---
product_id: 19399605
title: "I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2) Paperback – November 2, 1999"
brand: "philip roth"
price: "€ 36.57"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/19399605-i-married-a-communist-american-trilogy-2-paperback-november-2
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2) Paperback – November 2, 1999

**Brand:** philip roth
**Price:** € 36.57
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2) Paperback – November 2, 1999 by philip roth
- **How much does it cost?** € 36.57 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/19399605-i-married-a-communist-american-trilogy-2-paperback-november-2)

## Best For

- philip roth enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted philip roth brand quality
- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

Full description not available

## Images

![I Married a Communist: American Trilogy (2) Paperback – November 2, 1999 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71ZFwEt3wZL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    "A Catastrophe for Everybody"
  

*by B***N on Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2021*

Roth has the desirable ability both to revel in the particular and to present a visionary view of the general. I Married a Communist is a perfect display of this twin-treasure. Indeed, there is even a coy passage that seems to indicate this self-awareness: “Politics is the great generalizer, and literature the great particularizer.” And again: “Generalizing suffering: there is Communism. Particularizing suffering: there is literature.” One might be fooled by the title and various blurbs for the novel into thinking that this solely is the story of American politics in the Cold War, invoking the McCarthyist threat and the Communist witch-hunts in the early 1950’s. It is certainly that, but Roth presents a much grander vision of the human condition. Again, in almost contradictory form, he particularizes in astute detail the personalities and flaws of his characters to demonstrate that individuals share the human condition and are not all that different after all. Much of the general thrust of the book depicts a negative view of life, the problems we all inevitably face. Roth, as usual, takes no sides and leaves no stone unturned in his assault on everything. That Roth can pierce the veil on any sort of positive valence, thereby dragging out potential problems, is mitigated only by his own self-flagellation – not even his own putative character (Nathan Zuckerman) gets off the hook. There is something refreshing, though, in this kind of literary honesty, this unadulterated look into the realities of life. Ira Ringold, the great Iron Rinn, is presented as a towering figure initially, only to be steadily and mercilessly chipped away throughout the story, the unmaking of a great statue into mere formless stone.Ira’s communism, as well as his downfall because of it, is known from the jump. Roth, in classic form, can drop tiny bombs onto his audience by, for example, unceremoniously inserting the brief details of the protagonist’s death, weaving it almost translucently into the story’s larger current. The usual plot elements in a story, typically introduced in stepwise fashion, are exploded by Roth. He is not the only author to explode this formula, of course, but he does it in a unique fashion, flipping the traditional importance of moments like death, and instead imposing the importance of mulling aloud, philosophically, about life, which, no matter how one cuts it, inescapably ends in death. There is a certain fatalism, running as an undercurrent, pulsing through the book. This is applied dualistically to the political story, as well to the personal story. Often the two narratives step overtly onto one another. I offer a few passages to serve the point. “He has entered vigorously into competition with life; now, becalmed, he enters into competition with death, drawn down into austerity, the final business.” Roth takes us on Ira’s journey from a nameless ditchdigger to a respected, imperious Union Boss, to famous radio actor and polemicist personality, to love-weakened family man, all the way back to nameless nobody – persona non grata – living off the grid. Little hope was injected into the possible trajectory of Ira’s life.  Here is another passage displaying the fatalistic tendencies in which Roth splashes so refreshingly, this time in the political vein: “Gossip as gospel, the national faith. […] McCarthy understood the entertainment value of disgrace and how to feed the pleasures of paranoia. […] That’s how the country began: moral disgrace as public entertainment.” Naturally, there is uplift to be found in Roth’s sardonic humor and fearless observation, if nothing else. “His recourse to violence was the masculine correlate of her predisposition to hysteria – distinctive gender manifestations of the same waterfall.” Interestingly, there is also a prescience – a premonitory aura – of the “woke” hysteria on the far left that we see at the time of this writing. (Roth, like Orwell, had no qualms about eviscerating any political or psychological position in his quest for undaunted honesty.) “The public machine she wanted to destroy Ira begins to turn against her. It has to. This is America. The moment you start this public machine, no other end is possible except a catastrophe for everybody.” More directly to the point about the Mccarthyist ghost still lingering: “…even just the seemingly genteel game of naming names, well the results could be dire in those dark days.” This is not an especially uplifting tale. There is betrayal. There is hysteria. There is dishonesty. There is murder. There is fatalism. But even so, Roth manages to dig so deep into the truth of our lives, both individually and collectively, that the lingering impression is a positive one. How insightful, how moving, are lines like the following? “The hardest thing in the world is to cut the knot of your life and leave. People make ten thousand adjustments to even the most pathological behavior.” Here again: “When you loosen yourself, as I tried to, from all the obvious delusions – religion, ideology, Communism – you’re still left with the myth of your own goodness. Which is the final delusion.” Roth, it seems to me, can deliver a positive gut-punch in the disguise of hard-to-hear honesty. “Eve didn’t marry a Communist; she married a man perpetually hungering after his life. That’s what enraged him and confused him and that’s what ruined him: he could never construct one that fit.”So, perhaps the takeaway is that we can recognize our own pathologies – both individually and therefore collectively – and construct a life that doesn’t just “fit,” but is also good. We can bypass the “myth of our own goodness,” and create something real and honest from the ashes of self-awareness. One hopes as much is possible. Then again, the continuity of great literature seems to suggest that figuring it out is perpetually difficult.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Dull Book, But Vivid Portrait of Bad Time Long Gone
  

*by S***Y on Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2013*

Philip Roth's I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, 1998, is one of his Zuckerman books, but one in which the author's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman simply narrates: the story of Ira Ringgold, whom he had known since his Newark Jewish childhood, as Ira was the brother of one of his favorite teachers, Murray Ringgold.  Ira, perhaps defined by the fact that he was big, and rough, coming from a rough neighborhood as the Ringgold brothers did, began life as a teenage ditch digger in 1930s Depression Newark.  Rode the rails, worked all over the country, as a miner, a steel worker.  Joined the Army and fought during World War II.  Improbably became a big radio star, and married an even bigger radio star, Eve Frame, who had been a very very  big silent film star.  (People who are familiar with the lives of some celebrities may well feel that Eve, a self-hating Jew born Brooklyn's  Chave Fromkin, who climbs the social ladder by imitating her betters, including their anti-semitism, strongly resembles the beautiful actress Claire Bloom, one of Roth's  ex-wives.  And that Roth is here further pursuing his quarrels with her.)  At any rate, the fictional  Eve delivers Ira into quite a desirable lifestyle, based in a Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York townhouse, beautifully furnished, where she frequently entertains glittering figures in the arts and literature.  But he can't get on with her daughter from a previous marriage, Sylphid.And Ira is a confirmed, dedicated Communist, bullying everyone around him with his political views, furthermore using his radio show to put forth the party's views.  Then, in the early postwar years, comes the House Un-American Activities Committee, with its Inquisitional hearings intent on driving so-called Communists and fellow travelers from entertainment, and any other influential positions in American life.  Demanding that its victims `name names' of other political undesirables.  Creating various abominable blacklists that prevented its victims' employment, and hounded them into suicide and exile.  The House hearings to be followed, in the 1950s, by the even more damaging Senate hearings of "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy.  Initially, Ira is protected by his relationship to Eve, but soon enough, his unstable marriage starts to crack up.  And she publishes a bestselling exposé that identifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow."  He is destroyed, personally and professionally.  Because of him, even his brother, the teacher, loses his job; the McCarthyite witch hunters don't hold with Red schoolteachers, either.  Ultimately, Zuckerman will be told that the witchhunt even reached out to him: he failed to receive the Fulbright Scholarship he was expecting, as he was thought to be a nephew of the Ringgolds.In the 1990s, Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for 
  
Patrimony : A True Story







  
  
    ,(1991); the PEN/Faulkner Award for 
  
Operation Shylock : A Confession 







  
  
    , (1993); the National Book Award for 
  
Sabbath's Theater







  
  
    , (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 
  
American Pastoral







  
  
    , (1997).  He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I MARRIED A COMMUNIST.  This greatly-talented, multi-award winning, world famous American author  is, however, probably best known for his massively popular earlier books, 
  
Goodbye, Columbus 







  
  
    ;
  
Portnoy's Complaint







  
  
     and 
  
When She Was Good







  
  
    .  This book, told in long, dull, improbable flashback by Zuckerman and Murray, is probably best only for his more devoted fans, and/or those particularly interested in this dark period.  But make no mistake about it; despite its flaws, here, in the guise of social history, Roth has  created a  vivid portrait of a bad time long gone.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    I Married a Communist is a brilliant novel about the McCarthy era in American life
  

*by C***S on Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2021*

Recently I read Blake Bailey's brilliant biography of Philip Roth (1933-2018) the Newark New Jersey born author. Roth grew up in a prosperous Jewish home, graduated from Bucknell and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He wrote over 30 novels and should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I Married a Communist is the second volume in his three part series on America. The first book is American Pastoral and the third is The Human Stain. The Plot:  Ira Ringold is born in 1913 into a poor Jewish family in Newark. He serves in World War II and by unexpected developments becomes a radio star impersonating American heroes such as Abraham Lincoln. he marries movie and radio star Eve Frame. She is older than he and Ringold is her fourth husband. Her first was a gay silent movie icon. She has a grown daughter who is a harpist. This daughter dominates her mother. She reminds me of the daughter of Claire Bloom (whose personality mirrors that of the fictional Eve) who hated Roth. Bloom was married to Roth for several years before their divorce.The downfall of Ringold is poignantly told. Roth is a brilliant storyteller and his prose can be both funny and sad. Interesting characters and an absorbing story make this a great book.  Present day America is eerily similar to the witch hunting and paranoia of the Red baiting 1950s! Kudos to Roth and this novel!

---

## Why Shop on Desertcart?

- 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016
- 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories
- 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price
- 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members)
- 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection
- ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews

**Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.nl/products/19399605-i-married-a-communist-american-trilogy-2-paperback-november-2](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/19399605-i-married-a-communist-american-trilogy-2-paperback-november-2)

---

*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-01-24*