Reading Guide: The Plot Against America

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Philip Roth

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About Philip Roth

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral . In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005, Philip Roth will become the third living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. The last of the eight volumes is scheduled for publication in 2013.

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About the Book

When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America towards a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the 33rd president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial ‘understanding’ with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and whose virulent anti-Semitic policies he appeared to accept without difficulty. What then followed in America is the historical setting for this startling new novel by Pulitzer-prize winner Philip Roth, who recounts what it was like for his Newark family – and for a million such families all over the country – during the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every reason to expect the worst.

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Philip Roth interview/review

Jeffrey Brown Interviews Philip Roth about The Plot Against America Online NewsHour, October 27th, 2004

JEFFREY BROWN: It’s 1940, and flying hero Charles Lindbergh has galvanized public opinion against intervention in World War II, and pulled off a stunning defeat of incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. President Lindbergh signs a non- aggression pact with Hitler, the Germans roll through Europe, and in Newark, New Jersey, the Jews on Summit Avenue fear an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence. It’s fiction, of course, a novel called The Plot Against America.

But it’s fiction that feels real and frightening in the hands of Philip Roth, for almost 50 years now one of the nation’s leading writers. Roth himself grew up in Newark, and in this novel, he’s carefully depicted his own family in the 1940s: Father; mother; brother; and himself as a young boy. Now 71, the very private Roth invited us for a rare visit on a glorious fall day at his home in Cornwall, Connecticut.

He said the idea for his novel came from a single line in a book by historian Arthur Schlesinger, stating that some Republicans in 1940 had considered nominating Lindbergh for president.

PHILIP ROTH: My eye landed on the sentence, and in the margin I wrote, “What if they had?” What if they had nominated Lindbergh? And that just started my wheels spinning. And you can see how, because immediately you have to… you have to answer that question. And the answer to that question is dense, it’s not one line. “What if they had?”

JEFFREY BROWN: What was it about that “what if,” though, that grabbed you and made you realize that you had a book there?

PHILIP ROTH: I knew Lindbergh’s history and I knew about Lindbergh’s isolationism. And the first thing I wanted to imagine was what would it have been like if an isolationist had been elected president – it needn’t have been Lindbergh, by the way – and we hadn’t gone to war.

So that was the first, “what if?” But Lindbergh carried another possibility in that I knew he was famous for anti-Semitic remarks he’d made during his times as spokesman for America First. And I realized that he would be a threat or a menace to American Jews as a candidate.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, one of the things you’re doing here is you’ve got big history, you’ve got one big change to history, but most of your story unfolds with one family. So, how did you decide that you could look at history through the lens of this one small family?

PHILIP ROTH: Oh, I think it’s the novelist’s way, you know? I think that decision was made for me when I became a writer; that is, to see history through the lives of ordinary people has always interested me. You’re correct to say that there was just one change. I was very conscious of that. Just change the outcome of the 1940 election and make everything else as close to reality as you possibly can, which is why I chose my family as the family to whom all this happens. And that excited me because it opened up a question which is: How would we have behaved in these circumstances?

JEFFREY BROWN: One of the things that struck me is the relationship of the young boy – you – to his parents, particularly his father, because he sees his father’s flaws for the first time. So it’s very sort of personal and raw, in a sense.

PHILIP ROTH: I think the subject of the book that interested me was, to put what I said earlier another way, how much pressure can you bring to bear on this family, and what will happen when you bring maximum pressure to bear on them? They’re all trying to cope with this menace, the menace of Lindbergh, and the pressures are enormous. And they’re all trying to cope with the humiliation, too, even the little tiny boy, the humiliation of being… of the Jews somehow being separated out, of appearing to be not welcome.

JEFFREY BROWN: So is it a book of fear or of hope?

PHILIP ROTH: Well, in a manner of speaking, it’s an optimistic book. It imagines something that did not happen, and as you had said, could it have happened? And the answer is, sure, it could have happened, but it didn’t happen, which tells you a lot about the country, this country.

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Starting Points for Discussion

We see the events of The Plot Against America unfold through the eyes of a child: the young Philip Roth. Events are therefore seen on a familial rather than a societal level. How does this affect our view of the world-shattering events that occur in the novel?

Roth uses real characters from history (including himself and his own family) and places them within a fictional setting. Does he succeed in portraying credible and convincing characters that the reader can believe in and connect with?

Many critics have commented that this book has a great deal of contemporary relevance . Do you feel this statement to be true, and if so, why?

The Plot Against America is a description of how history can encroach upon ordinary lives. It shows the outcome when the public and private collide. By using his family as the central characters against the backdrop of these monumental events, the story becomes at once more real and meaningful.
Discuss.

Philips parents stay true to their values and bravely struggle to keep their family together, whilst Philip’s brother Sandy, his cousin Alvin, and his Aunt Evelyn show very different allegiances. How do we feel about the moral standpoints each of these characters takes?

‘This is the first fictional masterpiece of the 21st century, and it rings entirely true.’ Evening Standard The Plot Against America has been hailed a masterpiece across both sides of the Atlantic. Do you agree with the reviewers? What do you feel defines a masterpiece?

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