, in this alternative history, Charles Lindbergh ran as Republican Presidential candidate in 1940 and successfully challenged FDR for the Presidency. Once installed, President Lindbergh reaches an accord with Hitler and passes a series of measures seemingly designed to disperse and isolate America's Jewish community. (In an appendix, Roth reprints some damning remarks from the historical Lindbergh that make the imagined course of the alternative Lindbergh Presidency seem sadly plausible.) The screw tightens very slowly and the escalation of widespread anti-Semitism in a democratic country is made to seem all too convincing.
Some critics leapt on Roth for supposedly offering a short-range satire on the America of George W. Bush and his aides but 'The Plot Against America' isn't really about Bush, or any individual - it's much more about how fragile democracy might be against determined opposition from within. There are a few odd things here - the ending of the book seems rushed and contrived, and sometimes a lot of information gets beamed at the reader in a way more like that of a lecture than a novel. Still, 'The Plot Against America' is an astonishing use of alternative history, even alternative autobiography, and one of Roth's best and most inventive books.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a remarkably convincing counter-factual history of the United States between 1940 and 1942 and how it impacted on the seven to nine year old boy who was Philip Roth at the time. In that version of history, the 1940 presidential election was won by the American folk-hero and aviator Charles Lindbergh on a programme of keeping the United States out of the war against Hitler into which Roosevelt was thought to be steering the country. Lindbergh subsequently met Hitler in Iceland to seal American neutrality. That fact made many Jews, including Philip's father, accuse Lindbergh of being an antisemitic fascist, and that in turn made those Americans who wanted to keep out of the war accuse the Jews of wanting to drag America into it, and fanned antisemitic feelings to such an extent that Jews came to feel very insecure.
In actual history, Lindbergh was indeed something of an admirer of Hitler and had been awarded a decoration by him, and he was a prominent member of the America First Committee, founded to oppose Roosevelt's interventionist polices and to promote American isolationism. Historically also Lindbergh had been disturbed by the influence of Jews in the media, and he did single out the Jews as a pressure group trying to push America into the war.
In the novel, Lindbergh's antisemitic policies are much subtler than Hitler's: he simply sponsors programmes to make them 'more American' by inducing them to move out of the strongly Jewish areas on the East coast into the Mid-West. A prominent Jewish rabbi is a confidant and a regular visitor to the White House, and he defends the President against the charge of being antisemitic; the press carries a letter from Mrs Lindbergh to the rabbi in which the First Lady pays tribute to the great spiritual strength of the Jewish people. Towards the end of the novel we find an ingenious, if rather far-fetched, invention which explains this moderation, and which it would be a spoiler to reveal in this review. In any case, Lindbergh's more strident Jewish opponents, most prominent among them the journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell, are not convinced. (The novel is full of American public figures who really existed). Nor must I reveal the way in which the author eventually brings the novel to a point where the real history we know can be resumed (which, incidentally, forces Roth to misdate Pearl Harbour).
But before American history is 'back on track', we do see an America in which the sense of menace is growing and in which Jews do indeed come to be in deadly peril, with pogroms, riots, and murders. And one feels it could really have happened like this.
Against this background we have the life of the child Philip, in which he has many other things to think about than the political situation which so involves his parents and the older members of his family. The sense of danger does get through to him, of course, but at times we are as much involved in the importance of his stamp-collection, his relationship with his elder brother and his cousin, the tricks he gets up to with a school friend etc. So although this is primarily a political novel, it is at the same time a novel about childhood preoccupations, and a compelling read on both scores.
In actual history, Lindbergh was indeed something of an admirer of Hitler and had been awarded a decoration by him, and he was a prominent member of the America First Committee, founded to oppose Roosevelt's interventionist polices and to promote American isolationism. Historically also Lindbergh had been disturbed by the influence of Jews in the media, and he did single out the Jews as a pressure group trying to push America into the war.
In the novel, Lindbergh's antisemitic policies are much subtler than Hitler's: he simply sponsors programmes to make them 'more American' by inducing them to move out of the strongly Jewish areas on the East coast into the Mid-West. A prominent Jewish rabbi is a confidant and a regular visitor to the White House, and he defends the President against the charge of being antisemitic; the press carries a letter from Mrs Lindbergh to the rabbi in which the First Lady pays tribute to the great spiritual strength of the Jewish people. Towards the end of the novel we find an ingenious, if rather far-fetched, invention which explains this moderation, and which it would be a spoiler to reveal in this review. In any case, Lindbergh's more strident Jewish opponents, most prominent among them the journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell, are not convinced. (The novel is full of American public figures who really existed). Nor must I reveal the way in which the author eventually brings the novel to a point where the real history we know can be resumed (which, incidentally, forces Roth to misdate Pearl Harbour).
But before American history is 'back on track', we do see an America in which the sense of menace is growing and in which Jews do indeed come to be in deadly peril, with pogroms, riots, and murders. And one feels it could really have happened like this.
Against this background we have the life of the child Philip, in which he has many other things to think about than the political situation which so involves his parents and the older members of his family. The sense of danger does get through to him, of course, but at times we are as much involved in the importance of his stamp-collection, his relationship with his elder brother and his cousin, the tricks he gets up to with a school friend etc. So although this is primarily a political novel, it is at the same time a novel about childhood preoccupations, and a compelling read on both scores.
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm surprised that some reviewers found this book uninvolving and hard to get through. I found myself identifying strongly with the Roth family (and I'm neither Jewish nor American) and couldn't put the book down.
On the other hand, I'm a history graduate with a particular interest in the 1940s, and I can see that someone not familiar with the history of the period might miss a lot.
I also agree with the comment from Matt Diamond that the plot twist that Roth uses to get history "back on track" is implausible and unsatisfying, for which it gets docked one star.
All that said, the book is superbly written - Roth is brilliant on character, especially the dynamics of families, and can turn a paragraph expertly from wit to tragedy and back again better than virtually anyone else writing today.
Perhaps not quite his best - I recommend "American Pastoral" if you want a real five-star read, but this is excellent nonetheless.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
'a nightmarish vision of America's anti-Semitic fury roaring...up our...
Roth tweaks 1940s history, imagining how his native USA might have been if Roosevelt had lost the presidential elections to Lindbergh- the aviator, who was also anti-Semitic and... Read more
Published 14 hours ago by sally tarbox
Roth's Compellingly Twisted Tale
Philip Roth's 2004 novel The Plot Against America is a brilliantly clever tale of US life around the onset of the 2nd World War, but (fictionally) twisted such that (real-life)... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Keith M
Brilliant Premise, Flawed Execution.
'The Plot Against America' is at once compelling and maddening. Roth seems unsure whether he's writing an alternative history novel, or an alternative history textbook. Read more
Published 4 months ago by English Teacher
Roth's 1940's America: A Short Step from Fascism and Despair
It is an oft-stated cliché that many families are but one or two paychecks away from poverty. Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" suggests that perhaps U.S. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Leonard Fleisig
Fiction - faction
The underlying story - the post-Roosevelt Presidency of Lindberg with his isolationist keep America out of the war, generally pro-German, and specifically anti-Jewish policies in... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Dr Greville Rumble
A hugely disappointing work
Most of my wife's family died in the Holocaust, so I was fascinated by the idea of a book exploring how such a horror could come about. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Tom Williams
A chilling fantasy
The story takes place in Newark in a Jewish neighborhood in 1940. Philip Roth rewrites history imagining what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh had won the presidential... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Avid Reader
Alternative Realities
If I was being simplistic, I'd say this was a "what if" novel. The author changes a fact of history (in this case FDR loses the 1940 presidential election to Charles Lindhberg) and... Read more
Published 17 months ago by The Hedgehog
Depends what you like
I bought this book for my husband, who has a masters in American History and Institutions and he loved it. He passed it on to me and I found it very frustrating. Read more
Published on 19 May 2010 by Ms Michelle Dwyer
Philip Roth at his fulminating best
Historical what ifs provide ideal fodder for exercising the imagination of authors. One of the most popular must surely be `what if the isolationists had won out in America during... Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2009 by Trevor Coote
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