The Plot Against America

Infobox Book
name = The Plot Against America|

image_caption = Dust jacket of first U.S. edition
author = Philip Roth
cover_artist = Robert Overholtzer
country = flag|United States
language = English
genre = novel, alternate history
publisher = Houghton Mifflin
pub_date = September 2004
pages = 400 pp "(first edition)"
isbn = ISBN 0224074539
oclc =

"The Plot Against America: A Novel" (ISBN 0-618-50928-3) is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternate history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh.

Plot

The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels. The narrator and central character in the novel is the young Philip, and the care with which his confusion and terror are rendered makes the novel as much about the mysteries of growing up as about American politics. Roth based his novel on the isolationist ideas espoused by Lindbergh in real life as a spokesman for the America First Committee and his own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The novel depicts the Weequahic section of Newark which includes Weequahic High School from which Roth graduated.

Inspiration for the novel

Roth has stated that the idea for the novel came to him while reading Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s autobiography, in which Schlesinger makes a comment that some of the more radical Republican senators of the day wanted Lindbergh to run against Roosevelt. The title appears to be taken from that of a communist pamphlet published in support of the campaign against Burton K. Wheeler's re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1946.

The novel depicts a United States in the 1940s that was antisemitic. Roth had written in his autobiography, "", of the racial and antisemitic tensions that were a part of his childhood in Newark, New Jersey. Several times in that book he describes children in his neighborhood being set upon simply because they were Jewish.

Literary significance and criticism

The novel has been criticized by "The American Conservative" for its portrayal of increasing American antisemitism, in particular among Catholics, for the nature of its fictional portrayals of real-life characters like Lindbergh and for its rushed ending, featuring a drastic and odd resolution to the political situation reminiscent of a "deus ex machina". Writer Bill Kauffman calls the book "a repellent novel, bigoted and libelous of the dead, dripping with hatred of rural America, of Catholics, of any Middle American who has ever dared stand against the war machine." [Kauffman, Bill. [http://www.amconmag.com/2004_09_27/review.html "Heil to the Chief"] . "The American Conservative". September 27, 2004.]

Outside the pages of "The American Conservative" magazine, however, the book has fared better. The reviewer for "The Washington Post", who explores the book's treatment of Lindbergh in some depth, calls the book "painfully moving" and a "genuinely American story." [Yardley, Jonathan. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63751-2004Sep30.html "Homeland Insecurity"] . "The Washington Post". October 3, 2004. p. BW02] "The New York Times" review described the book as "a terrific political novel" as well as "sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible." [Berman, Paul. [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/books/review/03BERMAN.html "The Plot Against America"] . "The New York Times". October 3, 2004.]

Many supporters and critics of the book alike took it as something of a roman à clef for or against the Bush administration and its policies [West, Diana. [http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2004/10/11/the_unnerving_plot "The unnerving 'Plot'"] . Townhall.com. October 11, 2004.] , but though Roth is opposed to the Bush administration, he has strenuously and repeatedly denied such allegorical interpretations of his novel.

In 2005, the novel won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

Historical figures

There are several historical figures who are presented in "The Plot Against America":
* Father Coughlin
* Henry Ford
* Fritz Kuhn
* Adolf Hitler
* Fiorello H. LaGuardia
* Charles Lindbergh
* Joachim Prinz
* Joachim von Ribbentrop
* Franklin Delano Roosevelt
* Dorothy Thompson
* Burton K. Wheeler
* Wendell Willkie
* Walter Winchell

Notes

External links

* [http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0928/p15s02-bogn.html "Lucky Lindy Unfortunate Jews"] , "Christian Science Monitor"
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E4D71539F932A1575AC0A9629C8B63 "New York Times" review] by Michiko Kakutani