Review: The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth is a What If? historical novel. The idea is that, instead of FDR, anti-semitic Charles Lindbergh gets elected President in 1940, after running on a strong isolationist platform. It is a good yarn, as well-written as any of Roth's novels.

Politically, the book is particularly interesting because, while the Republicans are the anti-Semitic bad guys and the heroes are the liberal Jewish family of the charming 9-year old narrator (little Phillip Roth), Roth's clear message is that it is wrong for America to turn its back on evil, especially if that evil will then infiltrate America. It seems that the lesson Roth tries to get across is that liberals can be hawks -- and should be to protect the American way of life.

That lesson may come across more clearly in the audio book narrated by Ron Silver. Silver described himself as a “9-11 Democrat” and is a robust hawk in the war on terror.

The Plot Against America is very entertaining, as much for the central story as for the side stories about being a young, Jewish kid in Newark in the 1940s. Worth reading. Or, better yet, listening to, because Silver does an incredible job.

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Ross Douthat
Books 'N Border Collies

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Review: The Stettheimer Dollhouse

The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a little gem, appropriate enough for a book about miniature art.  The dollhouse itself – designed by, built for, and painstakingly decorated by Carrie Stettheimer from 1916 to 1935 – is itself a work of art.  It is also, to its lasting fame, filled with actual paintings and sculptures created for Stettheimer by some of the leading artists of her day.

The dollhouse is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York.  The book is a small catalog of the dollhouse exhibit, filled mostly with pictures, with written descriptions of each room of the dollhouse.  There is also a preface by the museum curator, a brief history of the dollhouse by Sheila Clark, and a reprint of the original remarks written by Stettheimer’s sister Ettie when she donated the dollhouse to the museum after Carrie’s death.

What the book was not intended to provide but noticeably lacks is an in-depth biography of Stettheimer.  She and two sisters never married, the three living with their mother in Europe and New York.  Florine was an artist who only came to modest fame after her death.  Her enchanting portrait of Carrie is reproduced in the book and a black and white miniature version hangs framed in the dollhouse dining room.  Ettie was an author.  Unfortunately for her own creative endeavors, the role of house manager and hostess fell to Carrie, who devoted her energies to running the house for the four women and hosting “one of the most notable literary and artistic salons of early twentieth-century New York society."  Carrie's dollhouse was her only artistic outlet.  These sketchy details create a melancholy picture.

Hopefully someone will pick up where this book leaves off and write a definitive biography of the Stettheimer sisters. In the meantime, The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a charming introduction to this distinctive family.

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Ready When You Are, C.B.
Kittling: Books

Happy Mothers' Day!

Author of the Day: Kingsley Amis

Lucky Jim is a favorite of mine, ever since I read it in college. Kingsley Amis's description of a hangover being like a huge raw egg rolling around inside Jim's skull has stayed vivid with me for years.

The Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize, was a great novel about friendship, fame, identity, and booze. The Green Man was entertaining, although veered alarmingly into science fiction there at the end. The Alteration, an alternate history imagining England if there had been no Protestant Reformation, was a quick read that gave a lot to ponder.

Amis wrote novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Those I have read are in red. Those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue. Many are out of print.

1947 Bright November (poems)

1953 A Frame of Mind (poems)

1954 Fantasy Portraits (poems)

1954 Lucky Jim

1955 That Uncertain Feeling

1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956

1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals (a Fabian Society pamphlet)

1958 I Like it Here

1960 Take A Girl Like You

1960 New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction

1960 Hemingway in Space (short story, Punch Dec. 1960)

1962 My Enemy's Enemy (short stories)

1962 The Evans County

1963 One Fat Englishman (reviewed here)

1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest)

1965 The James Bond Dossier

1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (as Lt. Col. William "Bill" Tanner)

1966 The Anti-Death League (Burgess favorite)

1968 Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure (as Robert Markham)

1968 I Want It Now

1968 A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957-1967

1969 The Green Man

1970 What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Questions

1971 Girl, 20

1972 On Drink (reviewed here)

1973 The Riverside Villas Murders

1974 Ending Up

1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World

1975 The Crime of the Century

1976 The Alteration

1978 Jake's Thing

1979 Collected Poems 1944-78

1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek

1980 Dear Illusion: Collected Short Stories

1983 Every Day Drinking (reviewed here)

1984 How's Your Glass? (reviewed here)

1984 Stanley and the Women

1986 The Old Devils

1988 Difficulties With Girls

1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill

1990 The Amis Collection

1991 Memoirs

1991 Mr. Barrett's Secret and Other Stories

1991 We Are All Guilty

1992 The Russian Girl

1994 You Can't Do Both

1995 The Biographer's Moustache

1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage

2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis, Edited by Zachary Leader

NOTE
Last updated on February 24, 2018.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Alteration

"Hubert Anvil's voice rose above the sound of the choir and full orchestra, reaching the vertex of the loftiest dome in the Old World and the western doors of the longest nave in Christendom." -- The Alteration by Kingsley Amis In this alternate history novel, there was no Protestant Reformation and the Catholic church is the only (Christian) game in town. Church higher-ups have their eye on musical marvel, ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, as the next great castrato. Ewwww . . . where is this going?