Rating: 
Summary: I loved this book
Review: Roth's preceding novel, "American Pastoral," established a new and astonishingly rich fictional domain for him--that of coming to grips with the personal vicissitudes and sociopolitical anguish of a complex decade (the 1960s) through the medium of a few richly drawn, representative characters. "I Married a Communist" continues this idea, only here it is the 1950s that is put under the magnifying glass. Popular culture has fashioned the 1950s into the "Happy Days" decade--a decade that still makes many a baby boomer misty-eyed for its apparent innocence and simplicity of purpose and beliefs. You don't see much of that in "I Married a Communist."...It's a wonderful, powerful novel, full of scorchingly articulate anger at the small-mindedness of powerful people who in the early 1950s destroyed the lives of many who didn't mindlessly conform to reactionary social and political beliefs. The one fault I find is that the novel at times seems to become an extended essay on, rather than a sustained dramatization of, this dark aspect of 1950s America. This only happens on a couple of occasions toward the end of the novel though, and it doesn't really detract from its overall effect. What it means is that it is a slightly less successful novel than "American Pastoral," but to me it is still one of the finest American novels published in the last decade.
Rating:
Summary: A petty betrayal
Review: 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.
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