I MARRIED A
COMMUNIST
by Philip Roth
$26.00, Cloth
Review by Marshall Bruce Gentry
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I MARRIED A
COMMUNIST |
Philip Roth's four previous books published in the 1990s have won major literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for what I think is his finest novel, AMERICAN PASTORAL. In Roth's twenty-third book, I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator, spends a series of evenings reviewing the past with his high school English teacher Murray Ringold. The teacher catches Nathan with a web of revelations about a man Nathan idolized, Ira Ringold, the teacher's brother, a communist who became famous portraying Abraham Lincoln and who then was ruined in the witchhunt for communists in the 1950s. The key to Ira's fall is his disastrous marriage to the famous actress Eve Frame and his relationship to Sylphid, Eve's daughter from a previous marriage.
The tone of Roth's book can be vicious and exaggerated--as when it compares an elaborate funeral given for a canary to the funeral ceremony awarded Richard Nixon--but I MARRIED A COMMUNIST is also at times subtle and melancholy. This novel is about the regularity with which everyone performs betrayal, for all sorts of good and bad motives, and the 1950s is merely an era in which (at least with hindsight) it is possible to see the tragic links between the personal and the political. Nathan learns not only about the ways in which he has been betrayed--the beloved Ira turns out to be a dangerous man--but also realizes in several impressive scenes the extent to which Nathan himself has practiced betrayal. The novel features a lovely ending in which Nathan wonders about whether to try to remain connected to this world with all its messy meannesses, or to embrace isolation for the rest of his life and imagine death as a release into a peaceful, star-filled sky.
Anyone who knows about Claire Bloom's 1996 tell-all autobiography, LEAVING A DOLL'S HOUSE, in which she describes her 1990-95 marriage to Roth, will find plenty to think about in I MARRIED A COMMUNIST. In some ways, Roth's novel looks like simple revenge on Bloom, and Roth does sometimes let vengeance lead him into writing unrealistic passages about relations between men and women. I MARRIED A COMMUNIST is most satisfying when Roth admits that he and Bloom are caught in the same sad quicksand, but the primary interest in this novel is watching this most intelligent of novelists struggle with his overpowering emotions.
