The Plot Against America by
October 2020
I’m not sure what compelled me to read this book, seeing as when we watched the HBO mini-series of it a few months ago, my heart was in my mouth the whole time. I find it hard to think of another television show that has so consistently made me so deeply anxious. Between the awful plausibility of the storyline and the uncertainty as to where it was all going, I was a nervous wreck through every single episode. The book did not have that effect on me, largely because I already knew the ending (and I knew that the book and the show ended differently), but in part because the book is told almost entirely from the viewpoint of the young son, “Philip Roth”. The TV show centers on him as well (though the family is renamed “Levin”), but you still get to experience the other characters as fully rounded individuals because the show follows them in their respective plotlines, whereas their stories are recounted secondhand through Philip’s perspective in the book. This had a distancing effect for me, and I sometimes found myself filling in the perceived “gaps” in their literary characterization by mentally referring back to the show. This is not to denigrate the book in any way, and I really hate being the philistine who says “I liked the TV show better”. The book is excellent and the writing is outstanding (obvs), but the TV show had a much more powerful emotional effect on me. But at least, knowing how it panned out, I could read the book before going to sleep every night without too many nightmares…