Customer Reviews

I Married a Communist

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This slim, dense novel of an ugly period in American history would most certainly have been overlooked but for two things: Philip Roth's name on the cover, and Claire Bloom's bitter memoir of her divorce from Roth. There is only one way to say it: yes, this novel plays a chillingly mean game of So There Claire, and yes, that is what keeps you turning the pages, at least on the first reading. Having said this, it is time to give Roth credit for having written a far more complex novel than alleged by his detractors on this score. The Roth-Bloom story is not, in fact, transplanted wholesale into a time when gossip-mongering really did have the power of life and death. Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, is in his late teens and flirting with radical politics before going away to college; his idol is the book's protagonist, Ira Ringold, a man quite unlike Roth; and it is Ringold who marries the Claire Bloom figure, "Eve Frame." To be quite fair, most of what is revealed about the Ringold-Frame marriage could have been inferred from Bloom's own words. And given the number she did on Roth, Bloom gets off lightly as far as her character goes: she is said to be vain, petty, and histrionic. No big surprise. Roth's bile is reserved for "Eve Frame's" monstrous daughter (whether true or not, an unforgettable portrait) and, interestingly, for "Katrina Van Tassel Grant," the actress's monstrous best friend. In reality, "Katrina" was probably Francine du Plessix Gray, Bloom's best friend, a writer and journalist well known for her damning early reports on Richard Nixon. Gray would have to be a poor sport not to laugh a bit on finding herself portrayed as a fanatic anti-Communist and, later, a mourner at Nixon's funeral.

This bit of literary back-getting is funny, in a repulsive way, but it raises a question which defines the novel and which the novel unfortunately fails to answer well. Roth has a real sense for his period, which most of us now associate with the blandness of popular culture at the time and not with the importance that higher culture attached to the moral power of literature. Middlebrows wanting access to higher culture were, if anything, even more fanatical than the Kazins and (Mary) McCarthys about the writer's duty of high-mindedness. It was the era that Lillian Hellman recalled for many in her memoirs and revivals of her plays, made plausible by her supposedly having been there as a neutral witness of integrity. After her death it was revealed that she had in fact been a Communist and had hidden the fact to avoid jail and enjoy the high lifestyle that somehow went both with the high mind and radical convictions in the literary world of the time. An excellent mimic, as always, Roth may also find that his own style--harsh, often unfair, never for the uninitiated--lends itself to the voice of the engage with no deep convictions, only rage. His feat is all the more impressive since the voice of Ira Ringold, a passionate but rather stupid man, is at odds with his own passionate but cynical voice and the voice of Ira's brother, Murray, through whom the story is told. Murray is the real common man, a decent Jewish schoolteacher with none of Ira's pretensions. The story ends with the sense of how cruelly Ira has betrayed Murray by speeding toward disaster--much, Roth might say, like the grandiose America Ira personifies (he was even an Abraham Lincoln impersonator).

People are what matter, Roth says, not ideas. It is a startling message from a man whose fiction has often suffered from a callousness to real human beings as opposed to abstractions. If this is what Roth has learned from the failure of real-life relationships, it may have made him a much better writer. But to return to the literary-gossip theme: Roth's message may well be that the political fad du jour is not what matters, that the gossip mills grind everything down to triviality, that betrayal, not idealism, is the strongest human motive, and Francine Gray may as well have been a Nixonite. In this, he finally cheapens his own message, for there are differences. The blows to Roth's reputation were about what a public figure can expect in a culture addicted to trivial revelations (his point) but something much worse happened in the fifties when genuine idealism was perverted by Communists and anti-Communists into the equivalent of Roth versus Bloom and worse. Roth is old enough and wise enough to remember an age in which we were idealists. He seems now to have taken the counsel of a teacher in the novel who tells him that literature is the only ideal that will not betray him. But if one set of writers is like another, reducing all critical thought to gratuitous backstabbing, it reflects poorly on literature and on the supposed moral maturity of a culture that once venerated literature enough to consider writers dangerous. There may be a lot of truth in this, but Roth only scratches the surface.

All the same, this may be the most moving novel Roth has ever written, not least because of the damaged faith it reveals in Roth's own commitment to literature. I defy anyone to read the closing paragraphs and remain unstirred. His writing is at its most spare and imaginative. It is high praise to say that in a novel whose bitterness recalls Thackeray, the music many readers may hear is Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In many respects, the two most recent novels of Philip Roth represent a long meditation on Tolstoi's famous observation and suggest a common wellspring of the unhappy family narratives. Roth goes as far as to put Tolstoi's words into the mouth of Murray Ringold, the high school English teacher who taught Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, the virtues of "cri-ti-cal thinking" and who, near the end of his life some fifty years later, unfolds the fate of his brother Ira, the radio personality "Iron Rinn" and young Nathan's boyhood mentor. Forget what you have read about I Married a Communist as Roth's roman a clef payback for Claire Bloom's recent memoire of her difficult life with the novelist. It is much, much more and is of a thematic and emotional fabric with Roth's great American Pastoral. Roth's project, of which this is the second installment, now seems to be "Nathan Zuckerman's America," thickly textured stories of lives collectively deranged and rendered dysfunctional by America and its political demons, now the MacCarthy era, Red-hunting, and the blacklist. Along the way we have countless carefully observed digressions on, among other things, taxidermy, how to make "literature," New Jersey's geology, the power of "the word," the triumph of lowbrow, and (of course) Newark in the 'forties and 'fifties. One remains in awe of Roth's undiminished ability to mine his own experience, augmented by prodigious research, to turn out superb, universal novels like I Married a Communist. Is he our greatest novelist? Consider the oeuvre--Portnoy, The Zuckerman tetralogy (which includes the magical The Ghost Writer), The Counterlife, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, and now this--and compare his accomplishment to that of any living American writer. It isn't even close.

I Married a Communist is a brilliant novel, one of few recent novels I've read through nonstop for a long time. It combines pathos and humor in laying bare a variety of important topics:both the well-intentioned but foolish Marxism and the evil witch-hunting manias of the 1950s, anti-Semitism and the integration of Jews into American life, issues of betrayal and loss, the decline of Newark, the inspiration of a good teacher. Yes, it's partly autobiographical. But the betrayed hero, Ira Ringold, who represents Roth at least in part, is part admirable giant/ part obsessive creep.
The book is curious in having two levels of narration. The first is Roth's quasi-alter-ego the novelist Zuckerman, and in part this is Zuckerman's bildungsroman from the Newark classroom to the fantasies of international socialism to the University of Chicago. For Zuckerman Ira was an almost irresistible mentor, as was his brother, the teacher who inspired him to become a writer. That brother, Murray, is the second narrator, filling in Zuckerman on the parts of the story he missed, either because he was too young to understand at that time or because he separated from Ira and only heard of his end second-hand. The interplay between these two narrators, looking back over some 45 years is subtle and crafty, and the book easily moves from one consciousness to another. Murray in particular is a brlliant character: a Jewish war hero (WW II); a stimulating Socratic high school English teacher who makes Shakespeare live for his students; a union organizer who fights a witch hunt-based job dismissal and triumphs years later; a loving father, husband, and brother; and at the end a clear-minded 90-year old survivor. He feels betrayed by the teaching union he helpedestablish, betrayed by the failure of the city he grew up in.
Both narrators puzzle over the meteoric rise and unaccountable marriage of Ira to a famous radio actress, a beauty with a secret Jewish past. His betrayal of her is sexual. Her big betrayal is a ghost- written book with the same title as the novel, a denuncaition of her husband, who is a naive, forceful, sometimes bullying Marxist. The book catches wonderfully the feel of the 50s, from a moral, cultural, and political view.
All the major characters are given full, multi-dimensional characterization, even the wife. There's lot of humor, and lots of subtle reflection as well.
One other note: Dickens had London, Balzac had Paris, and Roth has North Jersey. This novel combined with American Pastoral paints a deep (and sad) landscape of Newark and its environs. The decline and fall of Roth's native Newark is a moving background to the main action of both books.

This was my introduction to Philip Roth and it has made me (virtually overnight for I read the book in 2 nights) a Roth fan. For this is at once a book about McCarthyism, family, and memory. But perhaps most of all, it is about the human capacity to remember and to betray each other; a capacity undiminished with time. As Roth points out "The master story situation in the Bible is betrayal. Adam-betrayed. Esau-betrayed. The Schechemites-betrayed. Judah-betrayed. Joseph-betrayed. Moses-betrayed. Samson-betrayed. Samuel-betrayed. David-betrayed. Uriah-betrayed. Job-betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.' (p. 185)

And every character in this book is also betrayed. Nathan is betrayed. Nathan's father is betrayed. Ira is betrayed. Murray is betrayed. Eve is betrayed. Dorris is betrayed. All of them are betrayed by themselves and by America. An America they believe in; an America that never ceases to disappoint them for not living up to her potential.

But finally too America is betrayed. America is betrayed by Richard Nixon, the man who as much as McCarthy was responsible for McCarthyism and who it turns out, was no better than a common crook. A petty common thief.

And that perhaps is the moral (if there is one) of this story. For the betrayals, all of them are petty. They are petty because "people give up too easily and fake their feelings. They want to have feelings right away, and so `shocked' and `moved' are the easiest. The stupidest" (p. 219). People want to be good; they want to be right; they want to be caring. But being good, and right and caring involves a great deal of emotional and mental energy. It involves work and it involves overcoming of prejudices. Most people are not prepared to put in that kind of effort-nor do they want to. How much easier to unthinkingly mouth the words Nixon and McCarthy put into your mouth? For McCarthyism was the political correctness of the 1950s and if you simply said you hated the Reds or communists or whatever it was you were supposed to hate, people would say you were good. And who knows? Perhaps, like Eva, you might even have believed them.

And then you would have been betrayed. By McCarthyism, by yourself. A petty betrayal of your own making.

Wow! I bought this book thinking it was about the red scare and McCarthyism. Turns out it's really all about about how much Roth hates his ex-wife, Claire Bloom, and her daughter from another marriage. This extended poison pen letter is his revenge on Bloom for, I suppose, her tell all autobiography in which Roth does not come up smelling like a rose. In any case, despite "Communist's" pretext at telling a story of a not very bright, conflicted armchair radical it turns into a vindictive diatribe against his shallow, empty virago of a former movie star wife. The virulence and endless viciousness against this woman (all the characters agree she is very hateful indeed) and her hideous daughter is however the real subject of this piece of extended hate mail/male. Roth, obviously feeling betrayed by his ex-wife's pubic revelations of his treatment of her decided it was Revenge Time at the typewriter. But he makes her "betrayal" of him, if betrayal it is, seem like a political action. After all, what could be more heinous than someone informing on a husband for his political convictions? But that's not what Bloom did to you, Philip. You're not that imprtant, buddy!More self-aggrandizement at her expense. A shameful display of vituperation! A much better title might have been "The Gripes of Roth"! This doesn't make me want to read more Roth but I'm dying to read "Leaving the Doll's House," Bloom's version of their life together.This book is a soiling experience.Ugh!

Philip Roth could have written a book just like Clair Bloom's, where he went after her with a vengance and did nothing else of any literary value. However, unlike Bloom, he is a writer so instead he did something else. He wrapped his story and Bloom's around the McCarthy Era so that the novel is one continuous act of betrayal. There is the betrayal of friends and co-workers to stay off the blacklist. Then there are the betrayals going on in one's personal life.

One thing that Roth captures especially well is the often impossible relationship between stepchild and stepparent. In real life it was Bloom's daughter Anna Steiger, a minor opera singer, who gets blamed for everything whereas in the novel it is Sylphid, an aspiring harpist, who is the stepdaughter from hell. This material is the most engrossing in the book, closely followed by Claire Bloom/Eve Frame's portrayal as someone who can never really get off the stage and stop performing. Her histrionic marital scenes are really something and if they did in fact occur, I would have loved to have been there!

Of course, in the novel, the actress wife gets an abortion upon her daughter's demands for same. This despite the fact that her husband wants the baby. I suspect this may have been added into the story to portray the stepdaughter in the evilest possible light. As a device for creating hatred, it really succeeds.

Where Roth stumbles is being ponderous and tedious over the actual events of the McCarthy Era with blow by blow descriptions of the blacklisting and red baiting. I think he could have been more economical with this material and probably a really good editor would have cut a good deal of it. This is material many of us are very familiar with already as it is well covered in the arts. So we don't need to have Roth pound it into us.

On the plus side, when I got tired of reading this in print, I listened instead to the audio version as narrated by the late Ron Silver. Silver narrated 3 of Roth's books and did a superb job on all three of them. The other two are AMERICAN PASTORAL and THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA. In my opinion, those two novels are Roth's 5 star novels. It is too bad Silver wasn't able to do all of Roth's novels because he captured the feel, texture and sound of Roth's characters so perfectly. Unfortunately, Silver died in 2009 so it is not like this can be corrected now. Silver makes the tedious parts of this novel interesting plus makes the dramatic parts of involving Bloom/Frame positively sing. If you are going to try the book, I recommend you listen to Silver's narration of it.

Philip Roth is far and away my favorite author. I've made it through about half of his books now and while I Married a Communist didn't quite earn the title of my favorite Roth book, it is easily in the top 5.

Many of the novels I've enjoyed by Roth I would hesitate to recommend to someone who's never experienced him before. Often times they build on one another, or I think it's necessary to know certain things about his life or his philosophy to get what you need to from his books. However, I Married a Communist certainly stands on its own and makes an excellent starting point for someone who's never experienced him before.

There were many reasons I loved this book, not the least of which was the total saturation with McCarthy-era politics. The characters were rich, the book was complete. With other authors I'll often read a book and be left wondering what happened after it was over, or I'll be curious about details regarding what happened before the story began. Roth manages to start right in the midst of the story and yet the novel is 100% complete. Though I loved the book I did not feel like it needed a single additional word, nor were any of the words superfluous.

As always, there were many little sentences that proved Roth's understanding of the human condition.

"I'd say to Doris, `Why doesn't he leave? Why can't he leave?' And do you know what Doris would answer? `Because he's like everybody - you only realize things when they're over."

or

"I headed down the stairs with the seething self-disgust of someone young enough to think that you had to mean everything you said."

My politics are about as left as you can get and this book certainly focuses on left-wing politics, which is certainly a bonus for me. However, there were several sections regarding the inability of a writer/artist/etc. to be political, and while I generally disagree with that point of view...well, I was a bit swayed.

"Politics is the great generalizer," Leo told me, "and literature the great particularizer, and not only are they in an inverse relationship to each other - they are also in an antagonistic relationship. To politics, literature is decadent, soft, irrelevant, boring, wrongheaded, dull, something that makes no sense and that really oughtn't to be. Why? Because the particularizing impulse is literature. How can you be a politician and allow the nuance? As an artist the nuance is your task. Your task is not to simplify. Even should you choose to write in the simplest way, a la Hemingway, the task remains to impart the nuance, to elucidate the complication, not to deny the contradiction, but to see where, within the contradiction, lies the tormented human being. To allow the chaos. To let it in. You must let it in."

Overall, this book reminded me that Roth is the most awarded living author for a reason. Every word he writes is there for a purpose and he rarely oversteps his reach. I would recommend this book to anyone who's interested in literary fiction.

This is a big brassy book about a big brassy man. Roth explores the insidious horror of the McCarthy era without flinching. He also has no problem discussing the shallowness of the time, whether one leans politically to the right or left.

Many of the book's characters are caught up in the winds of an era rather than being self-thinkers and examining their own core values and external truths. Isn't this the way in most eras?

Sometimes, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or take Mr.Roth's words as literal. That's part of the joy of reading this book. The reader can be as irreverent as he or she chooses, or not!

I had read about the "revenge" factor in this Roth novel and perhaps because I wasn't quite familiar with the principals (on whom this book was supposedly based on), I ignored the negative spin and just enjoyed the story for what it was ... an invaluable lesson for all writers no matter their genre ... when Leo explains to Nathan why he should ignore the ideology and stick to the art, epiphanies (right or wrong) abound ... there was no putting this one down and the reward (for this reader) was all confirming. Whether it was Murray's decency or Nathan's naivety or Ira's iron will, the story flowed with passion start to finish. The fact there are parents who are victims (and/or) martyrs to their children (and/or their cause(s)) is undeniable (so who needs the revenge spin?). What flows from such a starting point is (probably) almost always disaster. Whether Roth is a brute or not in real life is irrelevant (not to forget the other side of the story--that he may be one hell of a decent human being), do yourself a big favor and ignore the revenge spin. Wagner was an anti-semite but much of his music remains hauntingly heavenly. Roth remains an American/World master of modern fiction.

Popular reviews of this book focus primarily on it's setting - the McCarthy era. But really this book is about the McCarthy Era the way that Shakespere's Henry V is about the Battle of Agincourt - kind of but not really.

What makes this book compelling is the sloppiness of the characters - Roth does not attempt to make people who fit into his setting, he makes real people with personal issues that have as much if not more to do with their situation in life than their surroundings - Ira Ringold is a classic example of this.

This is a book about finding mentors in life, about committment to a cause vs. committment to relationships, about human frailty and, yes, about the McCarty era - but again only partly.

This is not an easy read but it is worthwhile.