The desire to put it on screen is understandable. Lindbergh, like his friend Henry Ford (who becomes his secretary of the Interior here), was historically anti-Semitic - Roth supplies Lindbergh’s own writing in an appendix as proof - and at the very least tolerant of Hitler and warm to his views on race. The novel, which takes the form of a historical memoir - its central character is Philip Roth of Weequahic, a neighborhood in Newark, N.J., the writer’s own hometown - imagines a world in which the aviator Charles Lindbergh, put forward as an antiwar candidate by Republicans, is elected president over incumbent Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Like Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 “It Can’t Happen Here,” whose title Roth quotes, and the series quotes in turn, it’s a speculative tale of creeping American fascism in the run-up to World War II - which is to say, tailor-made for 2020. Philip Roth’s 2004 dystopian alternate-history novel, “The Plot Against America,” has become an HBO miniseries, created by “The Corner,” “The Wire” and “Generation Kill” collaborators David Simon and Ed Burns.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |