The Plot Against America

Philip Roth continues to challenge us in his novels with pithy concepts (the classic 'Portnoy's Complaint', 'Goodbye Columbus', 'The Dying Animal', 'The Human Stain', 'American Pastoral' etc - about 25 in all) written with such acerbic verve, wit, and investigation that he keeps his readers questioning 'how much more can there be?'. In THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Roth appropriates facts from American history, and in doing so provides a new form of insight into the plight of the Jews at the time of World War II.To add credibility to his revised version of history he places his story in the household of the Roths - his own family, where he as Philip is the youngest member living in Newark, New Jersey, sensing the storms of being Jewish in America. Though his family is wholesome and thoroughly 'American', they are aware of the degrees of isolation: wealthy Jews appear miscegenated whereas middle class and lower class Jews are ghettoized.It is 1940 and FDR as President is deeply concerned about Hitler's encroaching activities in Europe and Japan's mirror image conquests in Asia and the pacific. Roosevelt is encouraging assisting Allied Forces to protect Russia, France, and England against the march of Nazis and Fascists. At the same time aviator hero Charles Lindbergh has captured the hearts of Americans not only with his flying feats but also with the famous tragedy of his son's kidnapping. Lindbergh (along with Henry Ford and others) has publicized connections with Hitler and is encouraging the United States, still shaken by the losses of WW I and the Great Depression, to stay our of Hitler's war in Europe - isolationism.It is at this point that Roth's postulate begins: by means of well-paced and documented incidents, Roth has Lindbergh defeat FDR and become the 33rd President of the US. Once in office Lindbergh develops alliances with Hitler, initiates means of anti-Semitic segregation with what appears to wiser Jews to be a means of eliminating American Jews much as Hitler is decimating European Jews. How the Roth family weathers this period of time and terror is the crux of this beautifully constructed, wholly credible novel.THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is not solely about pogroms and 'What if it happened here': Roth uses this matrix to explore the bonds of family, of friendship, of ethnic individuality, of commitment, of tackling fear for survival at the personal level. Though we as the readers know how WW II ended, Roth convincingly introduces new variations to the equation and in doing so has created a suspenseful story that introduces characters whom we grow to love and others for whom we can acknowledge pity for paths inadvisedly taken. This is a story of history revisited from a different vantage, told through the lives of some of Roth's more unforgettable characters.Wisely at the end of the novel, Roth recapitulates sources, facts, the actual histories and outcomes of all the people he uses in THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA and in doing so provides a succinct and intelligent Coda that is refreshingly helpful in appreciating the 'novel' he has written. A worthy read!

I have long been a fan of Philip Roth, ranking his first book,"Letting Go" as one of my very favorite. "Portnoy's Complaint," " When She Was Good," "The Breast," "Goodbye Columbus," were all worthwhile investments of my time. And "The Great American Novel," well, who knew a book could be so funny? And yet somewhere around "The Ghost Writer" or maybe it was the Zuckerman Trilogy, perhaps "Sabath's Theater," I wandered away. His novels seemed now, well, bitter. And increasingly absorbed with his ethnicity and the diminishing capacities of age. I honored an old loyalty with "American Pastoral" which, while good, didn't really dispel the mood that seemed to have settled about him. So I began "The Plot Against America" with some trepidation. From reviews I knew the basic plot and feared that it might be more zionist screed than a work of literature.And so I am happy to report that the old Roth is back, light-handed, deft, at the very top of his form. Some of the credit surely belongs with the real events for which he creates a parallel story line - they themselves were so fantastic as to make Roth's alternate reality plausible. The book's characters, FDR, Fiorello LaGuardia, Walter Winchell, Henry Ford and others were all larger than life figures before Roth ever set pen to paper. A non-fiction tale about the Nazi villains, about Charles Lindbergh and others who populate this book would read like the wildest imaginings if we didn't have the unambiguous historical record. The story takes as its theme what would have occurred had Charles Lindbergh, hero of the 1927 Atlantic crossing, used his popularity, his innate isolationist bent and his unfortunate anti-semitic beliefs to best FDR in the 1940 presidential election. As Roth tells his story it is through the senses of a nine year old protagonist named, clear enough, Philip Roth. That choice helps greatly to blur the line between fact and fiction since many of facts of this child's life were Roth's own. This book is, in part, autobiography. But that choice also informs the book's tone with a sense of wonder and revelation as the child comes alive to a sense of the world's wonder and venality. Roth's gifts as one of the foremost observers of human nature are on full display as the child watches both his parents and himself make choices they cannot justify nor avoid. Roth's time rupture is over a span of just two years as facts merge again with the fiction by 1942 and the Allies go on to defeat the Axis powers. To some degree the minimal nature of the bubble Roth has created accounts for the novel's power - it would have been such a small change in events as we know them to have had history turn out so radically different. To consider how similar conditions were in the US and Germany in the 1930s - economic catastrophe the prime breeding ground of demagogues - is to wonder at how we managed to escape Germany's fate and to make Roth's telling all the more believable. To know, as every sentient being must, that human cruelty knows no geographic border, no unique planetary alignment, that genocide could, too, happen here.To share some of the credit for this novel with real life is in no way to minimize the authorial talent on display here. Philip Roth is one of the most talented, prolific writers of the past fifty or so years. Reading this novel was immensely enjoyable.

Through an imagined America, Roth depicts what really existed at that time under the surface of a republic, the so-called “land of freedom”. The anguish of the caracters is so devastating and profoundly exposed.

Pour les anglophone, le titre de ce livre traduit en français étant "Le complot contre l'Amérique".C'est une fiction vraiment originale et très attachante.Même s'il s'agit d'une fiction, je pense que ce livre permet de comprendre comment une famille juive pratiquante peut se sentir menacée par l'extérieur....

It is 1940 and Charles A Lindberg, a highly publicized figure with ties to Nazi Germany and no previous political experience, enters the race to become the Republican Presidential nominee in the upcoming election. To everyone`s surprise, he wins. Even more surprising he wins the election over the incumbent, Franklin Roosevelt on a platform of isolationism and the motto, America First.This impressive novel then goes on to imagine what Lindberg`s presidency would have been like. As a supporter of the Nazis, he invites the German Foreign Minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop to the White House, he rails against negative press reviews, he attacks the Jews as being warmongers, he flies around the country to appear at rallies in his support.Fast forward to the present. Replace Lindberg with another highly publicized egomaniac with no political experience; replace Germany with Russia and Ribbentrop with the Russian ambassador; replace Jews with Muslims and warmonger with terrorist; replace Nazis with Neo-Nazis (some fine people); the results are disturbing. However, what is truly amazing is that Roth wrote this book in 2004! How could he foresee what would transpire twelve years later?Lindberg, of course, never ran for President although many encouraged him to do so. He was, however, anti-Semitic, a white supremist who greatly admired the Nazis. (He was awarded a gold medallion by Hitler, "Service Cross of the German Eagle"). His biographer writes that Lindberg believed Western (and therefore American) civilizations depended on a "united strength among ourselves, on a strength too great for foreign armies to challenge, on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back...an infiltration of inferior blood".Ring any bells?

Roth präsentiert in unnachahmlicher Weise, auf der Basis historisch-fiktiver Handlungen, was in einer Gesellschaft passieren kann, wenn eine Mehrheit einen Sündenbock ausmacht und dabei perfide politisch unterstützt wird. Absolut lesenswert und aktuell.

Muy buen libro. Se puede leer en inglés con un nivel medio-alto del idioma. Por lo demás Roth es un valor seguro y el libro es muy entretenido