The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Scheduled to debut today as an HBO miniseries, Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America is oddly and powerfully prescient, published, as it was, in 2004. The plot turns on how, instead of electing Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third term as president, America elects Charles A. Lindbergh, a hugely popular hero at the time in spite of his sympathy for Nazi Germany.
In a 2004 essay for the New York Times about how he’d come to write this book, Roth said he’d been reading historian Arthur Schlesinger’s autobiography when he came upon a single sentence in which Schlesinger noted that isolationist Republicans had encouraged Lindbergh to run for president in 1940. Roth wrote the question “What if they had?” in the margin.
The result is an alternate history novel narrated by a young Philip Roth living on the outskirts of Newark, NJ, with his family when Lindbergh, the nominee of the America First Party, wins the presidency and persecution of Jews becomes commonplace. The book mixes historical facts with imagined outcomes.
A-LIST CAST BRINGS HBO SERIES TO LIFE
The six-part television series tells the story from the family’s viewpoints: Father Herman (Morgan Spector) is outraged and angry, especially after anti-Semitism spoils a family trip to Washington, DC. Mother Bess (Zoe Kazan) is fearful to the point of hysteria but tries to calm her family’s angst. Cousin Alvin (Anthony Boyle) runs off and joins the Canadian Army to fight against Hitler in Europe.
Also in the household is Philip’s aunt, Evelyn (Winona Ryder), a Lindbergh fan who marries Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), a well-known leader of Newark Jewry but also one of Lindbergh’s most ardent supporters and eventually a frequent guest at the Lindbergh White House. Evelyn dances there with German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, a scene Ryder later said was very hard for her to do.
In the novel, Lindbergh signs treaties with Germany and Japan, promising not to interfere with either nation’s expansion into their surrounding countries. He institutes a new government program to Americanize Jews by sending young boys, including Philip’s brother, Sandy, to spend time with Gentile families in the South and Midwest. Next, whole Jewish families are relocated southward and westward. Some Jews flee to Canada, but the Roths stay and resist as violence escalates.
HISTORICAL FACT AND UNSETTLING FICTION COLLIDE
Fiction is one thing, but the final 30 pages of The Plot Against America is a “Postscript” chapter — “a reference for readers interested in tracking where historical fact ends and historical imagining begins.” The chapter lists dates of real events for the many real figures in the book: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, Fiorello La Guardia, Walter Winchell, Henry Ford, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goring, J. Edgar Hoover and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to name a few.
Also included in this chapter of facts is a transcript of a speech Lindbergh delivered at the America First Committee rally in 1941. Arguing for non-involvement in the war while recognizing Jews who urged America to do so, Lindberg stated, “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
Trust The Plot Against America adaptation by David Simon, known for The Wire, Treme and The Deuce, to make the most of chills like these.
