I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2)

Roth has the desirable ability both to revel in the particular and to present a visionary view of the general. I Married a Communist is a perfect display of this twin-treasure. Indeed, there is even a coy passage that seems to indicate this self-awareness: “Politics is the great generalizer, and literature the great particularizer.” And again: “Generalizing suffering: there is Communism. Particularizing suffering: there is literature.” One might be fooled by the title and various blurbs for the novel into thinking that this solely is the story of American politics in the Cold War, invoking the McCarthyist threat and the Communist witch-hunts in the early 1950’s. It is certainly that, but Roth presents a much grander vision of the human condition. Again, in almost contradictory form, he particularizes in astute detail the personalities and flaws of his characters to demonstrate that individuals share the human condition and are not all that different after all. Much of the general thrust of the book depicts a negative view of life, the problems we all inevitably face. Roth, as usual, takes no sides and leaves no stone unturned in his assault on everything. That Roth can pierce the veil on any sort of positive valence, thereby dragging out potential problems, is mitigated only by his own self-flagellation – not even his own putative character (Nathan Zuckerman) gets off the hook. There is something refreshing, though, in this kind of literary honesty, this unadulterated look into the realities of life. Ira Ringold, the great Iron Rinn, is presented as a towering figure initially, only to be steadily and mercilessly chipped away throughout the story, the unmaking of a great statue into mere formless stone.Ira’s communism, as well as his downfall because of it, is known from the jump. Roth, in classic form, can drop tiny bombs onto his audience by, for example, unceremoniously inserting the brief details of the protagonist’s death, weaving it almost translucently into the story’s larger current. The usual plot elements in a story, typically introduced in stepwise fashion, are exploded by Roth. He is not the only author to explode this formula, of course, but he does it in a unique fashion, flipping the traditional importance of moments like death, and instead imposing the importance of mulling aloud, philosophically, about life, which, no matter how one cuts it, inescapably ends in death. There is a certain fatalism, running as an undercurrent, pulsing through the book. This is applied dualistically to the political story, as well to the personal story. Often the two narratives step overtly onto one another. I offer a few passages to serve the point. “He has entered vigorously into competition with life; now, becalmed, he enters into competition with death, drawn down into austerity, the final business.” Roth takes us on Ira’s journey from a nameless ditchdigger to a respected, imperious Union Boss, to famous radio actor and polemicist personality, to love-weakened family man, all the way back to nameless nobody – persona non grata – living off the grid. Little hope was injected into the possible trajectory of Ira’s life. Here is another passage displaying the fatalistic tendencies in which Roth splashes so refreshingly, this time in the political vein: “Gossip as gospel, the national faith. […] McCarthy understood the entertainment value of disgrace and how to feed the pleasures of paranoia. […] That’s how the country began: moral disgrace as public entertainment.” Naturally, there is uplift to be found in Roth’s sardonic humor and fearless observation, if nothing else. “His recourse to violence was the masculine correlate of her predisposition to hysteria – distinctive gender manifestations of the same waterfall.” Interestingly, there is also a prescience – a premonitory aura – of the “woke” hysteria on the far left that we see at the time of this writing. (Roth, like Orwell, had no qualms about eviscerating any political or psychological position in his quest for undaunted honesty.) “The public machine she wanted to destroy Ira begins to turn against her. It has to. This is America. The moment you start this public machine, no other end is possible except a catastrophe for everybody.” More directly to the point about the Mccarthyist ghost still lingering: “…even just the seemingly genteel game of naming names, well the results could be dire in those dark days.” This is not an especially uplifting tale. There is betrayal. There is hysteria. There is dishonesty. There is murder. There is fatalism. But even so, Roth manages to dig so deep into the truth of our lives, both individually and collectively, that the lingering impression is a positive one. How insightful, how moving, are lines like the following? “The hardest thing in the world is to cut the knot of your life and leave. People make ten thousand adjustments to even the most pathological behavior.” Here again: “When you loosen yourself, as I tried to, from all the obvious delusions – religion, ideology, Communism – you’re still left with the myth of your own goodness. Which is the final delusion.” Roth, it seems to me, can deliver a positive gut-punch in the disguise of hard-to-hear honesty. “Eve didn’t marry a Communist; she married a man perpetually hungering after his life. That’s what enraged him and confused him and that’s what ruined him: he could never construct one that fit.”So, perhaps the takeaway is that we can recognize our own pathologies – both individually and therefore collectively – and construct a life that doesn’t just “fit,” but is also good. We can bypass the “myth of our own goodness,” and create something real and honest from the ashes of self-awareness. One hopes as much is possible. Then again, the continuity of great literature seems to suggest that figuring it out is perpetually difficult.

Philip Roth's I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, 1998, is one of his Zuckerman books, but one in which the author's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman simply narrates: the story of Ira Ringgold, whom he had known since his Newark Jewish childhood, as Ira was the brother of one of his favorite teachers, Murray Ringgold. Ira, perhaps defined by the fact that he was big, and rough, coming from a rough neighborhood as the Ringgold brothers did, began life as a teenage ditch digger in 1930s Depression Newark. Rode the rails, worked all over the country, as a miner, a steel worker. Joined the Army and fought during World War II. Improbably became a big radio star, and married an even bigger radio star, Eve Frame, who had been a very very big silent film star. (People who are familiar with the lives of some celebrities may well feel that Eve, a self-hating Jew born Brooklyn's Chave Fromkin, who climbs the social ladder by imitating her betters, including their anti-semitism, strongly resembles the beautiful actress Claire Bloom, one of Roth's ex-wives. And that Roth is here further pursuing his quarrels with her.) At any rate, the fictional Eve delivers Ira into quite a desirable lifestyle, based in a Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York townhouse, beautifully furnished, where she frequently entertains glittering figures in the arts and literature. But he can't get on with her daughter from a previous marriage, Sylphid.And Ira is a confirmed, dedicated Communist, bullying everyone around him with his political views, furthermore using his radio show to put forth the party's views. Then, in the early postwar years, comes the House Un-American Activities Committee, with its Inquisitional hearings intent on driving so-called Communists and fellow travelers from entertainment, and any other influential positions in American life. Demanding that its victims `name names' of other political undesirables. Creating various abominable blacklists that prevented its victims' employment, and hounded them into suicide and exile. The House hearings to be followed, in the 1950s, by the even more damaging Senate hearings of "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy. Initially, Ira is protected by his relationship to Eve, but soon enough, his unstable marriage starts to crack up. And she publishes a bestselling exposé that identifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow." He is destroyed, personally and professionally. Because of him, even his brother, the teacher, loses his job; the McCarthyite witch hunters don't hold with Red schoolteachers, either. Ultimately, Zuckerman will be told that the witchhunt even reached out to him: he failed to receive the Fulbright Scholarship he was expecting, as he was thought to be a nephew of the Ringgolds.In the 1990s, Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for  Patrimony : A True Story ,(1991); the PEN/Faulkner Award for  Operation Shylock : A Confession , (1993); the National Book Award for  Sabbath's Theater , (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for  American Pastoral , (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I MARRIED A COMMUNIST. This greatly-talented, multi-award winning, world famous American author is, however, probably best known for his massively popular earlier books,  Goodbye, Columbus ; Portnoy's Complaint  and  When She Was Good . This book, told in long, dull, improbable flashback by Zuckerman and Murray, is probably best only for his more devoted fans, and/or those particularly interested in this dark period. But make no mistake about it; despite its flaws, here, in the guise of social history, Roth has created a vivid portrait of a bad time long gone.

Recently I read Blake Bailey's brilliant biography of Philip Roth (1933-2018) the Newark New Jersey born author. Roth grew up in a prosperous Jewish home, graduated from Bucknell and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He wrote over 30 novels and should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I Married a Communist is the second volume in his three part series on America. The first book is American Pastoral and the third is The Human Stain. The Plot: Ira Ringold is born in 1913 into a poor Jewish family in Newark. He serves in World War II and by unexpected developments becomes a radio star impersonating American heroes such as Abraham Lincoln. he marries movie and radio star Eve Frame. She is older than he and Ringold is her fourth husband. Her first was a gay silent movie icon. She has a grown daughter who is a harpist. This daughter dominates her mother. She reminds me of the daughter of Claire Bloom (whose personality mirrors that of the fictional Eve) who hated Roth. Bloom was married to Roth for several years before their divorce.The downfall of Ringold is poignantly told. Roth is a brilliant storyteller and his prose can be both funny and sad. Interesting characters and an absorbing story make this a great book. Present day America is eerily similar to the witch hunting and paranoia of the Red baiting 1950s! Kudos to Roth and this novel!

This is the story of Ira Ringold, a Jew from Newark who becomes a big star on radio and then is destroyed in the period of the McCarthy witch-hunts. This is the story of a failed marriage; of toxic family relationships; of male adolescence and male role models and masculinity; of morality and its lack; of ageing; of literature; of anti-Semitism; of politics; of fanaticism; of hypocrisy; of betrayal. This is the story of a particular America in a particular time and place; a story that presages the America of today.I Married a Communist is the second volume of what is known as Roth’s American Trilogy, preceded by American Pastoral, which I declared to be The Great American Novel, and followed by The Human Stain. They are not a trilogy in the sense that the word tends to be used today – each of these stands complete on its own, connected only in the sense that the three together are Roth’s attempt to make sense of America at the end of the 20th century by looking back over the decades of the mid-century. In each the story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, a barely disguised alter-ego of Roth himself.When Murray Ringold, once Nathan’s English teacher and later friend, and now an old man, attends a summer school at the university where Zuckerman, himself now a man in his 60s, teaches, they spend the evenings together, and over the course of the week Murray tells Zuckerman the story of his younger brother, Ira. Nathan knew Ira too once, when Nathan was young and impressionable and Ira was at his peak as a star and as a man. Ira was a formative influence on the young boy, a second father figure, and for a time he was the most important person in Nathan’s life. But as Nathan grew up he grew away from Ira, so although he knew in broad outline what had happened to him, this is the first time he has heard Ira’s later story in detail. As Murray fills in the gaps of Ira’s earlier and later life, Zuckerman also tells the reader of the man he knew, looking back with the eyes of age and experience and reassessing his youthful judgement of the man.The story is simple and we are told near the beginning how Ira’s downfall came about. At the height of his stardom he married Eve Frame, once a Hollywood starlet and now also a radio star. The marriage was disastrous, for which Ira placed the blame squarely on Eve’s grown-up daughter Sylphid and on Eve’s weakness in letting Sylphid domineer over her. Eve may have felt that Ira’s penchant for infidelity had something to do with it, though. When Ira leaves her, Eve publishes a memoir of their marriage in which she claims he is a communist taking orders from the Kremlin and betraying America. In the McCarthy era, this accusation alone is enough to destroy Ira’s career. Part of what Murray will tell Nathan is how Ira reacted to his downfall and how the rest of his life played out.But the story is to a large extent a vehicle for Zuckerman/Roth to dissect the various characters and the wider society. The question is not whether Ira was a communist – we know that he was – but why. He too, as Nathan with him, was influenced by an older man that he loved as a friend and mentor. But there’s a feeling that to him being a communist was an ego thing – something that separated him from the common herd, that allowed him to feel superior. Yes, he cared about those in society who were disadvantaged, but he also enjoyed the luxury and celebrity that came with his marriage to Eve even as he ranted against her and her friends. Nathan’s outgrowing of him is beautifully observed – as Nathan matures and goes off to college where he spends time with really educated and intelligent men, Ira diminishes in his eyes. Perhaps Ira’s tragedy is that he never outgrew his own mentor.It has been claimed that Ira’s marriage to Eve is based on Roth’s own failed marriage to Claire Bloom, and that the book is a vicious response to Bloom’s memoirs in which she painted an unflattering picture of Roth. This may be so, but I don’t think it matters – it works at a literary level and in truth the reader – this reader, anyway – sympathises slightly more with Eve than with Ira, although both are weak and selfish. Through Eve, Roth goes into the question of Jewish self-hate – anti-Semitism practised by Jews themselves. I found this aspect fascinating – it was something I’d never considered before. Roth shows how this is a response to society’s anti-Semitism, where some Jews find it easier to try to hide their identity and join in rather than spend a lifetime battling prejudice. It made me think of African Americans “passing”, which in fact is the subject of The Human Stain.Overall, this book doesn’t have quite the power or broad scope of American Pastoral. In some ways it feels more personal, as if it reflects Roth’s own life more intimately. The depiction of Nathan’s journey through adolescence feels lived – some at least of these reflections surely arise from Roth’s experiences as much as his alter-ego’s. Although Ira is the main focus, Zuckerman is very much central too, which isn’t really the case in American Pastoral. The young Nathan is an aspiring writer, allowing Roth to digress into his formative literary experiences, while the older Zuckerman is rather reclusive – an enigma left unsolved. It’s always dangerous to make direct links between fictional characters and their creators, but I think it’s probably safe to assume that the literary aspects of Nathan’s development at least are drawn from Roth’s own, and they are full of interest and insight. I came away from it wishing that Murray Ringold, or Zuckerman, or Roth, had been my English teacher.And I came away from the book wishing that Roth were here today to make sense for us of what has happened to bring America to its current state. This book goes some way to that, showing already the faultlines that have now become a gaping chasm into which the moderate centre seems to have fallen. A great writer, and an excellent book. It may not be The Great American Novel, but it’s certainly a great American novel.

This is the second part of Roth’s American trilogy that I have read – American Pastoral being the first, the Human Stain awaits. I discovered – after reading it – that a key character is based on the author’s ex-wife, Claire Bloom. It is none too flattering – indeed rather bitter. We can understand that fiction will use personal experience but writing a book to settle a score?Anyway, like Pastoral this is, also, a political novel, set in the 1950s. Further, as with Pastoral, political conflict is played out in a domestic setting. Indeed the families are very similar – Pastoral has father, mother, daughter [Seymour, Dawn and Merry], this has stepfather, mother, daughter [Ira, Eve and Sylphid]. Roth’s sympathies lie with Ira as they did with Seymour, but not without qualification. Sylphid is savaged as was Merry. I wonder what I have in store with The Human Stain.Like Pastoral the story begins with a chance encounter. Nathan Zuckerman – the narrator in Pastoral, too – meets his old high school teacher, Murray Ringold, Ira’s brother. Over several evenings Murray reminisces about times past – a sweet way to recreate old traditions of story-telling by the fireside.Philip Roth reflects on the nature of political commitment specifically and the human condition more generally. Just as with Pastoral I found his perspective narrow. He belongs to that particular generation of the American Jewish community, who came of age after 1945. Some can transcend generation and culture, not so Roth. This is most evident when he describes the black community in Newark.None can deny Roth is a deep thinker, within his range. He is without doubt a great writer, too, but here employed too much to satisfy personal affect. The novel has a curious “new age” ending, too – where does that come from? Guilt?McCarthyism drew on many streams, one of which was personal enmities. The witch-hunt was used to settle a few scores. Rather ironically this novel seems to be in part similarly motivated.

This is one of the good Roth books (I really hate some of them) – well written, and with several important subjects addressed; McCarthyism, the failure of the American Left, and relationships between people with…um…issues.Still, it’s a mixed bag. It has a weird structure, with a youngish narrator being told most of the events by an older man recalling them…only the narrator was there for some of the narrative so can provide his own perspective – and sometimes it becomes hard to remember who is talking or what they are saying. It’s a bit muddled and confusing, and not strictly necessary.It starts out exploring the impact of the blacklist on people’s lives, and the impulses that drove good people into first the Henry Wallace Progressive movement and then to the Communist Party. It covers well the fine impulses that drove people there, and also the sheer misery of the CP’s twists and turns and what they meant for those people. It explains how the New Dealers and liberals were the real target of the red-baiters, and how much nasty score-settling went on.But two thirds of the way it seems to change tack and sentiment; the liberal and communist characters are suddenly driven not by personal or political conviction but by their own emotional flaws. Some of this is revelation of the plot, and some of it feels like Roth changed his mind and started to write a different book.And the portrayal of the mutually destructive relationship between the main protagonist and his wife, and her previous destructive relationships with men and with her daughter, are really horrible. It’s put into the mouths of those characters who are generally reliable and insightful witnesses, so we are supposed to take it as a true and honest account.This is just misogyny, spiced up with some racial and class awkwardness. The knowledge that this is really about Roth’s relationship with Claire Bloom, and that many of the facts map on to the real story, makes it skin-crawling.At the end Roth brings it back to the historical events covered in American Pastoral – the failure of liberalism in the face of Black-led riots and urban degeneration. It’s all hopeless and depressing, and the moral is that those who pursue political or civil goals based on the possibility of change are fools who waste their own time and put themselves and those they care about in harm’s way. There is some ‘bracketing’ of the view, but the argument against it which is offered doesn’t feel strong or deeply felt.Very painful to read much of the time, although it is a mostly good book.

I am a huge Roth fan. His style is so psychologically probing but this book is hard work at times. It starts well but loses its way throughout the middle third as it gets bogged down in repetition. Ends well and is an interesting take on the times but I can’t say I really enjoyed reading it.

Superb display of his writing skills and story telling,BUT you must first read the autobiography of his contemporary wife,Claire Bloom,"Leaving the Dolls House" - she is the central subject of the novel. Mr Roth is not a person to cross swords with-an unpleasant public outing of his Jewishness towards his Jewish wife.