I Married a Communist

by PhilipRoth (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.26

  Radio actor Iron Rinn (born Ira Ringold) is a big Newark roughneck blighted by a brutal personal secret from which he is perpetually in flight. An idealistic Communist , an uneducated ditchdigger turned popular performer, a six-foot, six-inch Abe Lincoln lookalike, he emerges from serving in World War II passionately committed to making this world a better place and winds up instead blacklisted and unemployable, his life in ruins. On his way to his political catastrophe, he marries the nation's reigning radio actress and beloved silent film star, the exquisitely refined Eve Frame (born Chava Fromkin). Their marriage evolves from a glamorous, romantic idyll in a tasteful Manhattan townhouse to a dispiriting soap opera of tears and treachery. And, with Eve's dramatic revelation to the gossip columnist Clifford Grant of her husband's life of 'espionage' for the Soviet Union, the relationship enlarges from private drama into national scandal. Set in the heart of the McCarthy era, the story of Iron Rinn's denunciation and disgrace is narrated years later by his brother, Murray Ringold, whose former student, the adolescent Nathan Zuckerman, was the radio actor's adoring protege in t

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.26

  The second novel of Roth's eloquent American trilogy, set in the tempestuous McCarthy era - a brilliant successor to American Pastoral I Married a Communist charts the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, an American roughneck who begins life as a ditchdigger in 1930s New Jersey, becoming a big-time radio hotshot in the 1940s. In his heyday as a star - and as a zealous, bullying supporter of 'progressive' political causes - Ira marries Hollywood's beloved leading lady, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon is short-lived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling expose that identifies Ira as 'an American taking his orders from Moscow'. In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and savage revenge, anti-Communist fever pollutes national politics and infects the relationships of ordinary Americans; friends become deadly enemies, parents and children tragically estranged, lovers blacklisted and felled from vertiginous heights. `Quintessential Philip Roth' Sunday Telegraph

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $8.29

• New

  Paperback
  1999

  $11.56

  The second novel of Roth's eloquent American trilogy, set in the tempestuous McCarthy era - a brilliant successor to American Pastoral I Married a Communist charts the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, an American roughneck who begins life as a ditchdigger in 1930s New Jersey, becoming a big-time radio hotshot in the 1940s. In his heyday as a star - and as a zealous, bullying supporter of 'progressive' political causes - Ira marries Hollywood's beloved leading lady, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon is short-lived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling expose that identifies Ira as 'an American taking his orders from Moscow'. In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and savage revenge, anti-Communist fever pollutes national politics and infects the relationships of ordinary Americans; friends become deadly enemies, parents and children tragically estranged, lovers blacklisted and felled from vertiginous heights. `Quintessential Philip Roth' Sunday Telegraph