Krishna
This is a novel by a Pulitzer winning author. It is a work of fiction based on real life personalities and speculates what would have happened if Charles Lindberg, the dashing aviator, had won against Franklin D Roosevelt. In real life, when he stood for reelection for the third time against FDR, he had lost re-election. All this happened in the backdrop of events in Hitler’s Germany that led to the start of World War II.
Though the book is fiction, it is based on historical facts. It is interesting to note that FDR did win a Third Term (presumably no term limits for Presidents then). It is also true that Charles Lindberg and his wife lost their baby, who was kidnapped and later whose remains were tragically recovered. The mystery was never solved. His wife Anne Morrow Lindberg were openly pro Hitler and openly anti Semitic, and Charles even won an Iron Cross from the Fuhrer, which he was very fond of. Philip cleverly uses all this to imagine America under President Lindberg.
The story involves the anti Semitic forces gaining the upper hand and taking control of the Republican party and starting to disperse Jews to other regions (economic forcing). It follows the story of the Jews through a Jewish family in Newark. It consists of Philip Roth (the narrator and a boy of some nine years, yes the author himself in a fictitious story), his father who is fiercely anti Lindberg and pro FDR. who sees disaster before it comes. The family consists of Rabbi Bengelsdorf who refuses to see the evil and hobnobs with Lindberg, even attending a party in honour of the visiting Nazi leader Ribbentrop. Aunt Evelyn, Phillip’s own aunt goes along with the Rabbi and marries him too.
Philip’s elder brother Sandy is rebellious and cannot see what the fuss is all about. Lindberg is only enhancing the lives of Jews by giving them more experience. A virulently anti Lindenberg radio host called Walter Winchell is murdered by a Nazi sympathizer and when Lindberg himself disappears during a solo flight (an echo of Amelia Earheart here), the whole country goes up in flames with Anti Semitic rioting targeting and murdering Jews – scenes reminiscent of the Night of the Broken Glass riots in Germany itself.
Alvin, a cousin of Philip is so upset with German dictator that he goes to Canada to join the army and fight the Germans against the wish of everyone in the family but comes back minus one leg, and bitter with life, and completely strays to the other end, living the life of gambling and womanizing, not caring who rules America.
The story has its moments but comes across as paranoid imaginations of a Jew who sees a plot in everything around him. The story has the moralistic edge of seeing everything in black and white. Except for some token friends (the Italian watchman downstairs, the family where Sandy stayed in Kentucky) and some liberals (FDR and his coterie) every white man is against the Jew and the whole country is Anti Semetic; some Jews cannot see this plain fact in front of their nose
and so on.
Characters veer towards opposite ends for no apparent reason – Alvin is a hater of Nazis and Lindberg but suddenly loses his hatred, becomes self pitying wreck and then an evil don-like figure. Sandy hates all this anti Semitic talk, rebels against everyone in the family but suddenly goes quiet. Aunt Evelyn is authority figure herself, sure of herself but suddenly goes over the edge and behaves like a nut case. (‘She has always been emotional and unbalanced’ is a one sentence explanation after all has happened but that is not very convincing to a reader).
We can go on and on – but you get the point.
There are some nice moments too – when Philip wants to run away from home twice, what happens to his friend Seldon Wishnow in Kentucky, and what happens to Philip’s stamp collection – for example.
It can get grating after a while and spoils the flow of the story. The ending is very abrupt.
I think that is is an average read, and is worse than it could have been due to many reasons, one of which is the overly pessimistic and paranoid tone of the book
I give it a 4/10 at best.
— Krishna