- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; None edition (Sep 24 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395933463
- ISBN-13: 978-0395933466
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 612 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,619,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Iron Rinn (né Ira Ringold) is a self-educated radio actor, married to a spoilt, rags-to-riches beauty, silent-film star Eve Frame (née Chave Fromkin). He is a Communist, and a "sucker for suffering," locked into the cycle of violence from which he has emerged. She has risen by assiduous imitation of what is "classy"--which seems to include a wide swathe of anti-Semitism--and ultimately denounces her husband as a Soviet spook. And who would be the narrator of this McCarthy-era meltdown? None other than Philip Roth's longtime alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who learns the full tragedy several decades later, owing to a chance encounter with Ira's brother: "I'm the only person living who knows Ira's story," 90-year-old Murray Ringold tells Nathan, "you're the only person still living who cares about it."
Characteristically, Nathan also discovers that his own story was bound up with the blacklistings and ruined careers of the immediate postwar period. It seems that he had been tainted by his association with the Ringolds--Murray was in fact his high-school teacher--and was denied the Fulbright scholarship he deserved. "They had you down for Ira's nephew," Murray tells Nathan. "The FBI didn't always get everything right." Roth's acerbic style and keen eye for emotional detail goes to the heart of this moment of high tragedy in which the American dream was damaged beyond repair. --Lisa Jardine
From Publishers Weekly
Disconcerting echoes of Roth's relationship with Claire Bloom, as revealed in her memoir, Leaving the Doll's House, haunt Roth's angry but oddly inert 23rd novel. As in American Pastoral, Roth again deals with the Newark of his youth, and with the sons of Jewish immigrants to whom America has given opportunity and even riches?and how they are swept off course by the forces of history. Roth's old alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, narrates the story of Ira Ringold, aka Iron Rinn, a supremely idealistic political radical and celebrated radio star of the 1950s who is blacklisted and brought to ruin when his wife, Eva Frame (a self-hating Jewish actress born Chava Fromkin), writes an expose called I Married A Communist. The impetus for Eva's treacherous act is Ira's insistence that she evict her 24-year-old daughter from their house; the resemblance to Bloom's revelations of Roth's similar demand is too close to miss, and Roth's shrill belaboring of the issue seems a thinly disguised vendetta. Even high-pitched scenes of family conflict don't bring the novel to life. One problem is that the flat flashback narration shared between the 64-year-old Nathan and Ira's 90-year-old brother, Murray, is stultifyingly dull. Some fine Roth touches do appear: his evocation of the Depression years through the McCarthy era has clarity and vigor. But Ira's aggressively boorish behavior as he struggles with his conscience over having abandoned his Marxist ideals to assume a bourgeois lifestyle is never credible, and his turgid ideological rants against the American government are jackhammers of repetitious invective. In addition, the depiction of an adolescent Nathan as a precocious writer and social philosopher and the saintly Murray's infallible memory of long conversations with Ira?even between Ira and Eva in bed?challenge the reader's credulity. For those who lived through the years Roth evokes, this novel will have some resonance. For others, its belligerent tone and lack of dramatic urgency will be a turn-off. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good satire blended with sobriety and sadness,
This review is from: I Married a Communist (Paperback)
Being neither American nor Jewish and having had little interest in their modern history before, the main theme of this novel (the downfall of a communist radio actor) had been a put-off for me. Well, never judge a book by its subject alone. I was glad that I gave it a try because "I Married a Communist" turned out to be powerful and engaging. This owes a lot to the witty and insightful prose of Roth. In addition, although social and political commentaries in this story specifically point to the US in the 1950's, many of the human dramas it unfolds are universal in nature. A youth growing out of childish idealism. A man turning to an ideology in order to tame his own demons. A dysfunctional relationship between an insecure mother and a frustrated daughter. They are slightly like caricatures but escape slapstick as Roth skillfully blends satire with sobriety and a touch of sadness.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Polemic, the 1950's and the loss of trust,
By
This review is from: I Married a Communist (Paperback)
My interest waxed and waned whilst reading this novel which I would describe as a novel of ideas rather than one driven by the interest one has in the fortune of the characters. I did not find it near as enthralling as American Pastoral. It is generally pretty coruscating about all the characters, their motives, delusions, illusions, - but some of its set pieces are rivetting stuff including Nathan's teacher Leo's defence of literature (p218) And the summation of the antagonism between communism (read "politics) and literature (p.223). Because it is a novel of ideas, that makes it to me, an example of what the novel is railing against - the absence of thought in media generally or as the narrator Uncle Murray tells Nathan "American unthinking that is now everywhere."(p284). Don't not read it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Whether you're a Roth fan or not, you won't be disappointed.,
By
This review is from: I Married a Communist (Paperback)
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 idealogies of the time, whether right or left. In this book, many of the characters are caught up in the winds of an era rather that thinking for themselves or examining 'truth'. Isn't this the way in most eras? Sometimes I wasn't sure whether to laugh or take Mr. Roth's words as intense and literal. That's part of the joy of the read. The reader can be as irreverant as he, or not.
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