”Preso alla rovescia, l’implacabile imprevisto era tutto quello che noi a scuola studiavamo col nome di ‘storia’, la storia inoffensiva dove tutto ciò che nel suo tempo è inaspettato, sulla pagina risulta inevitabile. Il terrore dell’imprevisto: ecco quello che la scienza della storia nasconde, trasformando un disastro in un’epoca.”Considerato da molti critici un’allegoria dell’America ai tempi di Bush, “Il complotto contro l’America” è definito in realtà dal suo stesso autore come un’ uchronia, una rivisitazione della storia e del passato, quindi, dove si costruisce una storia alternativa rispondendo a una semplice domanda: “What if..?”. Philip Roth in questo libro si chiede: “Cosa sarebbe successo se Franklin Delano Roosevelt non avesse svolto il terzo mandato ma fosse stato sconfitto alle elezioni dall’isolazionista antisemita eroe dell’aviazione Lindbergh?”. Un “What if..?” nemmeno troppo poco plausibile: ci fu, infatti, chi propose realmente Lindbergh alla presidenza. Roth viene a conoscenza di questa curiosità leggendo un libro di Schlesinger e da quel momento inizia a lavorare per creare un romanzo pericolosamente somigliante alla realtà storica. La sua operazione è apparentemente semplice: prende un gruppo di personaggi influenti dell’epoca tra i quali Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Walter Winchell, William Randolph Hearst e molti altri e li fa agire secondo il loro carattere e le loro attitudini modificando la sola variabile del terzo mandato di Roosevelt. Ciò che ne risulta è spaventoso. Philip Roth ha voluto precisare che la sua, a differenza di quella di Orwell, non è una dystopia. Dice: “Orwell imagined a huge change in the future with horrendous consequences for everyone; I tried to imagine a small change in the past with horrendous consequences for a relative few.” Ne risulta comunque quell’”eterna paura” con la quale inizia il romanzo e che riporta in America la situazione di tutti quegli ebrei che, in Europa, non sono riusciti a sfuggire ai pogrom e alla soluzione finale nazista. Quella eterna paura, Roth ammette, è l’unico punto di contatto del suo libro con l’amministrazione Bush, a proposito della quale Roth si esprime nel seguente modo: “And now Aristophanes, who surely must be God, has given us George W. Bush, a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one, and who has merely reaffirmed for me the maxim that informed the writing of all these books and that makes our lives as Americans as precarious as anyone else's: all the assurances are provisional, even here in a 200-year-old democracy. We are ambushed, even as free Americans in a powerful republic armed to the teeth, by the unpredictability that is history.” L’imprevisto storico, il fatto apparentemente non plausibile che terrorizza gli ebrei americani del suo romanzo e l’intera umanità sempre, quel fatto che poi diventa storia e risulta inevitabile è ciò su cui bisogna riflettere e di cui bisogna sempre avere paura. Le somiglianze con l’era Bush però, ed è Roth a confermarlo, finiscono qui, perché poi il nucleo centrale del romanzo è un altro, è il mondo dei relative few che subiscono questa alternativa storica: sono gli ebrei Roth di Newark, Philip, il fratello, i genitori, il cugino e gli zii. Roth riporta alla luce le mitiche – nel senso che per lui fanno parte di un passato mitologico – figure dei genitori e rielabora ampiamente quella del fratello per far vivere a tutti l’incubo dell’Olocausto. L’essere ebrei, in questo libro, è un punto centrale: tematiche come l’assimilazione vengono trattate in profondità, e per farlo Roth si inventa delle alternative storiche non realmente accadute ma paurosamente (l’eterna paura..) plausibili. Così, ad esempio, si parla di un Homestead Act che prevedeva l’allontanamento degli ebrei dalla loro città natale con l’intento di dissolvere quelle comunità che, non volendo, ancora combattevano (e combattono) l’assimilazione per scampare a dei pericoli reali. Roth ci descrive questa comunità ancora ghettizzata, ancora schiava dell’eterna paura, ironizzando magistralmente su cliché ebraici senza tempo e dipingendo un quadro famigliare meraviglioso. La magia che Roth compie e che rende questo romanzo un capolavoro è il fatto che il protagonista è Roth bambino, la realtà che ci viene raccontata è quella che viene filtrata dai suoi occhi di bambino ma, allo stesso tempo, è riuscito ad inserire il Roth adulto, un’intelligenza adulta che lavora da mediatrice. Così abbiamo due prospettive che l’autore è riuscito a gestire alla perfezione: l’adulto che vede il generale e il bambino che, invece, non riesce a non ridurre il generale alla sua esperienza di bambino. Il risultato è un racconto dolce e divertente che passa dagli sconvolgimenti storici generali alle piccole avventure del quotidiano del piccolo Roth, bambino acuto ma terribilmente apprensivo. È proprio questo, forse, a distinguere “Il complotto contro l’America” da una classica historical fiction. Anche se, a dir la verità, l’appendice ricca di fatti storici realmente accaduti che Roth mette alla fine del libro per dare al lettore la possibilità di seguire la storia come è andata veramente e di leggere come si sono comportati veramente i suoi personaggi, questa appendice purtroppo a volte sembra essere molto meno plausibile dell’alternativa storica di Roth. Per fortuna, come dice anche Roth, gli ebrei americani non hanno dovuto subire lo stesso destino di quelli europei, ma questo libro fa riflettere molto sulla fragilità delle deviazioni dei destini storici.Un altro capolavoro di Roth, un dolcissimo sguardo da bambino su una storia che sarebbe potuta essere. Abbiamo, quindi, tutto il meglio di questo autore: l’ironia del bambino mai allontanatosi dal ricordo della sua infanzia e la maestria dello storico che comprende profondamente la storia e i suoi personaggi. Combinate insieme, queste due caratteristiche, producono un’opera geniale in bilico tra la realtà e la fantasia il cui valore e la cui importanza superano di gran lunga quelle dei libri attualmente sui banchi di scuola.
Once again, Philip Roth has published a novel that you must read - now. It's not that an appreciation of his book depends on the political climate; our appreciation of the political climate depends on his book. During a bitterly contested election in a time of war against an amorphous enemy, "The Plot Against America" inspires exactly the kind of discussion we need.With a seamless blend of autobiography, history, and speculation, Roth imagines that Charles Lindbergh ran against Franklin Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1940. Drawing on Lindbergh's writings and speeches at the time, Roth creates a campaign for the aviation hero centered on his determination to keep America out of Europe's war. While Roosevelt enunciates complex policies in his famous upper-class cadence, Lindbergh buzzes around the country in The Spirit of St. Louis declaring, "Your choice is simple. It's between Lindbergh and war." To preserve the nation, we must resist the propaganda of "the Jewish race," Lindbergh warns, "and their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government."After winning by a landslide, he immediately negotiates "understandings" with the Axis, consigning Europe to Germany in exchange for a promise to leave America alone. Political opponents rail against the president for "yielding to his Nazi friends," but everybody knows those nay-sayers are just warmongering Jews.Lindbergh's first domestic initiative is the creation of the Office of American Absorption to "encourage America's religious and national minorities to become further incorporated into the larger society." In practice, this involves sending urban Jewish children to spend the summer on farms in the South - "a Jewish farm hand in the Gentile heartland." Eventually, the program expands to remove whole Jewish families from their city "ghettos" and send them to exciting, new lives in the Midwest. If their culture is dissolved in the process, well, that's OK too.Yes, Lindbergh comes off very bad in these pages. He spouts anti-Semitic canards that sound far more shocking now than in 1938, when he accepted the Nazis' Service Cross of the German Eagle "by order of the Fuhrer." But clearly Roth's real target isn't an anti-Semitic aviation hero who died 30 years ago. It's an electorate he sees as dazzled by attractive faces, moved by simple slogans, and cowed by ominous warnings about threats to our security.The result is a cautionary story in the tradition of "The Handmaid's Tale," a stunning work of political extrapolation about a triumvirate of hate, ignorance, and paranoia that shreds decency and overruns liberty. Roth provides brilliant analysis of political rhetoric: the way demagogues manipulate public opinion and the way responsible journalists inadvertently prop up tyrants in their devotion to objectivity and balance.But what really gives the novel life is its narrator: a little boy named Phil Roth. He lives in Newark with his older brother, who's completely enamored with Charles Lindbergh; his righteous father, who's convinced the new president is an American Hitler; and his long- suffering mother, who struggles to hold her family together as the nation is ripped apart.In a voice that blends the tones of the author's nostalgia with the boy's innocence, Phil describes the national crisis through its effect on his own family. It's a narrative structure fraught with risks, particularly the danger of making this 7-year-old boy look cloying or inappropriately sophisticated, but Roth keeps his bifocal vision in perfect focus. The result is a profound examination of the way children negotiate their parents' ideals and their culture's prejudices along the way to developing not just a political consciousness but a sense of safety in the world.Soon after Lindbergh wins the election, for instance, the Roth family takes a trip to Washington, D.C., to reassure themselves of the stability of American democracy. Phil's father is full of enthusiasm, repeating the guide's patter and pointing to the sights. He also can't resist broadcasting his criticism of the new president. "That's just expressing my opinion," he protests when his wife begs him to be more discreet, but they're jeered at and thrown out of their hotel. Phil feels embarrassed and terrified, but he's also proud to have a father "ruthlessly obedient to the idea of fair play."That conflicted response continues as young Phil struggles to keep his alliances straight in a world of baffling complexity. His brother can't say enough about Lindbergh's wonders. Their father's suspicion seems downright paranoid. When his aunt starts dating the token Jew in Lindbergh's administration, Phil can see firsthand the rich rewards of assimilation and collusion. What, after all, did his cousin gain by joining the Canadians in their fight against the Nazis, except a prosthetic leg?By the novel's climax, the conflict tearing the world apart is violently loose in his own living room. "I was disillusioned," he writes, "by a sense that my family was slipping away from me right along with my country."Victims of anti-Semitism will react in a special way (as will the descendants of Japanese-Americans interned by Roosevelt), but "The Plot Against America" is really a story about the loss of innocence, about that moment when it's no longer possible for "mother and father to set things right and explain away enough of the unknown to make existence appear to be rational."This isn't the wrathful Roth of "The Human Stain" or "I Married a Communist." This narrator is too deeply unsettled to be angry, and frankly that makes him far more unsettling to us. In a surprising final chapter, after he's neatly woven his fictional history back into the historical record we all know, Roth concludes with a small, tragic story of a neighbor whose family is crushed, almost accidentally, by the fury of racial hatred. It's a stunning, deeply disturbing episode for young Phil, and one that leaves us shaken with the narrator's "perpetual fear."http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0928/p1...
What do You think about The Plot Against America (2005)?
Some said Philip Roth is the new messiah of modern writers. Philip Roth is overrated, said others. So I read a couple of Roth's books, Exit Ghost and Everyman. With only those to go on, to me, Roth seemed like your typical aging curmudgeon. Nothing special, just an old man venting through literature his disgruntled annoyance at no longer being able to get an erection. I was ready to call it quits on him, but felt like maybe I should try one more.So I read The Plot Against America. Boy, am I glad I did. What a joy! Indeed, I enjoyed everything about this "what if", coming-of-age tale where horrors, both real and imagined, feed into and upon the novel's building tension. Horrors and the heart of a child. Childhood and the heart of a family. This is war vs. peace. The good, the bad and all that falls in between.This is the story of a young Jewish boy growing up as American as can be in the New Jersey suburbs of the early 1940s. Germany is at war with the world. Hitler and his Nazis are at war with the Jews. President Roosevelt is campaigning for a 3rd term in office.Then Roth throws a monkey wrench into the works, presenting an alternative universe where, instead of facing off with and defeating Wendell Willkie, FDR is confronted with and defeated by the intensely popular Charles Lindbergh. With their flyboy hero at America's helm, the isolationist Republicans as well as the Nazis themselves can use Lindbergh as a tool to meet their ends. Aside from some fiddling with the Lindbergh baby history, that's about where the historical fiction ends. Lindbergh was an isolationist. He did occasionally let slip with an antisemitic remark. He did receive a medal from Goring on behalf of Hitler, and he did refuse to give it up. FDR did believe Charles Lindbergh to be a Nazi. Lindbergh's wife did privately wonder in her diary what the *bleeep!* her Swedish, Arian husband was thinking when he spouted anti Jewish nonsense. There's so very much more that truly did happen, whether you believe it or not, which Roth includes in his novel, but I won't spoil the glorious tapestry that lavishly drapes the background of what is actually Philip Roth's childhood autobiography, at least a fictionalized recounting.Much of The Plot Against America feels just like the movie Stand By Me. Boys being boys, having fun, experiencing life through youthful eyes, making mountains out of mole hills, and nearly getting buried beneath the true mountains. As a coming-of-age tale, you'll find few finer. Prior to reading this, I would've described Roth's work as Vonnegut-esque but without the humor. Here though, the humor - on occasions a bit dark - is in full throat and fine form. I love nothing more than connecting with human behavior via the stories of our interconnect childhoods. We were all young once and it is a pleasure to share that common ground. Roth shares his suburban American-Jewish upbringing at the height of Jewish persecution in the modern age and it is a joy to read.
—Jason Koivu
Reality in the MakingIs there a more obsessively repeated question than “what if”? We ask it when we regret past actions, we ask it when we are frustrated by unexpected results, we ask it when we dream of changes. It is true, we rarely ask it to wonder whether things could have turned worse. Except for authors, of course, with their habit of diving straight into nightmares. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is just this kind of a “what if” turned bad. Written in the style of non fiction novels, it looks so much like a historical memoir that you frequently have to remember that the events you are reading about never truly happened in those troubled times of the World War Two. A disquieting feeling of a disaster in the waiting, maybe because even though so far away, America did not entirely escape either the Nazi propaganda nor the blindness in front of the evil and so, under slightly changed circumstances it could have easily followed another way. Hence the eerie “almost-true” impression that this powerful novel leaves the reader with, an impression masterfully amplified by the perfect blend of real and fictive events, personalities, family members, that creates a parallel reality so overwhelmingly real (so to speak) that it is quite difficult to think of it as fiction, since almost all the events are historically verifiable, and almost all characters, either from public or family life could have a double in reality. Moreover, as I already said, the events are presented in the form of a memoir (a genre supposed to increase the authenticity feeling in readers’ perception) – that is, the memories of a 9-year old Philip Roth, but reconstructed by an older narrative voice, none other than his own mature self that subtly corrects and completes his recollections, while trying not only to recreate the dire times through the eyes of a little boy, but also to recapture the innocence of the childhood. The result? An almost historical novel (I think the word “almost” has got the starring role to describe it), a poignant story, told in a tranquil, equal tone that challenges the reader to deny it, either on the historical or the personal point of view.The historical evocation goes back to the troubled forties to call into question not only the famous Jewish question but also the standing power of democracy as a guarantee of the human rights. I thought for a little while that The Plot Against America is a daring mixture between a non-fiction novel and a dystopia, but I think Keith Gressen (His Jewish Problem) coined it better as a “counterfactual Holocaust novel” or better a ”Holocaust anti-novel”, for it extends that Nazi fascination to “the land of the free”. And how immune is America to tyranny and dictatorship? How equipped is it to resist the seduction of a Stalin or a Hitler? These are the questions Philip Roth’s novel mercilessly asks, and how could the answer be a definite no when everybody thought, at least once, while reading his book, that although the story did not happen to Jews, it happened often enough to blacks. So who is to say this never happened? Therefore a subtler question suddenly arises: how are we supposed to interpret History – what is History really about?And as Lindbergh's election couldn't have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as "History," harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.As for the personal touch, the microcosm as a blueprint of the macrocosm, it is known that the historical novels usually turn a real event into a more or less verifiable story, giving life to a name, making-up details, decanting the events through a personal filter. Here, the filter is a sensible boy who innocently swings between boyhood and adulthood, like another Anne Frank who tries to make sense of family and world, sometimes with an unexpected touch of humor in an otherwise gloom enough narrative:War with Canada was far less of an enigma to me than what Aunt Evelyn was going to use for a toilet during the night,However, usually his voice is reserved and distant, hiding both the anxiety of the boy and the anger of the adult under an almost academic tone that approaches the narrative to a philosophical essay with a disturbing premise: Anything can happen to anyone, but it usually doesn't. Except when it does.It didn’t happen. Yet. But will it? Or rather when?
—Stela
I read this years ago and remember enjoying it as an alt. history speculative fiction that examined Lindbergh in a less than flattering light. Given that most Lindbergh books are hagiographic in tone I appreciated the difference. Upon re reading it now I feel like it loses a star. Why? It's the preachiest, most agenda-driven thing I've read all year. Apparently Philip Roth doesn't like Republicans. Seeing as how half this country agrees with him I guess it's a safe bet the preaching won't bother most folks who are inclined to pick this book up. I'm not a Republican, but I AM a fan of well-written fiction. I require that there be an inherent logic in my speculative fiction, otherwise it reads as if a rambling four year old is at the helm. "What if everyone could fly? And what if the sky was made of pizza and we didn't have any teeth? And what if fish could throw pingpong balls?" This book has Roth's nightmare scenario falling into place simply because his hate for Republicans trumps his desire to write a coherent narrative. The entire country repeatedly acts unreasonably and out of character. Why? So Roth can prove his point. (Republicans Bad). It's boring.
—Katherine Coble
