NP? Rich re Roth

[pynchonoid]

[...] Where "The Plot Against America" fits into the
hierarchy of Mr. Roth's canon, which I and so many
others have followed for our entire reading lifetimes,
may be beside the point over the short haul. Sometimes
the public, acting on instinct, just picks up the
scent of something it craves without regard for the
aesthetic niceties. Whether it's major or minor Roth,
this novel is on a trajectory to match the
much-different "Portnoy's Complaint" in its anomalous
permeation of the larger culture. That's because "The
Plot Against America," set from 1940-1942, is on its
face linked to the wartime of 2001-2004. It's going to
be read by those who don't otherwise read Roth novels,
or novels at all, as well as by those who do. Not for
nothing does it sit on a best-seller list dominated,
low carbs notwithstanding, by a single subject, George
W. Bush. 

[...] What grabs us instead is the sinking sense that
the "perpetual fear" he describes is in some way a
cousin to the fear we live with now. Surely "perpetual
fear" defines our post-9/11 world - and the ruthless
election-year politics of autumn 2004 - as succinctly
as what Mr. Roth tagged "the ecstasy of sanctimony"
defined the Monica summer of 1998, in which he set
"The Human Stain."

[...] In an essay in last Sunday's New York Times Book
Review, Mr. Roth took a swipe at President Bush ("a
man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation
like this one") but not before saying that he
conceived this book in December 2000, and that it
would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to
the present moment in America." He's right. It can't
be. Yet it's precisely because "The Plot Against
America" wasn't written to make facile analogies
between then and now that the light it casts on this
present American moment seems so illuminating.
Literature still can accomplish what nonfiction and
ideologues can't. By sweeping us into an alternative
universe, it lets us see the world we actually inhabit
from another perspective. [...]

...read it all: 
"President Lindbergh in 2004" by Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/arts/23Rich.html




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