NP - The Plot Against America

[David Morris]

https://first-draft.com/2017/02/01/quote-of-the-day-philip-roth-on-trumpism/

Roth wrote in the *Times Book Review* that “The Plot Against America” was
not intended as a political roman à clef. Rather, he wanted to dramatize a
series of what-ifs that never came to pass in America but were “somebody
else’s reality”—i.e., that of the Jews of Europe. “All I do,” he wrote, “is
to defatalize the past—if such a word exists—showing how it might have been
different and might have happened here.”

Last week, Roth was asked, via e-mail, if it *has *happened here. He
responded, “It is easier to comprehend the election of an imaginary
President like Charles Lindbergh than an actual President like Donald
Trump. Lindbergh, despite his Nazi sympathies and racist proclivities, was
a great aviation hero who had displayed tremendous physical courage and
aeronautical genius in crossing the Atlantic in 1927. He had character and
he had substance and, along with Henry Ford, was, worldwide, the most
famous American of his day. Trump is just a con artist. The relevant book
about Trump’s American forebear is Herman Melville’s ‘The Confidence-Man,’
the darkly pessimistic, daringly inventive novel—Melville’s last—that could
just as well have been called ‘The Art of the Scam.’ ”
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