Philip Roth is one of America's most prolific and successful authors. Many critics have marked him as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature at some point during the coming years (a fact of which he seems very aware!). When the New York Times asked hundreds of the most prominent critics, writers, and editors to pick the best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years, six of Roth's novels made the top spot repeatedly. The essay accompanying the results of this survey stated that "[i]f we had asked for the single best writer of fiction over the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won."Roth was born in 1933 and grew up near Newark, NJ--much like the protagonists of The Plot Against America and many other Roth novels. He was recognized at a young age, publishing Goodbye, Columbus in 1959 (when he was just 26). After receiving the National Book Award for this volume in 1960, he went on to publish a number of other texts that form the fundament of postwar American literary fiction. From 1969's Portnoy's Complaint to 1979's The Ghost Writer to more recent works, such as American Pastoral (1998), The Plot Against America (2004), and The Human Stain (2000), Roth has managed to write books richly evocative of the era in which he and his readers live. The book we'll be reading in class--The Plot Against America--is one of Roth's more recent, but it manifests many of the themes that have preoccupied the author since the beginning of his career. Following in the footsteps of Roth's "American trilogy" (American Pastoral, I Married A Communist, and The Human Stain being the triumvirate), The Plot Against America marks the development of a historically-conscious and socially- panoramic Roth. The novel is both speculative history and playful metafiction, simultaneously undergirding and subverting our ideas about the links between history and fiction. How does Roth's novel and its relationship to historical revision compare to the neo-slave narratives we've read in class? To Kushner or Doctorow? Less formally experimental than Doctorow, Roth is nonetheless interested in the ways in which the history of postwar America continues to haunt the present.
Although it might be strange to think of the relationship this way, Roth's novel seems to be fairly similar to Butler's, in that both ask the question "What if?" and then explore the political and social dimensions of that question. Could Roth's work then be classified as speculative fiction?
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ReplyDeleteThe question of "authenticity" kept coming to mind through the novel. Roth writes a "fiction" or I would agree William, possibly a "speculative fiction", but inserts himself as narrator and writes the novel like a personal memoir. Then in the post-script the reader is given a variety of fact-based narratives on the historical figures of the novel. So why does Roth insert himself as authoritative narrator? The reader already knows that it is fictional, so we don't need to be assured on the reliability of the narrator.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that Roth's novel, like Butler's is, at its core, such a simple endeavor. When reading in public or with friends (book party!) and asked what The Plot Against America was about, I could readily break down the plot. The same is true of Butler's novel (though one could not as easily break down Morrison's plot). Though this is a far from scientific system, the "What-if?" question seems to be at the heart of most speculative and genre fiction.
ReplyDeleteWhereas Doctorow transplanted the history of the Rosenbergs and Kushner told the story of after, Roth works with not a retelling of history, but a re-imagining. He completely up-ends the “way-it-was” and redefines not only historical events, but also the psyche of an entire nation, transforming the champions of good into harbingers of evil. I would say without a doubt that The Plot Against America is a speculative fiction—a look at what might have happened had America stayed out of the war, if our politics had become corrupted by Nazi Germany. However, the book is as much about the war as about Philip Roth-as-narrator’s coming of age story, as he is growing up in a world where “the pressure of what was happening was accelerating everyone’s education, my own included” (101). In this Bildungsroman, Philip is confused by everything that is happening. For instance, in the scene where the Roths are kicked out of the hotel while on vacation in D.C., Philip relies on his older brother to fill him in on what has really happened, “I whispered to my brother, ‘What happened?’ ‘Anti-Semitism,’ he whispered back” (69). In a similar scene where Philip does not know how to react to the “pressure of what was happening,” when Alvin comes home with a blown-off leg, he looks again to Sandy for guidance, “I was so startled to see tears running down his [Sandy’s] deeply tanned face that I started crying too” (95). All that Philip can do is mimic the reactions of those he looks up to. As things continue to get worse, Philip begins to work for his own answers and Sandy becomes less of a guiding force for his younger brother. Philip’s understanding deepens and he realizes what is being lost, “A new life began for me . . . I would never return to the same childhood” (113). The height of Philip’s confusion comes after he sees the dead body of his neighbor Mr. Wishnow being removed from the house. The young boy becomes near catatonic, staying in bed for six days thinking only about how he’d “never before had to grow up at a pace like this,” and suffer an “ailment” he calls “why-can’t-it-be-the-way-it-was” (172). This ailment draws attention to the fact that this is an alternative history, a portrayal of an America on the side of evil. In Roth’s novel, history is not “the-way-it-was,” and the horror that strikes Philip Roth-as-narrator knocks him stiff.
ReplyDeleteIn keeping with William’s question about this novel being a work of speculative fiction, I have to admit that I began to question Roth’s intentions in writing in this genre towards the end of the book, mainly because ultimately the events in the novel very much resemble what actually happened: the US under FDR enters into WWII in the European and Pacific theaters and defeat the Nazis. This made me wonder what the goal of this reimagining of history was if eventually the results are the same as what happened. But considering this further, as Ian talked about, the point of the book is the personal effects this political climate has on individuals. The US may beat Hitler in the novel as in real life (I know: that’s a gross reduction of WWII), but that doesn’t mean that the Roth family isn’t permanently scarred by these events, nor does it bring Mrs. Wishnow back to life or the other Jewish Americans killed in the riots. In other words, the novel is less about rewriting history than using an alternative history as a device for talking about bigotry in America and how individuals and families are compromised when they live in an atmosphere of intolerance.
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