The Great American Novel (55 page)

If I have followed Mr. Solzhenitsyn's tragic circumstances with more than ordinary interest and concern during the months he has been in the news here, it is because I am an author who has for years lived in something like the same situation in America as he does in Soviet Russia. Presently I am as good as imprisoned in a county home for the destitute aged in upstate New York, where, by staff and inmates alike, I am considered deranged. Why? Because I have written a historical novel that does not accord with the American history with which they brainwash our little children in the schools. I say “historical,” doubtless they would say “hysterical.” Not a single American publisher dares to present the American people with the true story I have told, nor is there anyone here at Valhalla who considers me and my book anything but a joke. I have every reason to believe that upon my death, which like yours, Mr. Chairman, could occur any minute—I am nearing ninety, sir—the manuscript that is continually at my side for safekeeping will be destroyed, and with it all record of this heinous chapter in my country's history.

Now you may wonder why I am not addressing this letter to Party Chairman Brezhnev in Moscow. At first glance it might appear that he would pounce upon the opportunity for retaliation against the United States and the “traitor” Solzhenitsyn, by printing in Russia, and in Russian, a book that for all intents and purposes has been suppressed in America because it is at variance with the U.S. Government Officially Authorized Version of Reality. Once you have read the last chapter of my book, however, you will understand quickly enough why the Russians would find this work no less compromising than the Americans do. On the other hand, I would think that precisely what makes it so odious to these two fearful giants, is what would make it attractive to you.

I am writing to you, Chairman Mao, to propose the publication of my book in the People's Republic of China. I assure you that nobody knows better than I the difficulties of translation that are posed by a work like mine, particularly into Chinese. Still, I cannot believe that such obstacles would prove insurmountable to the people whose labor raised the Great Wall, or the leader whose determination has carried them on their Long March to Communism. I do not mean, by the way, to give the impression that I turn to you because I sympathize with your state and its methods, or feel a special kinship with your people or your system or yourself. I turn to Mao Tse-tung because I have no one else to turn to. Likewise, you should know that I am under no illusion about the devotion of politicians either to truth or to art, not even those like yourself who write poetry on the side. If you ran China on the side and wrote poetry in front, that would be another matter. But nations and leaders being what they are, I realize full well that if you publish my book, it will be because you consider it in the interest of your revolution to do so.

Mr. Chairman, we are two very old men who have survived great adversity and travail. In our own ways, on our own continents, with our own people, each has led an embattled life, and each continues to survive on the strength of an impassioned belief: yours is China, mine is art—an art, sir, not for its own sake, or the sake of national pride or personal renown, but art for the sake of the record, an art that reclaims what is and was from those whose every word is a falsification and a betrayal of the truth. “In battle with the lie,” said Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, “art has always been victorious, always wins out, visibly, incontrovertibly for all! The lie can stand against much in the world—but not against art.” Thus my defiant Russian colleague in a Nobel Prize lecture that he was prevented from delivering in Stockholm by the falsifiers who govern in his land. O would that I might draw upon his courage, his strength, and his wisdom in the days and months to come, if they come. For I will need all that and more to survive in upstate New York when (and if)
The Great American Novel
is published in Peking.

Respectfully yours,

Word Smith

(Author of “One Man's Opinion”)

BOOKS BY PHILIP ROTH

Goodbye, Columbus

Letting Go

When She Was Good

Portnoy's Complaint

Our Gang

The Breast

The Great American Novel

My Life as a Man

Reading Myself and Others

The Professor of Desire

The Ghost Writer

A Philip Roth Reader

Copyright © 1973 by Philip Roth

All rights reserved

Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, 1980

Library of Congress catalog card number: 72-91577

ISBN 0-374-51584-0

Published in Canada by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., Toronto

eISBN 9781466846449

First eBook edition: April 2013

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A “shire” is a county. Thus the word “sheriff”—he is the reeve (“an administrative officer of a town or a district”) of a shire. I am using “holpen” to mean “inspired”: the baseball players who inspired them when they were six years old. I realize of course from reading the footnotes that it does not mean inspired any more than it means “helped.” But it will if you want it to, and I want it to. A writer can take certain liberties. Besides, the word “inspired” appears just twelve lines earlier (line six): “Inspired hath in every holt and heeth.” I will not go into what it means there or how it is pronounced—though I do hope you will note hath, holt, and heeth, Doctor!—but the point is I didn't just pull “inspired” out of left field. On the other hand, if you want to understand the line as G. Chaucer (1340–1400) intended, with “holpen” meaning “cured,” then change the last word to “sixty.” Something like: the baseball players whom they would like to have cure them of being sixty. Not bad. But then you lose the rhyme. And the truth is that these boys are over sixty. Though I suppose you could insert the word “over” in there. I recognize, of course, that “six” does not exactly rhyme with “seke” either, but that is the only word I could think of to get my meaning across. Writing is an art, not a science, and admittedly I am no Chaucer. Though that's only one man's opinion.

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Some all-time records made by the '43 Mundys:
Most games lost in a season—120
Most times defeated in no-hitters in a season—6
Most times defeated in consecutive no-hitters in a season—4
Most triple plays hit into in one game—2
Most triple plays hit into in a season—5
Most errors committed by a team—302
Worst earned-run average for pitching staff—8.06
Most walks by a pitching staff—872
Most wild pitches by staff in an inning—8
Most wild pitches by staff in a game—14