Through the Dark Mirror: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America as Noir Fantasia

Abstract

Philip Roth’s 2004 alternative history novel, The Plot Against America, was his best-selling work in decades, firmly reestablishing his prominence among a general readership. The novel’s popularity was due at least in part to its deliberately accessible prose style and exciting, cliffhanger-rich plot. Seizing upon this accessibility, this article examines the style of The Plot Against America as a literary version of film noir, the influential cycle of downbeat American crime films spanning roughly 1941–1958. To read the novel through this cinematic lens is to highlight certain pulp and Surrealist aspects not typically associated with Roth’s fiction. Testing filmic understandings of noir themes and strategies against the novel’s genre experiment, this article ultimately demonstrates how these conventions (including the femme fatale, narrative dislocation, and racial displacement) endure as vital expressions of American Modernism.