This work of fiction essentially poses two questions: could America become fascist? if it did, would it do so through a popular non-politician becoming president with the secret manipulation of a foreign power? When this novel was first published in 2004, these questions must have seemed fantastical. When I eventually read the work after a four-year term in the White House by Donald Trump, these questions seemed not merely very much less theoretical but almost prophetic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The narrative is located in the period June 1940 to October 1942 in a Jewish suburb of Newark in New Jersey and the viewpoint is that of Philip Roth himself as a child of between seven and nine. The central proposition of this counterfactual history is that in November 1940 Franklin D Roosevelt failed to secure a third term when he was roundly defeated by Charles A Lindbergh, the famous aviator and noted Nazi sympathiser. Almost all the characters mentioned in the 360-page story were real-life individuals and, extraordinarily for a work of fiction, the novel concludes with 28 pages of historic notes consisting mainly of pen portraits of 39 personages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one point, the narrator’s father states of Lindberg supporters: “They live in a dream and we live in a nightmare”<\/em>. At another point, FDR is made to refer to “a plot being hatched by anti-democratic forces here at home harboring a Quisling blueprint for a fascist America or by foreign nations greedy for power and supremacy”<\/em>. Roth – who died during Trump’s occupation of the White House – could have been writing about Trump’s fanatical supporters and Putin’s nefarious interference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roth’s focus is very much on one Jewish family – ostensibly his family – but his sweep of characters and events is considerable. In spite of repeated use of very long (but perfectly formed) sentences, this is an easy – if unsettling – read, although the ending does seem rather sudden and somewhat contrived. This work of fiction essentially poses two questions: could America become fascist? if it did, would it do so through a popular non-politician becoming president with the secret manipulation of a foreign power? When this novel was first published in 2004, these questions must have seemed fantastical. When I eventually read the work after a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27370,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27369\/revisions\/27370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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