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Why waste time reading fiction when you can read The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini, the one-volume version? I kept hearing Trump being compared to Andrew Jackson by many people so I decided to find out why.
Trump isn't as brutal as Jackson (no duels) but in the olden days men had to be tough. Jackson lived with a couple of bullets inside of him, suffering for years. He fought entrenched corruption in DC. He had what could be described as rallies in those days, tens of thousands of people turning out to see him when he traveled through the US.
He also had a compassionate, sentimental side, like Trump does. Jackson was responsible for the controversial Indian removal policy but fought alongside some Indians against the Spanish, French and British. During one battle, a baby Indian boy's parents were killed. Jackson asked one of the squaws to look after him but they said, "Let him die." Jackson had been an orphan himself so identified with the baby and adopted him. This boy got a good education and lived in the Jackson household along with other children who were Jackson's wards.
This particular book was so well written and researched (lots of footnotes) that you will feel you knew the man. I cried at his deathbed scene which was extraordinary, like something out of a film. A larger than life human being!
Who is Phillip Roth and why is he remotely important beyond wanting to score some money off Trump's fame?
He can't score off Trump. He died May 22,2018. His books (Portnoy's Complaint and others) had two national book awards and a Pulitzer Prize among other awards.
At the center of “The Plot Against America,” a book that invents an America where Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election and initiates a secret pogrom against Jews, is a New Jersey family named Roth that resembles the author’s in every particular. The book was published in 2004.
He can't score off Trump. He died May 22,2018. His books (Portnoy's Complaint and others) had two national book awards and a Pulitzer Prize among other awards.
At the center of “The Plot Against America,” a book that invents an America where Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election and initiates a secret pogrom against Jews, is a New Jersey family named Roth that resembles the author’s in every particular. The book was published in 2004.
In the book, did Lindbergh appoint Henry Ford as Secretary of Labor and Walt Disney as Chairman of the FCC? Too bad that so few are aware of the militant anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi agendas those three had.
Who is Phillip Roth and why is he remotely important beyond wanting to score some money off Trump's fame?
Aha! Thank you, Kitty.
This is exactly way I included the little introductory sentence, to mention to people that he was a novelist, in case someone was so out of the mainstream that they didn't know. And, I'm sorry but I don't know any way to say this gently: There is something very wrong with someone who presumably pays some attention to news, if you're on this forum, yet don't know that Philip Roth was considered probably the greatest living American novelist, with his recent death making headlines across the country. Even if you don't read novels, anyone should know who he is, just like I know who Beyonce is, even though I don't listen to her music.
And this is exactly what's such a problem with Trump and his supporters - their narrowness. He's been a prominent novelist since the 1960s, with many awards, and a half-dozen of his works made into movies. And it should really give you pause if you don't even know his name.
It's now being made into a mini-series. I suppose they thought it's even more relevant.
‘The Plot Against America’ Imagines the Rise of an Intolerant Demagogue
David Simon has translated Philip Roth’s 2004 alternate history novel into an HBO mini-series, Simon’s first literary adaptation.
By Charles McGrath
With the Trump administration in full swing, he agreed that the parallels between the world he invented and what was happening in contemporary America were hard to ignore: a demagogic president who openly expresses admiration for a foreign dictator; a surge of right-wing nationalism and isolationism; polarization; false narratives; xenophobia and the demonization of others.
At some point, I hope to get around to reading the novel by the late, great Philip Roth, "The Plot Against America," which I gather is sort of an alternative universe imagined where America ends up with a right-wing xenophobic president, and a foreign enemy meddles in our election.
It's a novel, and written a decade ago. But Roth commented last year: "I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”
He's one of the most awarded American writers of his generation.
He won a Pulitzer Prize, multiple National Book Awards, and the Franz Kafka Prize, among many others.
Did he write the constitution too or just some fiction ? Is Adam Schiff his book researcher ?
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