Some of you astute Blatherscope readers may have noticed this week that two books switched from my Books-To-Be-Consumed list to Books-I-Have-Loved list: The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth and Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. And, knowing how this list activity must set your eager minds a-whirl with bookish questions, herein do I propose to discuss said literary queries.
The Plot Against America is Roth's alternate-history memoir of his boyhood during the first years of WWII. The world of this war, however, has an America that elects aviation hero and Nazi sympathiser Charles Lindbergh in the stead of FDR's 3rd term. Lindbergh campaigns on a promise to keep America out of "their" (i.e. the Jews) war, and slowly begins to dismantle the freedoms of American Jews. The Roth family, a middle-class Jewish family from Newark, NJ, can do little but watch the erosion of their civil liberties and try not to let each other slip away as well.
Roth's pacing of events is so subtle, so insidious, and so utterly believable, I had to remind myself at several points in the book that, "No, this is not real. This did not happen." But what is even more chilling to me, is that it could still happen--maybe not to American Jews at this point*, but to American Arabs/Muslims/East Asians. The steps Lindbergh takes to isolate America's Jews and accentuate their "otherness", all while supposedly offering Jewish families a chance to get out of "their self-imposed ghettos" and assimilate into "real American communities", are frightening. (See the Rabbi Bengelsdorf's monologue, p.110-111. Aww, heck, here it is, in part)
"[Lindbergh] is a man of enormous native intelligence and great probity who is rightly celebrated for his personal courage and who wants now to enlist my aid to help him raze those barriers of ignorance that continue to separate Christian from Jew and Jew from Christian. Because there is ignorance as well among Jews, unfortunately, many of whom persist in thinking of President Lindbergh as an American Hitler when they know full well that he is not a dictator who attained power in a putsch but a democratic leader who came to office through a landslide victory in a fair and free election and who has exhibited not a single inclination toward authoritarian rule....What Hitler perpetrated on Germany's Jews with the passage in 1935 of the Nuremberg Laws in the absolute antithesis of what President Lindbergh has undertaken to do for America's Jews through he establishment of the Office of American Absorption. The Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of their civil rights and did everything to exclude them from membership in their nation. What I have encouraged President Lindbergh to do is to initiate programs inviting Jews to enter as far into the national life as they like--a national life that I'm sure you would agree is no less ours to enjoy than anyone else's."
The reasoning is immaculate, if you accept the basic (unspoken) premise: white "christians" are THE TRUE Americans, and anyone who lives differently isn't. Scary to me was the fact that there were times that I couldn't immediately see the harm in a proposed action; I thought the Roths were over-reacting, hysterical for no reason--partially because Roth keeps his family characters real: intelligent, but inarticulate. Only after the "harmless" action opened the way for blatant discrimination and violence could I trace the terror to the source. It made me feel like a bad human because I, as a part of the dominant white "christian" sector, am so oblivious to what can cause harm to others. How much harm have I inflicted (what I have said, how I have voted) unaware, but no less culpable? My one major criticism of the novel is that the stamp collection representing young Phillip's youth is overwrought and LAME.
I am not alone in my respect for Roth's novel, as Nick Hornby gushes about it in the opening chapter/essay of Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt: Fourteen Months of Massively Witty Adventures in Reading. Now, I think Blatherscope readers are aware that I, Zerd, am a gigantic nerd. Not only do I like books, but I think books that contain others' thoughts on books and reading. Hornby's essays are no less entertaining than his books of fiction (About A Boy, High Fidelity, How To Be Good, and A Long Way Down), but somehow seem less illuminating than those works dealing with Serious Human Problems (suicide, monogamy, humanity) in rawly hilarious ways. Still, a frothy, fun read, with witty insights on books and authors (as promised on the jacket cover!).
I loved the lists [side note: I think I may have a "thing" for lists. Is that weird?] of books bought vs. books read at the beginning of each essay, and one can see how reading the books he did would put Hornby in the mindset to buy said books. A sort of chicken-and-egg thang, if you will. All in all, the collection of essays served as a delightful palate cleanser, scrubbing the stain of Lindbergh's America out of my mind's-eye, preparing me to devour The Next Book (to be revealed in a future column).
*I hope this doesn't show how naive/oblivious I am....Love, Peace, and Understanding for All!!!
Middle Eastern women are taking courageous stands in their communities by protesting, teaching, and writing about their lives in a part of the world few Americans can even comprehend. There are some wonderful books: Marjane Satrapi's two-volume graphic-memoir Persepolis (from which the image at right is taken) is a heart-rending account of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution; Azar Nafisi's insightful and unusual Reading Lolita In Tehran: A Memoir In Books recounts the lives of a group of women who dared to continue learning after Iranian women were banned from universities. For other recommendations, visit Laila Lalami's book blog, Moorish Girl.
