sdWhy You Treat Me Like a Dog?: Book Review: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth .comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}
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Sunday, September 18, 2005
 
Book Review: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The premise of this book is that Charles Lindbergh (of Spirit of St. Louis fame) wins the 1940 Presidential election instead of Frankin Delano Roosevelt on an isolationist, "America First" platform. The story is told through the eyes of a young Philip Roth, a child of a Jewish family living in a predominantly Jewish suburb of Newark, New Jersey.

Masterfully told with Roth's characteristic wit, the novel goes through the travails of the Roth family as the Lindbergh administration gradually unveils it fascist, Nazi-leaning policies. Jewish families are to be resettled in the Heartland to help their assimilation into the American melting pot. Prominent Jews and sympathizers like Justice Felix Frankfurter and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia are quietly rounded up by the FBI. The American equivalent of Kristallnacht occurs, while the Roth family strives to maintain an almost ironic air of normalcy in the face of a climate of increasing fear and antisemitism. On a certain level the book is a superficial attempt at presenting an alternative history; some of the events occurring seem a bit outlandish and implausible in our political system of checks and balances with a Supreme Court charged with protecting our Constitution, an independent press and various other safeguards of democracy.

The book was released on the eve of the 2004 election, and many reviewers have seen the book as an allegory for that election and its aftermath. As we continue to live in a climate of fear, with a global war on terror in progress, Roth reminds us that we must continue to be vigilant on the homefront. It is only too easy for the Lindbergh administration to violate the civil rights of American Jews, echoing the internment of Japanese Americans and perhaps, though hopefully not, foreshadowing further violations of our own civil rights in the name of homeland security. Roth shows his political colors here, condemning the America Firsters of the 1940s (Lindbergh really was virulently isolationist and racist) and by extension their contemporary conservative offspring. As we are in the process of selecting new Chief and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, we must remember the importance of a judiciary charged with jealously guarding the Constitution, no matter what the political or social climate of the day.

The book is a quick read, Roth seems to make his political points in setting up the story, but then just as the reader has begun to become engrossed in the character's lives, he wraps it all up with a seemingly neat twist in the last chapter. Too much happens in this one chapter, the book should be longer and in the end leaves one wondering if Roth was more interested in just completing it to get his message across, or if he actually sought to tell a good story. (But then the question can be asked, what is the true purpose of literature?) Nonetheless, it is a fascinating novel that should be read by all interested in American history and the road not taken.
- posted by wanderer @ 9:49 PM
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