Radio actor Iron Rinn (born Ira Ringold) is a big Newark roughneck blighted by a brutal personal secret from which he is perpetually in flight. An ...
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Apr 24, 2008
Erik
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I'm not the hugest Philip Roth fan; I get real, real tired of his penning his sexual fantasies, and as I read his books I often find myself wondering: outside of movie stars and rock stars, are they're really this many average-looking people having this much incredible sex with all these incredible looking people? That said, his nineties trilogy about America was terrific, and this book is a masterpiece. It's the best fictional account I've read of McCarthyism and maybe the best book I've rea
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Aug 13, 2007
Ben
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First let me say that Philip Roth is one of my favorite authors, which is saying a lot because I am pretty lame when it comes to capital-L Literature and also because I tend to read fluffy books about nothing as per my discomfort with profundity. To wit: what gets me about Philip Roth's books, beyond the way in which the arc of his oeuvre basically traces the arc of American society blah blah blah, is the fact that he writes about NEWARK, NJ when it was basically a completely different place th
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Dec 06, 2008
Aaron
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Many authors are vengeful deities, intent upon bringing woe to their creations. Few Roth creations have endured greater divine malice than Nathan Zuckerman, stripped of family, love, his people, and creative energy. By the American Trilogy, Roth has even taken away his health, leaving the metaphor of the “Anatomy Lesson” complete and upfront. “I Married a Communist” takes this one further, stripping Zuckerman of his happy past as well. Like Zuckerman’s first appearance in “My Life as a Man,” som
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Jan 12, 2011
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May 24, 2010
Ruth
rated it: 
323 pages. Donated 2010 May.
Iron Rinn (né Ira Ringold) is a self-educated radio actor, married to a spoilt, rags-to-riches beauty, silent-film star Eve Frame (née Chave Fromkin). He is a Communist, and a "sucker for suffering," locked into the cycle of violence from which he has emerged. She has risen by assiduous imitation of what is "classy"--which seems to include a wide swathe of anti-Semitism--and ultimately denounces her husband as a Soviet spook. And who wo More...
Iron Rinn (né Ira Ringold) is a self-educated radio actor, married to a spoilt, rags-to-riches beauty, silent-film star Eve Frame (née Chave Fromkin). He is a Communist, and a "sucker for suffering," locked into the cycle of violence from which he has emerged. She has risen by assiduous imitation of what is "classy"--which seems to include a wide swathe of anti-Semitism--and ultimately denounces her husband as a Soviet spook. And who wo More...
Jul 28, 2009
Joe
rated it: 
I am an avowed Rothnik, but I could not get into I Married a Communist. I've read nearly all of the Zuckerman novels--I believe the last I need to read is The Counterlife. In IMaC, the narration is inconsistent and the multiple voices are confusing when placed near each other. It's also repetitive and lacks a coherent stucture. Zuckerman's shrill voice seems to be trying to cover up the weaknesses of the plot, rather than lend genuine urgency to the book. Read The Human Stain and American Pastoral
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Nov 16, 2010
Alinola
rated it:
Che io dico: sei Philip Roth e puoi fare tutto? Ennò, non puoi fare tutto. E' completamente folle( ma non del tipo sei folle! ti adoooroo!!) raccontare tutta la vita di una persona attravero un dialogo diretto tra due persone. Lo so che Roth non si fa scrupoli. Ma è ingiusto. Io sono la lettrice e decido che questo libro è brutto. Ma poi i personaggi sono brutti. Gli unici momenti carini sono l'incontro tra Sylphid e Nathan e quendo Murray parla della sua famiglia, non del fratello. Fratello che
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Nov 09, 2010
Ryan
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I kind of miss Roth’s styling of his earlier work. I loved the initial Zuckerman trilogy, thought every sentence popped, thought his satire on addressing the world of a writer through the world of a writer was genius – and then he started to get weird and really fuck with his readers by addressing “reality” but not really: The Counterlife, American Pastoral, and now Communist.
I will say that I liked this more than American Pastoral, which I thought was too rambling, repetitive, had More...
I will say that I liked this more than American Pastoral, which I thought was too rambling, repetitive, had More...
Jun 21, 2011
Erik
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Roth paints his characters here with his usual care and sniper-like accuracy. He also exhibits a mastery of mixed timelines, telling stories from the distant memories of two separate narrators without confusing the reader's experience. Through Nathan, Ira and Murray, we taste nearly every phase of life: the frenzied excitement of a twelve-year-old finding the father he wished was his own, to a forty-year-old's urge to be that father, and a ninety-year-old's unstoppable urge to pass on what he's
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Jun 23, 2011
Tim
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A sometimes beautiful, sometimes boring look at a giant of a man, the self-created Iron Rinn, who falls apart in the 1950s. His marriage fails, as a communist, he is black-listed from the entertainment world. Structurally, the book is sometimes confusing, as it consists of Iron Rinn's (real name Ira Ringold) brother, Murray Ringold, talking to an old student, our friend Nate Zuckerman (Roth's alter-ego) about Ira and life in Newark in the 50s. The last chapters are windy, but beautiful, as th
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Jun 27, 2011
Agnes
rated it:
Anyone who's paid any attention whatsoever to my reading habits knows that Philip Roth is far and away my favorite author. I've made it through about half of his books now and while I Married a Communist didn't quite earn the title of my favorite Roth book, it is easily in the top 5.
Many of the novels I've enjoyed by Roth I would hesitate to recommend to someone who's never experienced him before. Often times they build on one another, or I think it's necessary to know certain things More...
Many of the novels I've enjoyed by Roth I would hesitate to recommend to someone who's never experienced him before. Often times they build on one another, or I think it's necessary to know certain things More...
Nov 12, 2010
Michael
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This novel is thematically similar to "American Pastoral," a towering piece of fiction, and the language is just as rich, so why didn't "I Married a Communist" resonate nearly as much?
I think the novel in that regard was doomed from the start, as structurally it keeps us at a distance. Nathan Zuckerman learns about his teenage hero Ira Ringold through Ira's brother Murray, and the story basically alternates between Zuckerman recounting his own Communist-in-training More...
I think the novel in that regard was doomed from the start, as structurally it keeps us at a distance. Nathan Zuckerman learns about his teenage hero Ira Ringold through Ira's brother Murray, and the story basically alternates between Zuckerman recounting his own Communist-in-training More...
Nov 30, 2011
Melby
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An interesting story told mostly in the past, by a boy — now an older man — reminiscing and discussing the past with his old teacher, friend, and mentor. What they discuss for a week of evenings is what they had in common - the boy's surrogate father figure for a time, the teacher's younger brother. The old man, Murray, fills in all the gaps about "Iron Rinn," his younger brother's, life for Nathan, who deeply respected and admired both of the men as a young teenager, during the era of
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Nov 23, 2011
Raffaella
rated it:
Philip Roth è un gigante. Piaccia o meno, questo è uno scrittore nessuno dovrebbe ignorare, soprattutto se nato su suolo americano.
Il comunista del titolo (“I Married a comunist”) è Ira Ringold, un povero ragazzo ebreo impegnato nelle lotte sindacali che, recitando con successo la parte di Abramo Lincoln – siamo nell’America degli anni ’50 – diventa un affermato attore radiofonico. Ira sposa per amore, ma con esiti infelici, Eva Frame, una bellissima ex diva del cinema muto con svari More...
Il comunista del titolo (“I Married a comunist”) è Ira Ringold, un povero ragazzo ebreo impegnato nelle lotte sindacali che, recitando con successo la parte di Abramo Lincoln – siamo nell’America degli anni ’50 – diventa un affermato attore radiofonico. Ira sposa per amore, ma con esiti infelici, Eva Frame, una bellissima ex diva del cinema muto con svari More...
Apr 07, 2011
Rob
rated it:
One of my favorite Roth novels. I love how the book is structured and narrated; how it flows and how it ends. I always love Roth's prose, but his riffs on politics and art was amazing. I love the details that unless you are looking are easily missed: How Roth infuses Murray with the habits of a man who spent his life teaching precise language and cri - ti - cal thinking. How Roth salts Ira with the size, looks and frailty of Abraham Lincoln and Marfan syndrome.
Sometimes, when More...
Sometimes, when More...
Oct 06, 2011
Barry
rated it: 
10/6 - This was terrible. Why can he be so devastating in My Life as a Man or even The Facts but here he buries any immediacy or intensity in all that hokey early 20th-century nostalgia nonsense (between this and Plot Against... I am horrified by the very thought of American Pastoral) and tedious politickish-accent speechifying that were the lamest parts of both Shylock and Counterlife (and outside of his Raging Jew wheelhouse, instead it's in favor of the most fashionista done-to-death McCarth
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Sep 08, 2011
Jonathan
rated it:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I liked the structure, being based on two character's accounts of another man's life. The first character was a brother to the man in discussion, the other was Nathan Zuckerman, a recurring Roth protag. Zuckerman listens to the brother's account and weaves his own memories into the story.
The central historical event in the reminiscence is the early-50's Red Scare, a Communist witch-hunt, in the U.S. Roth covers a great variety of human suffering and er More...
The central historical event in the reminiscence is the early-50's Red Scare, a Communist witch-hunt, in the U.S. Roth covers a great variety of human suffering and er More...
Aug 06, 2011
Evan
rated it:
"it was ok" enough for me to read 2/3 of it, but not good enough for me to remain interested enough to read the last 1/3. I was a bit torn about giving up when I had made it so far, but I had already read enough to be able to verbalize what I don't like about Philip Roth (this is the second book of his I've read) and didn't think I was going to pull much more than that. I didn't care about the characters and I feel like the narrator is just a channel for Roth's voice. It is the same
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Nov 18, 2011
Rob
rated it:
Only my second Philip Roth, but much better than The Plot Against America which I thought was pretty awful and made me question why anyone would want to give this guy a Nobel. I still haven't ready any of his early work, but I'm far more curious now that I've read what seemed to me to be a pretty good bildungsroman-ish kind of thing.
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May 19, 2010
Gordon
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This is the second Philip Roth book I've read (the first was "The Plot Against America") and they are both excellent. It is a compellingly written book of fiction based during the post-World War II ferment of anti-communism. All of the characters are fully developed, full of virtues and flaws. No one political side comes out the winner, although one of Roth's characters delivers a blistering tirade riffing on Richard Nixon's funeral. I recommend it highly, and will be reading other Ro
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May 07, 2010
Dan
rated it:
A sad and disturbing book. Roth ultimately is incapable of uniting the personal narrative of Ira and Eve with the larger social history he unfolds. His greater aim of rooting the contradictions of Ira in the larger post-war social contradictions, in good Marxist/Hegelian fashion, is a failure. Roth's fictional social history again asserts the same frightening themes, a combination of Republican mendacity and African-American savagery (as in incapable of being civilized) drowned the liberal Jewis
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Nov 29, 2009
Steve
rated it:
*SPOILER ALERT*
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. A famous radio star confides all his secrets to a 15-year old Nathan Zuckerman, takes him up to his cabin that his wife doesn't even visit, teaches him how to drive etc.? Zuckerman's U Chicago TA takes him to classical music concerts and back to his room? I also completely don't buy the "plot twist" (in a story told in the form of recollections of an old man--impossible) of Ira having secretly hastily killed in a mome More...
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. A famous radio star confides all his secrets to a 15-year old Nathan Zuckerman, takes him up to his cabin that his wife doesn't even visit, teaches him how to drive etc.? Zuckerman's U Chicago TA takes him to classical music concerts and back to his room? I also completely don't buy the "plot twist" (in a story told in the form of recollections of an old man--impossible) of Ira having secretly hastily killed in a mome More...
Jul 18, 2008
Jesse
rated it:
While billed as a story about McCarthyism, "I Married A Communist" by Philip Roth is really a novel about impulse control. The main character Ira Ringold (rather ostensibly named in my opinion, as he's always full of ire) is a communist, yet this is just something he latches on to and not something that is really essential to his individual character. He works as a radio star (for the people of course) in the late forties and early fifties and, contrary to his political ideals, marries
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Mar 31, 2008
Tara
rated it:
Roth is pretty great here. It's a good story, but what I liked best was how he tried to see people and situations fairly. He does justice to complexities. I've heard a lot of talk about how it's all a revenge on his ex-wife for publishing a memoir, and maybe that's partly true. Nonetheless, he digs deep into motives, into cycles of human cruelty that people perpetuate when they don't mean to, when it's not healthy, when it ruins their lives. So what if some of his thoughts in the book came from
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Dec 21, 2007
Patrick
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have to say that I really enjoyed Philip Roth’s I Married A Communist. It is part of the American Trilogy that also includes American Pastoral and The Human Stain, both of which I have yet to read. Roth tackles the usual Rothian themes of sex, marriage, and the Jewish American experience, but the post war political themes interested me despite the fact that our popular culture has been inundated with references to McCarthyism and the Red Scare with movies like Good Night, and Good Luck. Nathan
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Aug 14, 2007
Jrat
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as someone who really really enjoyed Plot Against America and especially American Pastoral, two Roths I think do a good job of looking candidly at the excesses of American politics, I’d hoped for more here. It strikes me that the form is not that different from American Pastoral; the alter-ego Zuckerman, the narrative device of an admirable old Jewish man from Newark who tells the writer Zuckerman everything...except for the big secrets they at least initially withhold that make the books tick (
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Jun 30, 2011
Deb
rated it:
Not as expansive as American Pastoral, but searching, incisive, brilliant, and quite the page-turner. While I found Roth's last, Exit Ghost, to be an anemic excuse for Roth's long literary rants, this one is a living breathing story on its own. Ira Ringold, the Communist in the title, is a tragic figure who uses ideology, and marriage, as a desperate protection against his own dark side. His wife, the aptly-named Eve Frame, betrays Ira to the red-baiting journalists of the time by participating
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Dec 13, 2010
Jennifer
rated it:
This was good. My least favorite of Roth's post-war trilogy, but a good book. The protagonist, "Iron Rinn", a working class Joe (and Jew) of average intellect, idololizes a self-named communist he meets in the Army, and proclaims himself a member of the communist party, such as it is, when he returns home. He marries a rich, beautiful movie star. The tale is told in retrospect by Roth's narrator Zuckerman, who describes the downfall of Rinn and those close to him with the rise of McCar
Aug 06, 2011
Philip Roth a le talent de mêler général et particulier, petites et grande histoire.
Roman d'apprentissage dans lequel les modèles qui inspirèrent Nathan lors de son adolescence défilent, fresque historique dans une Amérique un peu glauque, histoire d'un homme - et quel homme - ... c'est tout ceci qu'il nous est donné de lire.
Et puis : "S'il existe une chance de changer la vie, où commencerait-elle sinon à l'école?" ... De quoi faire des vocations !
Roman d'apprentissage dans lequel les modèles qui inspirèrent Nathan lors de son adolescence défilent, fresque historique dans une Amérique un peu glauque, histoire d'un homme - et quel homme - ... c'est tout ceci qu'il nous est donné de lire.
Et puis : "S'il existe une chance de changer la vie, où commencerait-elle sinon à l'école?" ... De quoi faire des vocations !
Oct 28, 2009
Pavel
rated it:
- I don't think this is a novel about communism, maccarthism and whatever;
- Obviously best pages of this book are those about Ira family: him and Sylphid and Eve... I think those are the reason why this book was written in the first place. Perhaps some Roth's personal life and revenge was involved - I don't know and really don't want to. But as a piece of literature this is the part of the book which is interesting.
- Ira is btw female Russian name (not only irish party More...
- Obviously best pages of this book are those about Ira family: him and Sylphid and Eve... I think those are the reason why this book was written in the first place. Perhaps some Roth's personal life and revenge was involved - I don't know and really don't want to. But as a piece of literature this is the part of the book which is interesting.
- Ira is btw female Russian name (not only irish party More...
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