Corey Robin

Tag: Sam Graham-Felsen

Letting Go

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My mom has been gone now for more than three months, and her death has loomed over much that I read and write and think. It has certainly shaped one part of my reading of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. There are two nearly perfect moments in the novel, a novel that I think is mostly imperfect and flawed. They both involve the young Philip Roth’s relationship to his mother. Sons and mothers, or mothers and sons, is not usually Roth’s strength as a novelist; it mostly serves as comic relief, usually at the expense of the mother. Roth is more interested in fathers and sons, and sons and fathers. Though, interestingly, I’d say his truest, most tender, portrayal […]

The Real Plot Against America

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There’s a moment in the middle of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America where the family has just learned that the father, Herman, is going to be transferred by his long-time employer, an insurance company, from Newark to somewhere in Kentucky. It’s very clear that the transfer is punitive, punishment for the father having crossed his sister-in-law, who is very connected with the fascist Lindbergh administration. The transfer order also looks a lot like simple ethnic cleansing, except that it’s framed as an “opportunity” that has been opened up by the Department of Interior, along the lines of the Homestead Act, where you get to be a pioneer in empty territory. But it’s all Jews who are being transferred. Though […]