the critic.....

ok, so in this week's new yorker.....there is a review of phillip roth's new book.....the plot against america....due out in october.....which contains the following set-up...then passage from the book....

The book’s foremost sufferer, though, is not Alvin but a little boy named Seldon Wishnow, who lives downstairs from the Roths. Seldon throws a ball like a girl; all he likes to do is play chess. Philip’s goal is to be a regular guy, and he wants no part of this loser. Seldon, meanwhile, worships Philip and lies in wait, each morning, to walk to school with him. In the middle of the book, Seldon’s father dies. He has cancer, and finally he can’t stand it anymore and kills himself. This is very sad, except in Philip’s account of it. Mr. Wishnow, he enthusiastically tells us, strangled himself with the family’s curtain cords, in the hall closet: “When Seldon, home from school, went to put his coat away, he found his father, in his pajamas, hanging face-down on the closet floor amid the . . . galoshes.” Seldon’s fatherlessness makes him more pathetic, of course, except in Philip’s eyes. Everywhere he turns, there is that pasty face, that imploring voice. Finally, Philip hatches a plan. His Aunt Evelyn is Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s assistant, which means that she has control over Homestead 42 assignments. Philip goes to her and recommends the Wishnows as candidates for that program. Seldon and his widowed mother are thus relocated to Kentucky. Goodbye, Seldon!

But then the pogroms begin, in Kentucky, among other places, and one night the Roth family gets a call from Seldon, who says that it’s 10 p.m. and his mother hasn’t come home: “She’s dead, Mrs. Roth! Just like my father! Now both my parents are dead!” Furthermore, he hasn’t had his dinner. The conversation that ensues is one of the finest scenes in the book. To calm Seldon down, Mrs. Roth wants him to eat something. Seldon can find no dinner food in the house, but he manages to locate some Rice Krispies, and Mrs. Roth tells him to make himself a meal of that, a proper meal:

“Now?” “Do as I say, please,” she told him. “I want you to eat breakfast.” “Is Philip there?” “He’s here, but you cannot talk to him. You have to eat first. I’m going to call you back in half an hour, after you’ve eaten. It’s ten after ten, Seldon.” “In Newark it’s ten after ten?” “In Newark and Danville both. It’s exactly the same time in both places. I’m going to call you back at quarter to eleven,” she told him. “Can I talk to Philip then?” “Yes, but I want you to sit down first with everything you need at the kitchen table. I want you to use a spoon and a fork and a napkin and a knife. Eat slowly. Use dishes. Use a bowl. Is there any bread?” “It’s stale. It’s just a couple of slices.” “Do you have a toaster?” “Sure. We brought it here in the car. Remember the morning when we all packed the car?”

Danville, as in Danville, Kentucky......ha! i somehow doubt that phillip roth bothered to come to danville, but then you just never know...................of course....we will have to buy that book............