The Plot Against America

Oct 23, 2009 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

When I wrote my review for China Mieville's The City and the City, I threw out a stray oblique threat to talk about how its central metaphor might say something about fiction. Mieville's conceit is a single physical space that is inhabited by two "separate" cities -- residents of the respective cities have deeply-ingrained habits of unseeing, so that walking through one neighborhood you might, if you violated practices both cultural and legally-mandated, turn your head and catch a glimpse of the...more When I wrote my review for China Mieville's The City and the City, I threw out a stray oblique threat to talk about how its central metaphor might say something about fiction. Mieville's conceit is a single physical space that is inhabited by two "separate" cities -- residents of the respective cities have deeply-ingrained habits of unseeing, so that walking through one neighborhood you might, if you violated practices both cultural and legally-mandated, turn your head and catch a glimpse of the space otherwise peopled, designed, lived. Such struck me as a sideways allegory for the way fiction and reality share the space of narrative. We tell a story, and with great care or simply deep unquestioned habit tell ourselves it's just a story, yet simply turn your head and the world peeks through. (And just as often our "world," those stones we kick so confidently, is shot through with our fictive shaping, which we habitually, willfully, perversely ignore.)

I ramble on here because that metaphor seems so peculiarly apt for my long history of reading Philip Roth. Every young writer probably grapples with (or was that an embrace?) the reviewers' desire to see the self in the fiction, to map the autobiography behind the first novel. Roth rather quickly made that exercise an exuberant central mythos: whether Alexander Portnoy or Nathan Zuckerman--or, most aggressively, as here, as "Philip Roth"--his protagonists and their narcissistic obsessions spit in the eye and rejected the unseeing, demanded a constant engagement at the borders between the cities. In this Plot, we get a memoir of the Newark Roths in the early '40s, and countless details echo earlier more explicit autobiographical works or hint with a madeleine-like particularity of lived experience. And yet these Roths watch the blond anti-semitic isolationist Adonis Charles Lindbergh capture the Republican nomination and send FDR packing, the novel turning to the counterfactual exploration of some other America, not our own.

Mieville's metaphor seems perfectly suited to the alternate history, too; explorations of what-happened-if (a Lindbergh presidency, a South victorious in the US Civil War, a Catholic Church never displaced from England), this genre has always delighted me when the premise is not mere window-dressing but the revelation of another city, just sideways of the one I (think I) know. The best alternate histories tease out the conditions of some other history, and in so doing tease out the conditionality of history: sometimes it's just an exercise about the want of a nail, but often (as with this, one of Roth's best) these fictions reveal the shaping of the world we take as simply there.

And what is a memoir but just such a case study? The last two decades' explosion of memoirs--not the extended-play reading of a life but the close interrogation of an event or events which have shaped who "I" am now--imagine a premise (often a trauma) which makes (or re-makes) the narrator's world the way it is. Oh, sure, they're not counterfactual. But in the Cities of narrative, one needn't unsee the way the borders are being drawn between what happened and what might have happened. In Plot, I feel confident asserting, we get as rich and realized a vision of how Philip Roth (as well as "Philip Roth") came to be.

And to be Jewish in America has been, as Roth's fiction over nearly five decades now has illustrated, to live just over the line in another City. When early on, before the Lindbergh ascension, Roth's father is offered a promotion to another neighborhood in Newark, the family journeys to this other place and sees another country. The book--whatever artifice we see in the central hook--is a precise detailing of what it's like to live in another country. (Stanley Crouch scolded Roth, or those embracing this book, for here presenting an "alternate history" when one needn't test-drive any counterfactual to narrate an America in the '40s with a whole race of people segregated, oppressed, living in fear... and he's both right and misguided. Given Roth's deep history at the intersections of world and word, I think it's a bit short-sighted to smack him for some allegedly simplistic approach to History and Nation.)

And here's where I come in, dancing at the borders. When I was in my early teens, I ordered Peter Straub's Ghost Story from the library but was accidentally sent Roths' The Ghost Writer. I didn't know what to make of it. Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman only later emerged more forcefully and fully for me, but I was startled by the extended riff on a young woman who believed herself to be--and, in this riff, was made out to be--Anne Frank. This collision (of the enshrined martyr to History with a--blasphemous? bold, brutal, bleakly funny and horribly sad counter-history) blew me away, but I was unsure what sense, if any, to make of what was happening. So I went back to the library and grabbed Goodbye, Columbus... and in that novella and stories, and then in subsequent swallowing of much Roth, this young small-town happy-bland-American-Protestant-God-loving (-fearing?) good-boy smart kid, already feeling like an outsider (already losing, and fretfully seeking therefore to reaffirm and thus rejuvenate, his faith), found an alternate life that made so much sense of my own. Oh, not the cheap joke stuff (or not just): Portnoy wasn't me, nor any of his nicer or nastier protagonists. But there was something I understood about being the good boy and desiring to reject the good as well as to find it. I understood the empathy in the corrosive exploration of family and community and faith. I often say that Stephen King made me a reader, but Philip Roth made me a reader. King brought me into the City, and Roth showed me the Cities.

I haven't much talked about the novel. I think that it reinhabits longstanding obsessions for Roth, with a perhaps more implicit but still near-scabrous sense of play (Anne Frank still alive, Lindbergh now president) embedded in its careful delineation of a country that sidles into fear, hate, and aggression. (I suppose we could also turn our eyes a bit and glance at the way his faux '40s rests alongside the Patriot-Act America...) I could just lay out a case for what I love about the Roth sentences, about the escalation toward rant, about the beauty of the argument in his prose and in his characters. But I leave his defense for another time, some other review, some other reviewer. (less)

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Nov 10, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

(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 r...more (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' World War Z ) 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. (less)

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May 29, 2010 Jace rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't usually do this, but I'm halfway through this book and I want to write a review of my progress so far. For a couple of reasons:
1. The thought has crossed my mind a couple times in the first 200 pages to put the book down. If I don't finish it, I'll probably never write a full review.
2. As I near the midsection of the book, it becomes clearer that things might be about to turn upside down. If so, by the time I finish it I probably will have erased from memory everything I'm thinking about...more I don't usually do this, but I'm halfway through this book and I want to write a review of my progress so far. For a couple of reasons:
1. The thought has crossed my mind a couple times in the first 200 pages to put the book down. If I don't finish it, I'll probably never write a full review.
2. As I near the midsection of the book, it becomes clearer that things might be about to turn upside down. If so, by the time I finish it I probably will have erased from memory everything I'm thinking about this book now.

Anyway, this book is nothing like I thought it would be. With the title of The Plot Against America and a giant swastika on the cover, I expected it to be some sort of post-apocalyptic political thriller. Especially after just finishing, The Handmaid's Tale, I had high hopes. Well, it turns out to not be so much about Charles Lindbergh's fascist takeover of the USA. Instead it's a [fabricated:] autobiography of Philip Roth, then a 9-year-old Jewish boy growing up in Newark, set in an America where Republican Lindbergh defeated FDR in the 1940 election. Lindbergh is an anti-semite who, instead of entering World War II, signs a Memorandum of Understanding with Hitler's Germany--which would lead the reader to believe something ominous is in the works. But for 200 pages, it's just a droll account of Roth's childhood. The most excitement so far is Roth's older cousin who joins up with the Canadian military only to lose a leg fighting in France. One sinister thing the Lindbergh administration has done is introduce the Office of American Absorption [OAA:], which sounds like it belongs in the alphabet soup of FDR's New Deal. Though benign on its face, the OAA seeks to assimilate "minority" [i.e., Jewish:] youth into rural American life, thus driving a wedge between them and their parents. Roth's brother Sandy spent a summer in Kentucky with a pro-Lindbergh family and now he's back home in Newark and moody. It's not exactly Hitler Jugend, but it's what passes for drama in this book. That's my report so far. We'll see what the final 200 pages hold.
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Well, I finished the book. I don't really have the time or the inclination to give any more of an in-depth review, so I'll just say this. The rise AND the defeat of a fascist American government happened in all of EIGHT (8) pages. The entire escapade was condensed into a short newsreel blurb. It turns out that Roth is supposed to be one of the greatest living writers of our age, but I didn't see it. This book was a literary cock-tease. The emotional tension built up by the Lindbergh administration's machinations was betrayed by a fizzling, easily forgettable climax. (less)

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Sep 08, 2007 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone with a desire for a good yarn

I gave this book 4 stars. I probably would have given it 5 had it not gotten a bit weak towards the end and the author seemed to lose focus of where his story was going. It seemed like he wanted it to end whereas I wanted it to continue on.

First off let me say this book is NOT what most of these reviewers are calling it. It is far too complex to be thrown into a category of "what-if" histories. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was that is was a memoir. In fact it reminded me a l...more I gave this book 4 stars. I probably would have given it 5 had it not gotten a bit weak towards the end and the author seemed to lose focus of where his story was going. It seemed like he wanted it to end whereas I wanted it to continue on.

First off let me say this book is NOT what most of these reviewers are calling it. It is far too complex to be thrown into a category of "what-if" histories. The first thing that came to mind when I read it was that is was a memoir. In fact it reminded me a lot of Frank McCourt's work, but only much better.

That is not to say that there is not a "what-if" angle to the book. That is obvious. And kind of like Harry Turtldove's books, Roth is not dealing too much with the actual history and consequences of the twist of events. He is dealing with the actual people--notably his own family and only throwing in the historical figures as they played a role in their everyday lives.

Once I acknowledged that this was a very unique memoir, I read it as such. Yes I understand the author has "A Novel" posted on the cover. But it is written as a memoir and should be read in that way. You do not read biographies like you do novels, nor the Bible like you would The Odyssey. Same goes here. It is a novel because it is fiction, but Roth is a brilliant writer that can present it as a memoir detailing a specific moment in his life, but presenting it now in a way that expresses the extreme fear that bubbled within the Jewish communities of the East Coast.

And he succeeds. America has forgotten in our collected back-patting and our victories in saving the world from the Nazis that we had some of the very same anti-Semetic sentiments in our own country. We quickly criticize drunken-rages by famous actors but forget that our own heros of American history held these views soberly (Limbergh and Henry Ford). And it is because of these underlying views that Roth seeks to throw a mirror up to ourselves and question how close we came to having our own (Final) "American Solution."

The only thing that kept this from being 5 stars was the weakening of an exposition of "events" towards the end. It did help give background but I thought someone with Roth's writing talent and given the incredible journey he had already taken me on, he could have filled in the "historical gaps" better. And the twist of an ending, though hardly a happy one, was very unexpected and forced me to charge through the last 100 or so pages staying up late at night to do so.

Read this book with an open mind and with a mind on our own dark history in mind. (less)

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Jul 24, 2012 Whitaker rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, united-states, 2012-read

One star??!!!?? Really???!!! I gotta be kidding right? Either that or I’m on some kind of crazy drug trip.

Well, no. I really “did not like” this book. Hence, the single solitary star.

I hate it when mainstream novelists try their hand at science fiction. They usually muck it up. This is not too surprising given the disregard most of them have for science fiction in the first place. It’s even worse when the science-fiction novel in question is a thinly disguised political rant because the politi...more

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Jul 28, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

Coming soon...must first nurse hangover...having trouble with simple sentences at the moment...

Okay, here goes. This is going to be worded poorly because I killed a lot of braincells last night, but I need to get this out of my system.

I enjoyed this novel. I really, really did. To be more specific, I enjoyed it in the way you enjoy a movie-version of a book you've already read, or a cutesy little romance like The Princess Bride (no disrespect). I mean, you just KNOW where it's going. Describing...more Coming soon...must first nurse hangover...having trouble with simple sentences at the moment...

Okay, here goes. This is going to be worded poorly because I killed a lot of braincells last night, but I need to get this out of my system.

I enjoyed this novel. I really, really did. To be more specific, I enjoyed it in the way you enjoy a movie-version of a book you've already read, or a cutesy little romance like The Princess Bride (no disrespect). I mean, you just KNOW where it's going. Describing The Plot Against America sort of sounds like the beginning of a bad joke..."what do you get when you take FDR, and swap him out with Charles Lindbergh...I think it would go a little something like this...(insert 400-page punchline)." Since the scenario that he lays out is slightly feasible and extremely specific (Nazi-friendly US government...how many possibilities are there, really?), the results are about what you would expect.

Further, Roth's attempt at making us question whether the family is just being paranoid or not is sort of a fail. Seriously, we know that this is a nightmarish scenario, and if the Jewish folk of Newark think that they are getting fucked by their government, then I, the humble reader, am going to safely assume that they ARE getting fucked by their government. All the same, this novel is a nice little history lesson and a somber warning against extreme isolationism, among other things. It made me question my thoughts on war (anti) and get really confused by and about them (What about concentration camps? Tibet? Female infibulation and vaginal slicing? Civil liberties being brazenly shat upon? Do we war then? When do we war, AAARRGH??!??!?). And I like it when a book can piss me off like that.

Roth is also great at building flawed characters who are convincing even as they are changing over time. For example, you get a little uncomfortable when the pompous teen starts running his mouth about politics to his parents at the dinner table, because you remember being the pompous teen running your mouth about politics at the dinner table. Then there's the love-crazy phase, the part where you think your parents know everything, the part where you think your parents know nothing, etc. It's all here, and it's believable. For that (and many other things about this novel), I applaud you, Mr Roth. Sorry to nitpick.

I am torn between a 3 and 4 star rating. I almost want to give it a 4 just to bump up my average rating so I don't look like such a damn HATER. Buuuuuuut, I'm going with the 3 anyway. I recommend it, it's good, you will read it quickly, but don't expect your life to change dramatically. 3 stars, BOOM.

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Jun 19, 2008 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth lovingly re-creates the lost world of the Jewish community of mid-century Newark, the world of his own boyhood. Then he takes the main characters, modeled on himself, his friends and his family, and tortures them by forcing them to live through state-sponsored Nazism in America.

Roth imagines an America in which Charles Lindberg defeats FDR in1940 by pledging to keep the US out of WWII, then immediately signs non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Jap...more In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth lovingly re-creates the lost world of the Jewish community of mid-century Newark, the world of his own boyhood. Then he takes the main characters, modeled on himself, his friends and his family, and tortures them by forcing them to live through state-sponsored Nazism in America.

Roth imagines an America in which Charles Lindberg defeats FDR in1940 by pledging to keep the US out of WWII, then immediately signs non-aggression pacts with both Germany and Japan, and presides over a climate of creeping authoritarianism and anti-Semitism in the US. The story is told through the eyes of a seven year-old boy—Philip Roth--part of a lower-middle class Jewish family in Newark. The Roths are strivers living in a tightly knit community of other lower-middle-class Jews. The novel illustrates the destructive effects of the climate of fear unleashed by Lindbergh’s election by showing what happens to this particular family and the community of which they are an integral part.

Plot is a kind of speculative historical fiction, but it faces some of the same problems that bedevil traditional historical fiction: how to accurately and convincingly recount the historical context without turning the novel into a research dump, and without completely breaking the narrative spell. Roth is only partially successful at this. The novel is beset with jarring juxtapositions of narrative tone, as he stops the action to set up the context, and then plunges the reader back into the narrative proper, and the rapidly unraveling world of the Roths.

Roth faces the added challenge of convincingly narrating historical events that did not occur, and making them flow seamlessly out of those that did. In this he’s much more successful. He wants to show the reader that, though fascism did not take root here, it might well have. History is only inevitable in retrospect. It’s almost always, to some degree, radically contingent while it’s happening. Unless you believe that all events are preordained, either by a higher power or by some kind of inexorable structural logic, then you have to hold open the possibility that even though things without question turned out the way they did, they might well have turned out differently. In the end, Roth returns the nation to its actual historical path, and the fascist interlude that he narrates is but a temporary swerve, but he does succeed in convincing the reader—at least this reader—that the history of the US at mid-century might well have taken a darker turn. Consider the following:
-At the time the US had its own officially sanctioned system of apartheid. Blacks in the south were denied the right to vote and were forced to use a separate but decidedly unequal set of public services. Their second-class status was codified into law. In 1940, Americans already lived in a country where an officially sanctioned racism buttressed a social system in which a despised minority was denied equal access to employment, education, public services, and political influence.
-Anti-Semitism was hardly unknown in 1940’s America—whether in the genteel version espoused by the WASP establishment or the cruder versions adhered to further down the social scale. America in 1940 was a country in which many if not most Americans at least entertained the idea that some social groups were either naturally inferior to white/Christian Americans or were superior in a potentially diabolical way, and were at least passively supportive of a political system that limited their political and civil rights. And these attitudes and forms of discrimination applied, to a lesser degree to be sure, but nevertheless, to Jews as well as blacks.
-In the novel, Lindberg defeats Roosevelt by espousing a very simple message: I will keep the US out of war. There was plenty of isolationist sentiment in the US after World War One. Americans may or may not have been appalled by Hitler’s persecution of the Jews of Europe, or worried by Germany’s aggressive military expansionism, but it took Pearl Harbor to convince Americans to enter the war--an attack by Japan, not Germany. Had Japan not attacked the US, the country could have tolerated a lot more systematic murder of European Jewry before intervening. Also, remember that it wasn’t until after the war that the defining fact of Word War II, in the popular imagination at any rate, became the systematic campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Perhaps the best one can say is that necessary but not sufficient conditions were in place for a fascist swerve. Also, I suspect that in showing us how fascism might have come to America, Roth is also showing why it didn’t.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the book was that, ultimately, the reader never knows just how real the plot against America actually was. In the end, the book dissolves into rival, tabloid-style conspiracy theories. And because the narrative voice is that of a 70 year-old man remembering events that took place when he was 8 or 9, and because the question of just what motivated Lindbergh is never answered in the “reality” of the novel, and because the things that the narrator can reveal are constrained by what he perceived then and knows to be true now, no definitive version of events can be rendered. If Roth had chosen to adopt the voice of the truly omniscient narrator he’d be able to penetrate the consciousness and observe the most intimate and secret thoughts and actions of other characters—everyone from Philip Roth to Charles Lindberg to Adolph Hitler--and to render some kind of definitive version of events—at least within the universe of the novel. Plot feels more plausible than most historical novels precisely because it never renders a definitive version of events. It dramatizes how little, ultimately, we understand the historical forces that shape our reality.

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Sep 07, 2007 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

This alternative history ponders what might have happened had pilot Charles Lindbergh run against and defeated Roosevelt in 1940. The Plot Against America is a wonderful and surprising read -- especially in its restraint. Roth's story provides insightful commentary on how American presidential campaigns are run, our media's role in them, how we choose our leaders, the bigotry behind assimilation efforts, and how corruption can and often will run its course. At the book's end, I was surprised to...more

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May 19, 2008 J rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’d been a big fan of Philip Roth since stumbling across Portnoy’s Complaint in college. That book spoke hysterically of the torments of a desire conflicting with one’s upbringing and one’s own better sense. Roth captured so keenly the nature of an almost self-destructive pursuit and the complexities of repression, transference, and what Dostoevsky’s Underground Man referred to as “contrary to one’s own interests…that very ‘most advantageous advantage.’” The book was hilarious absurdity yet hear...more

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Nov 02, 2007 Cate rated it 3 of 5 stars

My closest book-swapping sidekick disliked this one, and another friend began but put it down soon after, so I started reading with a bit of hesitation.

I should say at this point that Roth's American Pastoral is one of my all-time favorites. It starts incredibly slow (i.e. I didn't expect to read in excess of 50 pages about the inner workings of a glove factory), but knowing that the build-up in this book was well worth it, I stuck with The Plot...

The quality of the writing itself didn't strike...more

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Aug 18, 2007 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Like others here, I often found this book to be a compelling read (though there were some unnecessary bits), but ultimately, I think Roth (do I need to warn about 'spoilers'?) presents us here with a more sophisticated version of the Dallas 'it was all a bad dream' solution, where all the events of an entirely plausible American support for Nazism in the Second World War -- intelligently illustrating how other countries might also have been seduced by fascism and anti-Semitism -- are nearly comp...more

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Jul 03, 2008 Meghan Sweeney rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: History lovers

Divine. This is a fantasy book in a way; a history book in a way; and a coming-of-age novel in a way.

It takes place in America in the early 1940's and takes us through the journey of a Jewish family living in the ghetto of Newark. The twist is: FDR didn't get a third term. Instead Lindbergh wins the presidency. As an isolationist and a Nazi sympathizer, he keeps America out of World War II and begins to implement "programs" that help Jewish Americans assimilate into middle America.

Roth deftly...more

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Aug 01, 2007 Jojo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

I do NOT life alternate history. It makes me confused about facts and usually just pisses me off. But this one is different. It's a "what if?" sort of book that feels very real. Probably because Roth inserts his own boyhood self into the narrative. It did make me hate Lindbergh, and I am not sure he deserves quite as much hate as I am feeling. I have to research that! (because the fake history has messed with my head)

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Feb 06, 2010 Ron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, general-fiction

3.5, maybe. Like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this book may tell more about Roth's state of mind perhaps than any real or likely "history."

Great premise: pro-Nazi, anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940. What is the impact on a secular, urban Jewish family in New Jersey, as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old (in 1940) protagonist?

But poorly developed and told. All sorts of logical gaps. Too complete knowledge. But worst, Philip as narrator tells us how the "history"...more

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May 23, 2013 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For one short little book, "Plot Against America" is two brotherly stories beating each other senseless in the basement while the parents watch TV upstairs. The first book is an alternate 1940 where Roosevelt is voted out, Charles Lindbergh voted in, and the day is won by Isolationism and Antisemitism. The second is a look at Roth's childhood reflected within the mirror of that alternate history, based on the real-life tensions in his neighborhood.

Not to be THAT parent, but I have a favorite.

I...more For one short little book, "Plot Against America" is two brotherly stories beating each other senseless in the basement while the parents watch TV upstairs. The first book is an alternate 1940 where Roosevelt is voted out, Charles Lindbergh voted in, and the day is won by Isolationism and Antisemitism. The second is a look at Roth's childhood reflected within the mirror of that alternate history, based on the real-life tensions in his neighborhood.

Not to be THAT parent, but I have a favorite.

I really got into the portrait of 40's America where the negative feelings towards Jews, bubbling under the surface, was suddenly given a gate to roam free; and how that would look to a child who has had the city, and land, that he grew up loving turn it's back on him for no reasons he can understand. Roth's writing is just as good as the previous book of his that I consumed. The way that current events alternately tear apart and cement together Roth's family, feels like a real life. And there are little touches, like Roth's childhood stamp collection played as adolescent innocence: Held proud, worried over, and eventually lost. I really liked those aspects of the book, which there were not nearly enough of.

Unfortunately, there's the other brother, and man, those other brothers always ruin everything, don't they? (What?) Look, I saw all the books Roth took in for historical context, clearly he did his homework on this one. I just didn't need so much detailed history. Or rather, I didn't want it, when I was enjoying the smaller, personal look at Roth's family. And the plot twist at the end, when it is revealed that famous Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932 was done by the Nazis, in an attempt to eventually place Lindbergh in power so he can force an American holocaust...that took the collective goodwill that Roth had built up and smashed it all over the sidewalk. I have nothing against Alternative History, but the struggle to focus on the parts of the book I liked was tough enough, and a Nazi-Lindbergh conspiracy was the sucker-punch that won the basement war, and left me disappointed. I like "Plot Against America", but I think about what it could have been. (less)

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Sep 11, 2008 Alena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

What a brilliant novel. Well thought out, based on enough historical facts to feel very real and uses its characters very well. What would have happened had isolationist won the presidential election in 1940 and not Roosevelt? How would his anti-Semitic politics influenced the life of a Jewish-American family? Roth tries to answer this from the viewpoint of 8 year old namesake (I don't know whether family, etc. depict autobiographical elements).

Roth's writing is astounding in that it delivers th...more

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Aug 21, 2008 Brittany rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historicalfiction, sciencefiction

I'm not really sure how to describe this book. It's an "alternative history," book in which FDR didn't win a third nomination, and somehow Charles Lindbergh got elected instead.

It was fascinating to read the book and compare/contrast and think very deeply about our political situation today: Unpopular war, pro-war president, charismatic presidential candidate and so forth. (And before anyone gets carried away and upset, I said compare and CONTRAST. Some things are clearly very different, but it...more

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Jun 28, 2008 Gregg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Philip Roth’s re-imagining of history reminds me of the old What If? comic books, wherein they take a specific point in history and change an event or the choice someone makes. The narrative then follows this alternate reality to demonstrate how different the world would have become. It’s like Clarence the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life when he shows George how different his entire town would be had he never been born.

But in The Plot Against America, Roth chooses to ask What if Charles Lindbergh...more

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Jul 11, 2008 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Philip Roth is certainly one of our best novelists--in fact, he may be among the last of our Great American Novelists, that crew of writers who were renown as much as public figures as writers. Norman Mailer has opted more for the public face aspect of his career than his writing career considering the quality of his work of late, and Thomas Pynchon has no public face at all. Modern masters like Cormac McCarthy (who, age-wise, is in the Mailer/Roth boat but has only become renown in his later ye...more

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Jul 28, 2008 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm on a small, alternative WWII histories kick (started w/ Fatherland), and I'm pretty sure Roth's contribution will be the meatiest of this weird little sub-genre*. In TPAM, Roth imagines an America that stays out of the war, thanks to isolationist/anti-Semite president Charles Lindbergh. The book charts the effects of Lindbergh's Nazi rapprochement on a Jewish family (in, it being Philip Roth, Newark, New Jersey), and describes how senses of Jewish identity and community are both forged and d...more

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Apr 16, 2008 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars

I began this book with sort of low expectations, for a variety of reasons: (1) the other non-sci-fi alternate history book I read recently, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, was disappointing; (2) I had a friend who did not like it; and (3) I started reading it about a year ago and put it down because it didn't grab me. But my expectations were exceeded, and not just because they were low to begin with.

This book isn't your typical alternate history (taking a sci fi alternate history as typical) in...more I began this book with sort of low expectations, for a variety of reasons: (1) the other non-sci-fi alternate history book I read recently, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, was disappointing; (2) I had a friend who did not like it; and (3) I started reading it about a year ago and put it down because it didn't grab me. But my expectations were exceeded, and not just because they were low to begin with.

This book isn't your typical alternate history (taking a sci fi alternate history as typical) in that it does not revolve around describing the alternate world, it doesn't put every titillating detail of the alternate world in front of you all at once, and it doesn't spend the whole book dwelling on these differences. It is the exploration of these differences that usually draws me to alternate history, so when there wasn't a ton of details up front, I was initially turned off by the book.

But when I finished reading, and thought about it, I realized this book (and to a certain extent Yiddish Policemen's Union too) actually does something more interesting and satisfying -- instead of just writing a book about the alternate world, Roth has set himself in the alternate historical context, and written a book that an author actually living in that world would write -- a personal account of one family’s experiences within that world.

Towards the end of the book, Roth gives a blast of juicy alternate-historical description which is the typical brain-candy of this genre. The stuff that makes you think “holy crap, it didn’t happen like that, right?!?!” and gives you a bigger picture of how everything could have turned out so differently. Without that, I think I would have found the book unsatisfying in the end (and why I think Yiddish Policemen’s Union was a much weaker book). Roth has clearly done a ton of historical research to be able to piggyback on real historical figures and events to mess with your brain and make you try to figure out what is fact and what is fiction. (And I really appreciate that he gives the real facts of the historical figures in the Postscript -- my memory of the Real History is weak enough that there’d be a chance I’d remember this Fake History instead and embarrass myself somewhere down the road.)

Also, I love how Roth turns the typical “butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane” theme on its head. The book begins employing this trope -- i.e. it’s obviously partially based on Lindbergh deciding to run for president instead of declining to do so. But it also demonstrates how even when huge, horrible, monumental things happen in the world, some things will still turn out the same.(less)

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Sep 22, 2008 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2007

This book definitely has a great coming of age story involved in what is looked at as a historical novel. But the best insight that I got from it was something along the lines of this: it warns of the dangers of big government. And by that, i mean not the actuality of large government, but how a large government can fall in to the hands of the wrong people and easily become a dictatorship or a fascist state.

As a liberal, its easy to romanticize the New Deal era and all of its programs. One such...more

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Feb 18, 2008 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read probably 3 seconds after it came out. Roth takes a faintly possible fictional premise--Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 Presidential election, then proceeds to implement suspiciously Hitleresque policies--and imbues it with relentless realism. It's an astonishing act of bravura...or chutzpah, if you prefer. This is what it would have felt like to suddenly realize that coded speech, political discrimination, the whole gamut up through pogroms, could happen here, to coin a phrase. Roth has alw...more Read probably 3 seconds after it came out. Roth takes a faintly possible fictional premise--Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 Presidential election, then proceeds to implement suspiciously Hitleresque policies--and imbues it with relentless realism. It's an astonishing act of bravura...or chutzpah, if you prefer. This is what it would have felt like to suddenly realize that coded speech, political discrimination, the whole gamut up through pogroms, could happen here, to coin a phrase. Roth has always created, ahem, frictional characters, and here he gives them something substantive to rub against: every American Jew's worst nightmare.

What ties the novel together is the human dimension of the story--seven-year-old narrator Philip Roth's vision of a Washington, DC suddenly awash in polite (and impolite) anti-Semitism, his parents' fights over whether to flee to Canada and to let Philip's older brother go off and work in Kentucky under another suspicious steal-the-kids program that will make ghetto Jews into burly country farmers (surely intended as a perverse goyische [and maybe Roth's own as well] parody of Zionism, perhaps echoing his defense of "diasporism" in Operation: Shylock), his feelings about America and its patriotic icons--some, like the Lincoln Memorial, being worth their weight; some being Lindbergh. Roth has fun with the historical record, turning sleazy (but Jewish; birth name: Walter Winchel) radio personality Walter Winchell into a lone voice of patriotic conscience, Fiorello LaGuardia into the national hero a lot of New Yorkers certainly expected him to become, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh into a kind of savior. (Mothers, in general, come off well, as beacons of unshowy concern and love, whether it's Phil's careful, sensitive mom, Bess, or nerdy downstairs neighbor Seldon's frazzled, suffering Selma. Or Anne M.L., of course, for the whole nation.) There's a lot bound up here, most powerfully in his Mom's plangent statement, "this is their country now." Despite a somewhat rushed denouement, this is one of his best books, certainly the best since American Pastoral and maybe back to Portnoy.(less)

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Jan 10, 2008 Jennine rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like popular history

As a fan of the "alternate history" subgenre of speculative fiction, I found The Plot Against America disappointing. I didn't think that Roth pursued his alternate history far enough into his narrator's future, and I didn't think he explored its implications thoroughly enough. Roth uses the Lindbergh presidency to good effect to highlight American anti-Semitism in the early 20th century and the less flattering features of some illustrious "great Americans", but I thought the ending gave short sh...more

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Jul 24, 2007 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: life_and_other_atrocities

[http://jonathan.touboul.free.fr/artic...]

Cette uchronie nous emporte chez l’auteur lui-même, dans les années 40. Famille juive américaine de Newark, Sumit Avenue (New Jersey). Une ville bien tranquille, 3 synagogues concurrentes, où il fait bon être juif. A tel point que le père du narrateur refuse une promotion professionnelle pour y rester et y protéger sa famille. Mais toute cette tranquilité va vaciller, et même s’effondrer, le jour où Charles Lindberg, l’aviateur sympathisant du régime naz...more [http://jonathan.touboul.free.fr/artic...]

Cette uchronie nous emporte chez l’auteur lui-même, dans les années 40. Famille juive américaine de Newark, Sumit Avenue (New Jersey). Une ville bien tranquille, 3 synagogues concurrentes, où il fait bon être juif. A tel point que le père du narrateur refuse une promotion professionnelle pour y rester et y protéger sa famille. Mais toute cette tranquilité va vaciller, et même s’effondrer, le jour où Charles Lindberg, l’aviateur sympathisant du régime nazi et membre du comité America First, est élu président des États-Unis au terme d’une campagne teintée d’antisémitisme et axée principalement sur le refus de voir l’Amérique prendre part au conflit qui ravage l’Europe. La suite s’enchaîne naturellement : pacte de non-agression signé avec l’Allemagne, isolationnisme, l’antisémitisme latent de la société américaine de l’époque libéré, qui se déchaîne. Le tout vu de l’oeil subjectif d’un enfant juif, nommé Philip Roth. La peur. La destabilisation de sa famille. Un cousin qui part en guerre et revient mutilé pour tomber finalement dans la délinquence. Une tante épouse le rabbin Bengelsdorf, la “caution juive” de Lindberg, et qui rencontre ce charmant von Ribbentrop. Un frère qui tombe dans le panneau de l’assimilation et de la dissolution des juifs dans la société (c’est à dire l’extermination totale et définitive) et qui se retrouve à a limite de l’antisémitisme(en plus, il mange du porc). Des juifs assassinés, après avoir été personae non grata. Le Bund germano-américain et le KKK qui triomphent. Et un beau président Lindberg fier qui parcourt l’Amérique a bord de son historique Spirit of Saint-Louis.

Roth a 7 ans. Les deux ans de gouvernance de Lindberg vont nous être décrits de ses yeux d’enfant apeuré. Et le livre de s’achever sur l’attaque de Pearl-Arbor que finalement on ne comprend pas. Comme dans la vraie histoire finalement. Puis l’histoire du complot contre l’amérique. Difficile à croire, car finalement moins mijoté que le reste de l’ouvrage. Mais finalement à ce moment là le roman s’est déjà refermé. On a renoué avec l’Histoire, la vraie. Et son absurdité, pire car réelle.

Un des points forts du roman de Roth, c’est aussi l’annexe historique. Où l’on apprend la vraie histoire. Celle où le même Lindbgerg refuse l’investiture démocrate. Mais on se rend compte que tout porte à croire que sa popularité en aurait fait un candidat redoutable contre Roosevelt. Et le ton de ses discours, dont celui prononcé à Des Moines en 1941 (un onze septembre...), intitulé Qui sont les fauteurs de guerre, reproduit intégralement en annexe, nous prouve qu’un Lindberg au pouvoir aurait changé la face du XXe siècle. Finalement, Lindberg, l’America First, et le bund germano-américain n’auront pas eu leur heure de gloire, et c’est pour le mieux. Tellement pas qu’ils sont oubliés.

Mais ce qui est fabuleux, dans ce nouveau roman de Philip Roth, c’est sa façon de donner une dimension subjective à son roman, la petite histoire qui vibre dans la grande, avec tous ses détails pitoresques qui en font un récit drôle, l’humour fût-il glaciale. Après avoir réglé ses comptes avec l’éducation à la juive-américaine dans Portnoy’s complaint, il rend à ses parents et à leur éducation un hommage. On s’amuse à le lire ; on frissone à se projeter dans l’histoire.(less)

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Mar 06, 2008 Sam rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who are into alternate history

Note that I will discuss major plot points in this book, including the end. If you have any intention of reading the book, don't read below. I'll simply say that I was very disappointed.

I was very disappointed by this novel. Philip Roth does a good job of building the hopes of the reader that he will find a compelling and provocative conclusion to the events that begin with the election of Charles Lindbergh to the presidency. However, he fails to capitalize on them. As it turns out, things just...more

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Nov 19, 2008 Antonia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Antonia by: Book Club

Shelves: book-club

It took me awhile to get into this, but I ended up enjoying it. I think I read generally for characters more than for plot, and this book was all about plot. Eventually, the characters developed enough for me to care about them, to make the plot feel less like a (fictional) history lesson, and at its best, the book did put a very personal perspective on events. But there were still way too many long passages devoted to national events and political intrigue, and not enough about how this was all...more

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Feb 23, 2009 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, lit-fic

i'm not going to lie -- i didn't fall in love with this novel from the get-go. it's not that it was uninteresting; it was. i just felt as though i should be enjoying it more than i was.

at some point, however - and i'm not sure exactly when that was - i was sucked in. this is peanut butter and chocolate, a reese's peanut butter cup, if you would. literature with a capital L meets alternate history, introspective flowery meandering meets epic frontpages 128 point headlines. it's not perfect by any...more

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May 21, 2013 Danleik rated it 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars. In the late 1930s America elects as president Charles Lindbergh, an anti Semite and admirer of Hitler. Gradually, America starts turning on Jews. The building fear is palpable and the ease with which America turns fascist is chilling.
I thought this might be a bit of an out-there concept for anyone to pull off, but Roth is not just any writer. Highly recommended.

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Nov 08, 2011 Mark Barnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, adult, fiction

An enjoyable read as Roth theorises what might have happened had America kept out of WW2, and elected a Fascist sympathiser in place of Roosevelt. I find it difficult to understand the "it couldn't have happened here" comments that so often accompany this book. Those who believe that clearly have understood neither history, nor men's hearts. The US treatment of Japanese during the period described shows how those perceived as enemies were in fact treated, and Roth's description of the persecutio...more

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