Philip Roth vs Daphne du Maurier: The Battle to Epitomize our Times (well, not really a battle except when read back-to-back)

I made a foray into Philip Roth's Plot Against America soon after its publication in 2004. The concept was cool, as in neat-o, that America had gone Nazi. That instead of FDR winning a third term in the White House, Charles Lindberg, nonfictional Nazi sympathizer, had run and won. Given the decades of Nazis in fiction and cinema who made great villains, I was ready for fun. After 50 pages I wandered off, however, insufficiently captivated. In 2004. In 2017 I returned to the novel, along with a slew of readers, because Plot is primo relevant. We have a fascist in in D.C.

I understand my disinterest in 2004 -- while the characters are believable, plucked as they from Roth's Newark, New Jersey childhood, they remain historic in feel, not universal. I didn't see myself or my milieu in any of them. The detailed plot was more workmanlike than fascinating. Now, 2017, the novel's concept overrides all. We have a nonpolitician, a larger than life public figure in the White House, beating out the exquisitely qualified competition. And he's scary as shit.

Plot's national antisemitic campaign, Lindberg-initiated, is believable in the novel's context. Maybe, however, it is too specific.  There's a plot twist that could well  bear out in real life in the U.S., too, but no point in ruining that. Because of Trump, The Plot Against America is a valuable tool, a 'we missed the alarm clock, can we NOW wake up' call. I could have put it down but I knew I dare not do so this time.

Contrast that with Daphne du Maurier's short story, "The Birds." I read it yesterday. It's set in Britain's Cornwall, on the coast (not Marin County). Seen through the eyes of Nat, a thoughtful family-man, the ominous story feels (feels) at least as plausible as Roth's terror. The narrator notices unexplainable and eerie gatherings of birds. As happens with any prophet warning God's children, Nat's cautions to his neighbors are ignored. His precaution serves only his wife and two children. As with Plot, there's much detail--Nat's smart hard work to shore up his house--and the birds' ballistic attacks. Yes, the premise seems a bit more implausible than Roth's, but "The Birds" seems far more real, and is a far more satisfying read. With the Doomsday Clock near midnight, avian disruption--well, who knows.

I was impressed by Roth, enchanted and terrified by du Maurier. Glad I read both.

[Note: These are my two most recently completed reads. Not much of a basis for comparison? Probably not, but I trust a reader with forgive my fancy.]

How dare you, V.S. Naipaul. + I like to think of myself as a stately pleasure dome.

**

Dear V.S. Naipaul,


Gosh darn. Thanks for your trash talk on culture. I can't wait to see you and Philip Roth go all girlfight over who has the worst time reckoning himself to his anatomy.

You told a journalist that all fiction by women was sentimental, narrow and inferior, and thus, you sly cat, you got me, a woman, thinking. Think about that! Oddly, though I read several of your books when I was in my twenties, I can't remember titles, plots, if I liked them or didn't. Just sayin'. In terms of sentimentality, however, I wonder about the following books which I can remember reading when I was in my twenties.

Madame Bovary. The women kills herself. Loves goes wrong, society is a hard place for a woman, and so she paints her lips a tasteful blue and falls into the big sleep. Sentimental? If she had become a whore on the streets of Paris it would be less sentimental.

Anna Karenina. The woman kills herself. Karenina is a more engrossing book than Bovary but not quite as finely stitched--Flaubert is a real real careful writer, even I could tell that and I have a vagina and breasts. Russian society is a worse place to live in than Bovary's society and Anna chooses death by the D Train. Sentimental?

D.H. Lawrence, works thereof. Granted that for those of us of a certain age it is hard to disengage from images of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed man-wrestling on fur, when we think of Lawrence. Still Lawrence writes of Big Love and not Salt Lake City style. Sentimental, Sir. Lawrence is sentimental.

Karl Marx was so fully human in his love of each person's capacity for fulfillment and so fully committed to creating a world where that is possible, that well, he must be sentimental. Cause that ain't happening anytime soon. Certainly not equality for men and women, not as long as your types smirk and strut.

Proust. Well, no one would accuse a man who creates seven volumes of written memorabilia in search of lost times sentimental. Would they? A thousand-page docket of hard thinking? Nu-uh.

The Lake Poets? Nuttin' sentimental in a field of daffodils or a stately pleasure dome. I like to think of myself as a stately pleasure dome, but that's something altogether different.

Bold Lord Byron on whose verse butter melts? He's a wonderful poet but in disfavor, in some circles, for that boldness which is sentimental in its own way.

What about some of the great saints? Theresa, John of the Cross, Francis? Isn't it implicit in such kick-butt faith a level of sentimentality which allows us to believe the unseen.

Though I've read him, I'm going to take a pass on Rabelais here but I cannot ignore the sweeping gestures of Cervantes and his windmill-dualist as sentimental.

Clear-headed and divine though he was, Spinoza expressed some sentimentality in his notion of us ending up on a far star. And please, there nothing as sentimental as one of Leibniz’s monads. Those guys and gals are all about pulling out their handkerchiefs and showing us they cannot go in or out because they are monads, boo hoo. I'm tired of it!

Blake? Thomas Hardy?

I loved reading every book and author mentioned above. Except you who I neither like nor dislike as I cannot remember one thing about your novels.

Yours until the end of this posting,
Sarah "Sentimental Me" Sarai

p.s. Have you read Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead?  I doubt it.
From some of my sisters. . .
From One Writer To Another: Shut Up, V.S. Naipaul by Diana Abu Jabar

In a Sentimental Mood by Danielle Pafunda

Sentimental, Narrow, Women’s Writing. Alas, Alack, Anon! by Roxane Gay

**The gorgeous monads available here. (If you don't know Leibnitz look elsewhere for what a real monad is. This monad is a computer thing but lovely.)