I Married a Communist - Hardcover

Roth, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395933463 ISBN 13: 9780395933466

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 1998

Synopsis

In an eloquent novel set against the turbulent backdrop of the McCarthy era, radio actor Iron Rinn, an idealistic Communist, marries beautiful actress Eva Frame, but their private relationship becomes a national scandal when Eva publicly betrays her husband's politics to a gossip columnist. 150,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Ira Ringold (now Iron Rinn) is a self-educated radio actor married to spoilt, rags-to-riches beauty and silent-film star, Eve Frame. He is a Communist, she is passionately and irrationally anti-Semitic (in spite of her own Jewish origins). Roth's alter-ego narrator Nathan Zuckerman--an idealistic admirer of Ira as a boy-- uncovers the story of Eve's betrayal of Ira to a gossip- columnist, and Nathan's own unknowing involvement with the blacklistings and ruined careers of the immediate post-war period. Roth's characteristically acerbic writing and keen eye for emotional detail reaches to the heart of this moment of high American tragedy, a point at which the American dream was damaged beyond recovery.

The McCarthy era has faded, eerily, into nostalgia, just as Capitol Hill produces its own 90s version of witch- hunt and communal obsession with enemies of the state, and perversions of justice perpetrated in democracy's name. Roth avoids nostalgia by making his narrator an active, if unwitting participant in the original drama, caught up in political currents and counter-currents he did not comprehend at the time. --Lisa Jardine

Review:

" A bitter, often funny, always engrossing story that wonderfully evokes a time and place in our common past.... The idealisms and hypocrisies of the postwar period [are] brilliantly resurrected." -- Robert Stone, "The New York Review of Books"
" A remarkable work-- remarkable in its stringent observation of American life...remarkable in its wisdom. Mr. Roth has the frantic politics of this frantic time-- the McCarthy era-- in exact pitch." -- Arthur Schlesinger, "The New York Observer"
" As social history it bbreathes life. In Ira Ringold, Roth has created one of his singularly ripe, vigorous characters. Ira's dizzying rise and fall out of and back into the working class trace the trajectory of twenty years of American history." -- Todd Gitlin, "Chicago Tribune"
" Philip Roth is an amazing writer.... I Married a Communist may very well become his classic work; perhaps a classic for all time." --"The Plain Dealer"
" Gripping.... A masterly, often unnerving, blend of tenderness, harshness, insight and wit." --"The New York Times Book Review"
" I Married a Communist is filled with passages as fine and sharp as anything Roth has ever written (which is to say, as fine and sharp as anything in contemporary American literature)." --"The Village Voice Literary Supplement"
" I Married a Communist leaves you--both dumbfounded and in awe." --"Chicago Sun-Times"
" [S]eals [Roth's] reputation as a writer at the very top of his game." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"A bitter, often funny, always engrossing story that wonderfully evokes a time and place in our common past.... The idealisms and hypocrisies of the postwar period [are] brilliantly resurrected." --Robert Stone, The New York Review of Books

"A remarkable work--remarkable in its stringent observation of American life...remarkable in its wisdom. Mr. Roth has the frantic politics of this frantic time--the McCarthy era--in exact pitch." --Arthur Schlesinger, The New York Observer

"As social history it bbreathes life. In Ira Ringold, Roth has created one of his singularly ripe, vigorous characters. Ira's dizzying rise and fall out of and back into the working class trace the trajectory of twenty years of American history." --Todd Gitlin, Chicago Tribune

"Philip Roth is an amazing writer.... I Married a Communist may very well become his classic work; perhaps a classic for all time."--The Plain Dealer

"Gripping.... A masterly, often unnerving, blend of tenderness, harshness, insight and wit."--The New York Times Book Review

"I Married a Communist is filled with passages as fine and sharp as anything Roth has ever written (which is to say, as fine and sharp as anything in contemporary American literature)."--The Village Voice Literary Supplement

"I Married a Communist leaves you--both dumbfounded and in awe."--Chicago Sun-Times

"[S]eals [Roth's] reputation as a writer at the very top of his game."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0395933463
• ISBN 13: 9780395933466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 323