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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN November 12, 2006 
The Plot Against America Philip Roth Vintage Books, 2004 Dare I criticize the writing of American literary icon Philip Roth? The same Philip Roth whose "Portnoy's Complaint" caused a veritable frisson and gave the censors something to do by trying to keep it out of public libraries and the public eye. When Roth's "The Plot Against America" came out in 2004 I put it immediately on my must-read list but somehow other must-reads took precedence and I never got to it. Therefore I couldn't wait to dig into it when the Library Literary Salon selected it for its September reading. But 100 pages into it, I was still waiting for the hook. By page 200 I realized that "The Plot Against America" does not have a hook. My hopes for reading a great book were dashed. But I persevered. I struggled through the dull, verbose and occasionally academic writing to the very end. "You turn the pages, astonished and frightened," wrote the venerable New York Times Book Review and USA today said that it is "a breathtaking leap of imagination…The writing is brilliant." Were these august book reviewers discussing the same book I was reading? I searched for this elusive quality but all I could see is a badly conceived plot to make a point. In order to show us how easily Americans can give up democracy and succumb to the manipulations of a dictator, Roth reinvents American history during World War II. In June of 1940 the Republican Convention in Philadelphia nominates aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh as it's presidential candidate. In real life Lindbergh was an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer. Roth builds the novel's plot on that premise. Lindbergh wins the election and keeps the United States out of World War II while initiating insidiously anti-Semitic policies and measures. In fact, Lindbergh is so crafty in pursuing his hidden agenda that he succeeds in conning important Jewish leaders into supporting him. This plunges a wedge of divisiveness into the American Jewish community. To further his strategy of dispersing the Jewish communities and isolating Jews, Lindbergh creates a government program of repatriation of America Jews to areas in the country where there are no Jews whatsoever. All this is narrated by the book's protagonist Philip Roth, who in 1940 is seven years old. He lives with his older brother, mother and father, an insurance agent, in a safe and cozy, totally Jewish neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. There is a lull of contentment before the coming events begin to disrupt the life of the family and the world around them. The reason for Lindbergh's betrayal may or may not be the rumor that the Lindberghs' baby had been kidnapped by Nazis who, after staging his death had taken him to Germany to be raised as a Nazi youth. I read for the alchemy of words, for that well-turned phrase that invokes subliminal feelings and thoughts. "The Plot Against America" does not have a single such phrase. Roth drones on and on and never once does he manage to touch the readers or reach deep into the souls of his characters. At book's end I was weary from wading through reams and reams of prosaic writing. Roth is obviously trying to show that we live in constant danger of succumbing to ideologies that involve the persecution of Jews. But that point would have been more effective had the story been set sometime in the future instead of Roth reinventing history. The poignancy of "1984" was due to the fact that it was set in the future. We are very vulnerable to being conned by ideologies of special interest groups or by our government's hypocrisy, i.e., today's battle in Congress over the Armenian Genocide Resolution. The massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1923 is the first Holocaust of the 20th century. Yet, Turkey refuses to acknowledge it and is warning the U.S. that it will impose severe sanctions against America if the Armenian Genocide resolution is implemented. The Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust are inextricably bound. Had the U.S. and the Allied powers punished Turkey for the brutal extermination of 1.5 million Armenians when Turkey was smarting from the WWI defeat, Hitler and the Jewish Holocaust may have turned out differently. After all, Hitler's oft-uttered excuse for his plans for the extermination of the Jews was, "Who remembers the Armenians?" "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it," is often quoted but rarely heeded. But there are no history lessons to be learned from "The Plot Against America" as the history recounted in it is the invention of the author. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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