It was a time of hoop skirts and sock-hops, drive-in theaters and
rock and roll. The economy was booming, children were being born at
an alarming rate, and a hero from World War II was comfortably
ensconced in the White House. Yet, while most of the country was
busy cheering for the red, white and blue, one Senator in
particular had reduced that color scheme considerably: Joseph
McCarthy was only seeing red.

"Thousands and thousands of Americans destroyed in those years,
political casualties, historical casualties...But I don't remember
anybody else being brought down quite the way that Ira was. It
wasn't on the great American battlefield he would himself have
chosen for his destruction. Maybe, despite ideology, politics, and
history, a genuine catastrophe is always personal bathos at the
core. Life can't be impugned for any failure to trivialize people.
You have to take your hat off to life for the techniques at its
disposal to strip a man of his significance and empty him totally
of his pride."

The "Ira" in question is Ira Ringold, a radio theater actor, friend
of Nathan Zuckerman and brother to Nathan's high school English
teacher, Murray Ringold. Ira is a big, bruising man who got his
break playing Abe Lincoln for local school programs and union
rallies. The story of Ira's rise and fall comes to us through the
reminiscences of Nathan and Murray over the course of six nights of
conversation. Roth allows his storytellers the benefit of
hindsight, and a country in political conflict proves a worthy
stage on which this drama is played out.

Passionate and idealistic, Ira and a group of fellow actors and
writers work on a radio show called The Free And The Brave. Ira
marries former silent movie star Eve Frame, and they attain some
degree of success when Eve joins the cast. As the personal politics
of the group begin to creep into the scripts, unsavory rumors start
to circulate. In the wake of similar controversies, people are
being called before the newly formed House Un-American Activities
Committee to discuss their questionable political
motivations.

"Lists. Lists of names and accusations and charges. Everybody...has
a list. Red Channels. Joe McCarthy. The VFW. The HUAC. The American
Legion. The Catholic magazines. The Hearst newspapers...Lists of
anybody in America who has ever been disgruntled about anything or
criticized anything or protested anything...all of them now
Communists or fronting for Communists or 'helping' Communists or
contributing to Communist 'coffers,' or 'infiltrating' labor or
government or education or Hollywood or the theater or radio and
TV...All forces of reaction swapping names and mistaking names and
linking names together to prove the existence or a mammoth
conspiracy that does not exist."

Ira and Eve's life together suffers from more than the political
upheaval going on around them. Ira despises Sylphid, Eve's daughter
from a previous marriage. Sylphid is a whining, opportunistic young
woman who rules her mother with an iron fist. Eve lacks the
backbone to stand up to her daughter, and the stormy relationship
between Ira and Sylphid leads to even further complications.

Betrayal is a word that crept into everyday use during the Red
scare, and it is betrayal that finally does Ira in. Not betrayal of
his country, as the rumors would suggest, but betrayal of his
marriage. When Eve finds out that Ira has been having an affair,
her first impulse is to seek revenge. She does just that in a
tell-all book,  
co-written by two political up-and-comers, entitled I MARRIED A
COMMUNIST. The book and the events that follow its publication ruin
Ira's career, but Eve, too, is sullied in the morass.

I MARRIED A COMMUNIST is a wonderful novel, full of heart and soul.
Using the broad canvas of a troubled decade on which to paint the
portrait of one man's fate, Roth has never been more compelling.
His later works show a greater sensitivity to those around him.
Always one to confront his own inner demons, Roth's focus now
incorporates the bigger picture and the reader is the benefactor.
Roth --- using Zuckerman as his mouthpiece --- gives us a clue as
to the path which brought him from a young writer to this place and
time:

"Occasionally now, looking back, I think of my life as one long
speech that I've been listening to. The rhetoric is sometimes
original, sometimes pleasurable, sometimes pasteboard crap (the
speech of the incognito), sometimes maniacal, sometimes
matter-of-fact, and sometimes like the sharp prick of a needle, and
I have been hearing it for as long as I can remember...whatever the
reason, the book of my life is a book of voices. When I ask myself
how I arrived at where I am, the answer surprises me:
'Listening'...was I from the beginning...merely an ear in search of
a word?"