On two distinct
but complementary postmodern historical novels.
As I wrote in this
post on American hypocrites, Tony Kushner’s Angels
in America (1991-1993) includes one of the most searing and tragic
depictions of McCarthyism: Kushner’s portrayal of Roy Cohn, and most especially
of his literally and
figuratively haunting conversations with the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whose
demise a young Cohn helped ensure and who becomes in Kushner’s imagining the
last “person” to speak with Cohn before his own death. And Kushner isn’t alone
is capitalizing upon Ethel Rosenberg’s literary and symbolic qualities, as she
also occupies a complex and central place in two of the most significant late
20th century American historical novels: E.L. Doctorow’s The
Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover’s The
Public Burning (1977).
Scholar Linda
Hutcheon developed a new category, “historiographic
metafiction,” to describe postmodern historical novels, works that put
history and fiction in complex and often playful interrelationship and that do
so in self-aware and –reflective ways. Both Doctorow’s and Coover’s novels fit
aspects of this category, but in very different ways: Doctorow’s novel is
narrated by the son of a fictionalized version of the Rosenbergs (known in his
novel as the Isaacsons), and it is the narrator Daniel’s awareness of his own
project, audience, and historical significance that makes the book truly postmodern;
whereas Coover’s novel’s most prominent characters include not only Ethel
Rosenberg but Richard Nixon (who serves as one of the text’s main perspectives)
and Uncle Sam (who is a folksy and vulgar chorus of sorts, appearing periodically
to comment on the action). Needless to say, despite their shared subject matter,
only one of the novels produced a significant
controversy upon its publication.
Yet if we
consider that shared subject matter, and more exactly the question of how fiction
can help us engage with difficult and divisive historical subjects more
generally, it seems to me that Doctorow’s and Coover’s books complement each
other quite nicely. Coover’s is biting and angry, lashing out at the kinds of
hysterias and extremes that McCarthyism exemplified (whether the Rosenbergs
were guilty or not) and that Uncle
Sam’s America has always included. Doctorow’s is intimate and tragic,
considering the legacies of such histories on the individuals and families, as
well as the communities and nation, that experience them. Coover focuses on the
most public moments and figures, Doctorow on the most private effects and
lives. Together, they help us remember that every American history and issue,
even the Cold War boogeyman of communism, became and remains a part of our
communal and human landscapes as well.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So what do
you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Other thoughts on communism in
America to share?
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