Thursday, March 17, 2011

I finally read "I married a communist"

Away in Turkey while on maternity leave, every night before dropping off to sleep I'd read another half page.  Yes, the Philip Roth book.  It was really good.   The opening parts of the book describe the appeal of fighting against corporate domination and for a world free of wage slavery.   But a marriage is the centerpiece of the book, not communism, and it doesn't really matter whether communist Ira is fighting against unfair labor practices or whether he's active in some other up-hill social battle, because in the end, his quirky marriage to a film star both protected him initially from being blacklisted and later did him in.   It's a powerful story.

Although H is a Roth fan (once had to get up in the night and to go a 24 hour bookstore to get the next Roth novel on his list), he wasn't happy with the book -- felt that Roth had only the most basic understanding of what communists were trying to do in mid-20th century American.  "He doesn't really understand that era"  H said (contrary to the book's back page blurbs).

But now H is like Ira -- he's married and drawn into the demands of married life, including the total absorption required to help me take care of two little boys, now almost one year old, who never take the cute off.

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