![]() "It can't happen here?" a prominent American politician asks a large audience in New York City in October 1942. Now, with the United States at unceasing risk of terrorist attack and with many Americans fearful that civil liberties are being compromised as the government attempts to fight terrorism, Roth gives new currency to the old phrase - indeed, deliberately employs it as The Plot Against America approaches its climax. In 1935 Sinclair Lewis took the familiar phrase as the title for a novel that depicted the seeds of totalitarianism sprouting in a small New England town It Can't Happen Here is not among Lewis's best works, but it was widely read at a time when Americans were becoming apprehensive about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and when it was translated into German the Nazis banned it, implicitly acknowledging its power to sway people's minds. ![]() ![]() $26 Philip Roth's huge, inflammatory, painfully moving new novel draws upon a persistent theme in American life: "It can't happen here." That's how we express our longing to believe that our ideals are too strong to be shoved aside by some cruder impulse, and our nagging fear that our democracy is too fragile to withstand assault by the muscle of fascism. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |