The Plot Against America: the usual shopworn obsessions with Roth! Narcissism takes the lead in this utterly tepid anti-fascist tract, that features the very appealing narrator/hero: Mr. Roth as a child. Lindbergh is a featured player, but strategically always just off stage, the éminence grise, the villain of this appealing melodrama, marinated in Mr. Roth’s rampant retrospective paranoia . But it never emancipates itself from that melodrama, it would have been more appropriate as a T.V. movie. with Roth providing a self-congratulatory introduction.
Lindbergh was an actual hero, the antithesis of the clownish fascist Ring Master Trump. Lindbergh and America First disappeared after December 7th.
Portnoy’s Complaint was a comic tour de force, as yet to be matched by Roth. Portnoy and Myra Breckenridge were the scandalous satirical literary polemics of the late 60’s in America.
American Writer