Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: After Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) came out he published “My Uchronia” (2004). Among other things, Roth explains that before reading Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Life in the 20th Century (2000) he “had no such novel in mind” (2017: 341). This autobiography made him think of what would have happened if Charles A. Lindbergh—the famous aviator and Nazism supporter—had won the 1940 elections instead of F.D. Roosevelt. In this essay, which abounds in the theme of antisemitism introduced in a previous paper (Sánchez Canales, 2021), I will focus on the factual figure of Lindbergh—and to a lesser extent that of his wife Anne Morrow—Roth’s counter-versions of them, and key factual and counterfactual events depicted in the narrative. Through this comparative analysis I will attempt to show that Roth’s fictional America is by no means something far-fetched.
Author: Gustavo Sánchez Canales
Institution: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4405946186