Passion, betrayal, and the blacklist

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	• I Married a Communist Philip Roth Vintage, 1999 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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A Great Historical Novel

I really liked this book. It is actually my first Philip Roth book. I was drawn to it because I find this period of American history, the 1930s-1950s, fascinating. I'm drawn to the idealism of people like the fictional hero of this book (Iron Rinn) and of real life activists who figure in the book (Paul Robeson). I find labor history during that time extremely interesting. I also find the betrayal and spying and generally insane political atmosphere of the Cold War period horrifying and yet something that we should never forget.

I admired Roth's portrait of Iron Rinn. Although he is an idealist, an obsessive, and an altogether annoying person who incessantly repeats himself and refuses to admit any shortcomings in his Communist ideology, it is easy to see why someone like him would be drawn to Communism. A working-class man with little education who has dealt with anti-Semitism his whole life, Iron Rinn is naturally in sympathy with the working classes and with black Americans. At that time, unfortunately, there seemed to be limited organized ways to aggressively address glaring social inequities.

And while I certainly find it upsetting that people like Ira failed to listen to the stories of what was actually happening in Stalinist Russia, his anger at a society that felt that persecuting "communists" was more pressing an issue than poverty, exploitation, or racism is certainly something the reader can identify with.

So basically this book is a skilled and moving portrait of a flawed, angry, and naive man-a deeply human man- who genuinely wants social justice; of the bitterness and pettiness and hysteria of red-baiting (which cost countless people their jobs and reputations), and one individual's too human frailties that are his downfall.

The story is narrated by a man twenty years Iron Rinn's junior who once worshipped him. The story unfolds as this now middle-aged man, Nathan, talks to Iron Rinn's brother Murray about the late Iron Rinn. Iron Rinn lost everything due to his connections to Communism, and in fact both Murray and Nathan were victims through their connections to him, even though neither was a communist (Nathan flirted with it for awhile but was a teenager).

I enjoyed this aspect of the story, Nathan's recalling of his hero-worship of Iron Rinn, because it's a universal emotion we can all identify with-when we are so young and first begin to pick intellectual and moral heroes in our lives and try to model ourselves after them. And then it is quite upsetting when, as in Nathan's case and in many like these, we find out that our heroes are flawed, and in some cases, we can become disillusioned.

Roth also does a great job lambasting the hypocrisy and the pathetic nature of those who persecuted men like Iron Rinn for political purposes. And at the center of the story, showing the banality that usually accompanies these types of political crucifixions, is the fact that Iron is betrayed by his own wife for purely personal reasons.

(I also really liked Roth's description of Nixon's funeral!)

I enjoyed this story on so many levels; the history lesson about American life and politics and the shrewd insight into family relationships. It is a great read.

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La novela de formación

"Me casé con un comunista" es una novela en que Philip Roth explora la temática de la caza de brujas, que tuviera lugar en los Estados Unidos durante la época del senador McCarthy (años 40 y 50). En este contexto, Ira Ringold, protagonista de la obra, es un excombatiente de la II Guerra Mundial que actúa como propagandista de la causa comunista. En consecuencia, esta es una historia de lealtades y de traiciones. Todos los que están con él, lo abandonan en algún momento, salvo Nathan y el hermano de Ira, Murray. Todos dudan, como hicieron los apóstoles con Jesús, y al final todos caen en la cuenta de que Ira era un buen tipo, algo iluso y llevado de sus ideas como todos los ilusos, pero un buen tipo, más allá de lo acertado o errado que hubiese podido estar en sus juicios.
Me parece, no obstante, que para un escritor como Philip Roth, la trama es sólo la excusa para encarar el tema del creador y su obra, la "relación" del creador con su obra. Aquí el narrador, Nathan, cede su sitio al narrador Murray y éste al narrador Ira, etcétera. En el juego de las perspectivas para juzgar la realidad, Roth siempre resulta vencedor, porque en sus fallos no parece haber culpables, aunque los haya. "Me casé con un comunista" es una novela de víctimas, aun cuando se trate de los propios traidores. Lo que me gusta de las novelas de Roth, y de esta en particular, es su especial delicadeza para tratar a sus anta-gonistas. Siempre les concede la cláusula de humanidad que aún estando equivocados, les pertenece, pues en el fondo de lo que se trata aquí es de la dignidad de las personas.
El juego de espejos con que Roth construye su obra es una confirmación de una práctica suya. Yo no diría que es su estilo sino, más que eso, su "arte poética." En cierto modo, Roth es lo contrario de Ellroy pero también lo es de Bellow. Quizá se parezca más a I.B. Singer, aunque su temática es algo más amplia. Y es que a Roth no le interesa tanto el culpable como la culpa, o el castigo como la expiación.
En fin, aun cuando "Me casé..." es posterior a "Contravida," esta última me gusta más porque en ella la manera de explorar la realidad se halla más a la vista. Es más notoria. Y en este sentido actúa mejor como la novela de iniciación de un consumado, en tanto guía para iniciados. "Contravida" es más explícita que "Me casé..." Es más "manual." La realidad es algo más remota porque sirve de resonancia a los protagonistas, al revés de lo que ocurre aquí, en que la cuerda de la historia (el macartismo) vibra para que se despierten las musas.
La recomiendo para lectura y relectura. Es otra de mis candidatas para abolir el olvido.

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Roth Just Gets Better

It's amazing that Roth continues to produce such first rate novels. This sad story about the seductions of communism in the 40's and 50's, and the hysterical reactions of the paranoid right, is an excellent introduction to the craziness of the HUAC manipulations of public fears (which has so many applications to todays political scene) while telling a story of how the age impacts the lives of one group caught up in it.
Yet the flaws of the characters are fully developed and so that there is no hint of mere propagandizing.

Roth is a national treasure.

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Passion, betrayal, and the blacklist

The life of Ira Ringold, a Communist activist-cum-radio star who was betrayed to the blacklist by his actress wife, is reflected upon by the last two people alive who knew him--his brother Murray, a former English teacher, and Nathan Zuckerman, who grew up idealizing him. The result is a complex and fascinating novel about the nature of human passion, betrayal, and much more.

Ira emerges as a tremendously angry and violent figure who latches on to Communism as a means of civilizing himself. Young Nathan is initially swept along by the purity of Ira's fervor, but ultimately gains perspective as he matures and broadens intellectually while Ira remains mired in a pure belief in Communist doctrine that blinds him to all its faults. Murray tries to act as the voice of reason to shield Ira from his own impusivity and rage. All of this goes on again the backdrop of the Hollywood blacklist and the vicious social mercanaries of the elite. Recommended.

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Clever and thoughtful

Roth's subject and style in his later novels has devolved into political/social/personal interrogations of post WW II America; this one is insightful, original, masterfully written, clever, and authoritative. Roth has stated the significant aspect of the novel is 'voice' and this is a perfect example of it. There are fascinating ironies in the book that entwine to develop a multi-layered novel of a variety of Americans caught up in competeting allegiances of the 1940's and 1950's. It is a study in imperfections of the left and right; the confusion of a nation whose citizens grasp after meaning whether through the studies of history; the search for financial security, the fear of the 'red scare,' the ruts that unlearned abstract thinking can lead to as well as the dangers of ideologies when championed by people with personal, unconscious agendas. Roth has the ability to write a finessed novel like Nabokov if he chose to. Thankfully, he has used his talents to create works of importance that are more than literary. Additionally, I listen to about 12-15 audiobooks a year, and Ron Silver, the actor's rendering of the New York City accent is subtle, true and utterly mesmerizing.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenage ditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star, and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthy witchhunt of the 1950s.

In his heyday as a star?and as a zealous, bullying supporter of "progressive" political causes?Ira marries Hollywood's beloved silent-film star, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon in her Manhattan townhouse is shortlived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling exposé that identifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow."

In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge spilling over into the public arena from their origins in Ira's turbulent personal life, Philip Roth?who Commonweal calls the "master chronicler of the American twentieth century?has written a brilliant fictional protrayal of that treacherous postwar epoch when the anti-Communist fever not only infected national politics but traumatized the intimate, innermost lives of friends and families, husbands and wives, parents and children.

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