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 years, which is a shame since he's been writing brilliant work from the outset) and Don DeLillo have set the tone for work that breaches the deepest levels of humanity and the issues of life and death, and though Don DeLillo is also a social critic, he seems to be looking at us as a cultural rather than a political body.



Philip Roth seems to know this, and so possibly took it upon himself to follow in the footsteps of Arthur Miller's The Crucible (Penguin Classics) to write a work that may be set in historical times (or pseudo-historical), but in many ways makes us question where we are at today. Philip Roth also continues to cross the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction, as he most clearly did in The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography, working with a narrator named Philip Roth in a situation that clearly has not happened.



The premise here is that Roth revises the events leading up to World War II, or at least the American lead-up, in that FDR is actually voted out as the war brews and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh is voted in on a ticket of isolationism and keeping America at peace and free from harm. But Lindbergh's anti-Semitism is quite evident ( though mostly to the Jewish only at first), and the country begins a slow turn towards America First, the idea of bringing everyone in the country towards 'real American values,' which are clearly white and Christian. The story is told through the young Philip Roth, avid stamp collector and deeply engrained in his Jewish Newark neighborhood, and we fo9llow the hardships he and his family must go through as they become more and more aware that Lindbergh wants a country free from their kind.



Roth's fictional history is frighteningly detailed and thorough, showing a progressive removal of the human rights of undesirables through a steady stream of 'patriotic' acts. And maybe, it might sound familiar. Roth is out to show that the condemning of a people doesn't always come in one fell swoop but in increments, mirroring the systematic Nazi removal of undesirables after undesirables, but also possibly giving a warning about our own lackadaisical acceptance of the removal of people's rights in the name of peace, prosperity or patriotism.



Of course, Roth twists away from overt commentary by writing about a country that wants to avoid war rather than engage in a battle across the ocean, which may make direct correlation a little foggier, but in the end I don't think this is so much Philip Roth's own comment on the Iraq war as it is a study on how people are willing to excuse infringements of the rights of others in the name of comfort, whether that comfort be an acceptable facade of patriotism, or in the name of safety against an enemy who may or not be plotting against us. This is truly the stuff of the classic, activist American novelist, and Roth reminds us that there is still power in such a position.



But for as classic an effort this novel is, I think it also suffers a bit from being done by a classic American novelist. Philip Roth has a wonderful way of exploring situations, and he works hard in this book to make his imagined history very palpable and real and as accurate as possible. However, his parenthetical style made for tough reading at times. How wonderful it was to know how each and every movement and character connects to everything else in a web of causality, but his long explanations of the most minor events and lead-ups to entrances or actions got a little tiresome to follow. The 50 or so pages after the midpoint of the book dragged, and though the novel concludes brilliantly, and though Roth clearly has a greater agenda than to cater to my predilections, the prose reads at times a little like a history book, unquestioningly accurate on the names and places and verisimilitude, but a little tedious in execution.



Have no doubt--this book is of great import and should be required reading for all who want to think they know a thing or two about America. Don't feel off-put by the ramblings of a snob like me--Philip Roth is clearly a force to be reckoned with, who will shine as a strong light in literary history for a long time, so read him.