( 12:24 AM )
Just finished reading “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth. I have to admit, it probably wasn’t fair to read this right after Don DeLillo’s “Underworld.” DeLillo’s prose is unparalleled, and how he could sustain it for 800 pages is phenomenal. Sure it jumped around too much, shifting perspectives, focusing on too many characters, introducing new ones just when you wanted to get back to the main character, messing with timelines and generally working back in time, a confusing technique which ultimately was a bit unsatisfying. The massive scope of the book interferes with the plot, and in the end you wonder if this might just be the rantings of an old man confused by the internet. But even if they are, they are the most beautifully written rants you’ll ever find. And there is so much rich detail, so many wonderful scenes throughout the book (the Prologue, which I have read about 5 times, is one of the greatest pieces of writing about baseball I've ever read--can stand on its own), it has to be considered a masterpiece, even if ultimately he probably didn’t quite pull it off as The Great American Novel. But it was a damn good shot and definitely worth the investment.
Back to Roth. Roth is apparently one of the great American novelists of the last half century (that's what they say--what do I know?). But I was so blown away by DeLillo, Roth seemed quaint. I had to read two-thirds of the book before I got over my DeLillo envy and began to appreciate the brilliance of Roth’s writing. And plot? This book had plot to burn.
The post-9/11 parallels in Roth’s book are powerful and unavoidable. And they work, but not in the obvious way you might expect. The real power in this book is the personal connection Roth creates through embedding his own childhood into the story, and therefore into an important, though heavily fictionalized, time in history. The beauty of “Plot” is in the individual characters, not the broad sweeping generalizations about curtailment of civil liberties in a time of conflict (although that works just fine, too).
Take for instance Alvin, the wounded veteran who fled to Canada to fight the Nazis when the U.S. refused to enter the war. His transformation from a conscientious and principled fighter to a bitter amputee to high-rolling hoodlum raises questions about the fate of the wounded coming home daily from Iraq. I live 15 minutes from Walter Reed Army Hospital, where so many rooms are filled with the wounded from Iraq. What’s going to happen to these people? What will their future hold? It’s one thing to ask them about their feelings on the war now. I’ll be equally as interested what they think about it 10, 15, 25 years from now when they look in the mirror and see the lasting affects of shrapnel carved into their bodies like disfiguring tattoos from the longest night of their lives.
“Plot” is eye-opening historical fiction, even without considering its modern parallels. Throw in the current state of affairs, and it’s worthy of the glowing reviews heaped upon it. I’ll have to read American Pastoral soon.
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