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More reviews by Peter Gordon
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The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
In his review of THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, Ron Charles of The Christian Science Monitor writes "Once again, PHILIP ROTH has published a novel that you must read -- now. It's not that an appreciation of his book depends on the political climate; our appreciation of the political climate depends on his book." Although he was directing his remarks at an American audience, THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA can provide anyone with insights into the upcoming American presidential election or, indeed, to democracy in general.
Roth imagines what would have happened had Charles Lindbergh (he of the The Spirit of St Louis) had run against FDR in the 1940 election. "Lindy" wins by a landslide by campaigning against America's entry into the War. Lindbergh, an isolationist and anti-Semite, signs "understandings" with Hitler and proceeds to introduce anti-Jewish policies in America.
That might make an interesting contrafactual exercise, but Roth's coup is to tell the story through the voice of nine year old Philip Roth, who watches a cousin run off to Canada to fight when American wouldn't, a brother co-opted by the Office of American Absorption and sent to Kentucky to spend a summer living with white folks down on the farm, and a father defend America and American values when faced with anti-Jewish insinuation.
In this way, Roth makes it all seem so easy, easy for politicians to dress up nefarious proposals in innocuous wrappers, easy for ordinary people to trade their constitutional birthright of a mess of security pottage. One sees the Roth family, the country and the entire American people slowly slipping toward the abyss.
Could it have happened? One would like to say that a majority Americans would ultimately have come to their senses and would never have stood for it. Yet one fears that it is not so implausible after all, even now in a country which, 60 years later and presumably 60 years wiser, can justify Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in the name of security.
Ironically, of course, the parallels are inverted, for the fictional Lindy subverted the nation to keep America out of a war rather than blunder into one. It just means that the citizenry needs to keep their focus on fundamental liberties rather than the purported urgent issue of the day.
Roth reminds non-Americans that democracy and freedom are fragile, and that even a democratically-elected Government can be freedom's worst enemy.
THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA is a thought-provoking and rather frightening look at what might have been, and what perhaps might still come to be. As a novel, however, it has a few flaws, notably the ending which arrives deus ex machina (in this case, an airplane). The positive ending, when history gets back on track, is -- disturbingly -- less plausible than the original premise of the country slipping into fascism.
Peter Gordon
24/10/2004
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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