Sidewalks - Did Irish Thicken Roth’s ‘Plot’?

by Tom Deignan

IT is often said that people don’t read anymore. It might be added that what they do read is hardly the most challenging material. The best-seller lists all over the U.S. are stuffed with romance fluff, generic thrillers and one-sided political tracts.

This makes the best-selling status of Philip Roth’s new novel The Plot Against America all the more interesting. Last week the book was featured prominently in long, largely glowing reviews in places such as The New York Times Book Review and the Atlantic Monthly. This week, Roth’s book shot up to the number 6 slot on The New York Times best seller list.

On the surface, there does not seem to be much Irish American history in Roth’s novel. Roth — considered by many to be America’s greatest fiction writer, who only seems to be getting better with age — has created an alternative history novel which asks — What if, during World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually lost the election of 1940? Not only that, but what if the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh had won the presidency? 

Best known for his heroics in the sky, Lindbergh later evolved into a political activist of sorts, arguing that America should not get involved in World War II. His argument appealed to many Americans who felt the war against Hitler was a European mess best left to Europeans. Sadly, Lindbergh’s message appealed to many anti-Semites and other bigots.

According to Roth’s novel, America would have become a very scary place had Lindbergh been elected president.

So, how could the Irish fit into this? Well, when you read some of the plot twists Roth throws at us, it’s hard not to think about several the darker episodes in Irish American history. Whether he knows it or not, Roth borrowed from real history to invent his own alternative history.

For example, in Roth’s book, it is clear that Jews in America have been targeted as suspicious by President Lindbergh and his allies. In fact, Lindbergh has passed a program called “Just Folks” which “encourages” Jews to leave their families and the big cities behind and head out to the flatlands of America. 

As innocuous as this may sound, it is clearly an attempt to “Americanize” Jews, to break up their families and neighborhoods and perhaps even “encourage” them to leave their religion behind.

In Roth’s world this never happened. But this did, in fact, happen to thousands of Irish families in New York City and across the country.

In the wake of the Irish famine, obviously, cities across the U.S. were left with countless families in need of food and shelter. The Children’s Aid Society, founded in the middle of the 19th century by Charles Loring Brace, aimed to take kids out of these squalid surroundings. 

That sounds noble enough. But critics have long pointed out that the society seemed as interested in converting Irish Catholic children as it was in feeding or sheltering them. 

As novelist Peter Quinn has noted, Brace himself wrote a number of books which seemed to split the world into higher and lower orders such as Races of the Old World and the Dangerous Classes of New York. 

Others have noted that the Children’s Aid Society often seemed to conspire with local politicians and courts to speed the process of religious conversion, suggesting to Irish Catholic kids that the only way to save themselves was to shake off the past. They even seemed to suggest it was Catholicism which might have caused these Irish kids to end up so poor and hungry in the first place.

Supporters of the Children’s Aid Society obviously don’t see their history in such dark tomes. Either way, there are other Irish shades in Roth’s book. 

There is a prominent religious figure, a rabbi, who is won over by the isolationist cause. In some ways he echoes a very real Irish American figure, the popular “radio priest” (and anti-Semite) Charles Coughlin who also said the U.S. should stay out of World War II.

Inevitably, many people have suggested Roth’s book is really about America today, a nation at war abroad and unaware it is losing its rights at home. But if you look closely, The Plot Against America also seems to be about Irish American history.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan@irishvoice.com)