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September 30, 2004

ROTH IN NEWSDAY, FORWARD

The press juggernaut for The Plot Against America continues, as Newsday takes this longish look.

Although the wider world might be surprised to see this tenderness surface so prominently in Roth's work, the writer's friends are not. Judith Dunford, the widow of literary critic Alfred Kazin, is quite familiar with this side of Roth. She and her husband were Roth's neighbors in northwest Connecticut when Kazin became ill and Roth "draped his wings" over her in a way that was not just moving, but helpful.

"The tenderness evident in his book 'Patrimony' and now in 'The Plot Against America' is certainly a part of his character," she says in an e-mail, "although not one usually pointed out.... He can be a very steadfast friend, and has an unusual gift in that he rallies to the sickbed. He would have been a good doctor."

The book is also reviewed in the Forward. More interestingly, though, the same issue takes a look at the historical issues underpining The Plot Against America.

In "The Plot Against America," Lindbergh stampedes the deadlocked Republican Convention, wins the nomination by acclaim, runs with Senator Wheeler against Roosevelt and wins. In the real world, it was only after Roosevelt's re-election that Lindbergh emerged as the president's symbolic opponent. He not only testified before Congress against intervention, but also continued to address America First rallies, greeted with shouts of "Our Next President!" in public appearances throughout the country. In his history of American Jews, the late Labor Zionist journalist Judd L. Teller evokes a charisma match between Lindbergh and FDR: "American Jewry suddenly found itself in the humiliating circumstance of dependence, like the medieval Jewish communities, upon the longevity in office of the reigning prince. FDR became in the Jewish imagination a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke, a father and a guardian."

The hysteria around Lindbergh's appearance at a May 1941 rally in St. Louis caused his wife to fear that her husband might be assassinated. Suddenly, the boy aviator seemed like the avatar of a native American fascism. Both Time and Life ran photographs of Lindbergh and his colleagues appearing to give the Nazi salute while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes called Lindy "the Number One Nazi fellow traveler" and, after Lindbergh addressed a rally of 80,000 at the Hollywood Bowl, he remarked: "I have never heard this knight of the German Eagle denounce Hitler or Nazism or Mussolini or fascism... I have never heard him express a word of pity for the Poles or the Jews who have been slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands by Hitler's savages."

Posted at 12:28 AM |

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Comments

Genevieve

Thanks for the link to Forward, a very interesting article.
Is faction like Roth's just a way to keep the public reading fiction with a political flavour, do you think? as it becomes tiresome to have to correct the picture all the time. Thanks for the background,

Genevieve

Posted by: Genevieve | September 30, 2004 at 06:06 PM

genevieve

sorry please ignore that comment,it was poorly shaped.
GMT (abashed)

Posted by: genevieve | October 01, 2004 at 04:41 AM

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TEV DEFINED


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