Given how prolific an author Philip Roth is, it’s surprising that he doesn’t produce more duds. Unfortunately, Our Gang is definitely one of those. That said, a Philip Roth dud is worth more than most authors’ best efforts.
Our Gang is a satire of the Nixon administration, written pre-Watergate. I’m obsessed with Watergate, but this book has nothing to add to our understanding of that pivotal event in American and, arguably, world politics. It has the feel of a book written in both haste and anger – which is what I was expecting from Roth’s recent The Plot Against America. Where the later novel possibly ducks out of contemporary political comment, Our Gang is a merciless and personal pisstake of Nixon.
Nixon becomes Trick E. Dixon, a pompous, hectoring boor who justifies the use of force against Denmark on the most spurious of bases, and constantly worries about the sweat on his top lip. He defends the rights of the unborn child in the most ridiculous way. Both of these elements have depressing parallels in the current US administration. Eventually, Dixon is assassinated by being stuffed into a plastic bag (a ‘baggie’) in the foetal position following an operation to remove the sweat glands in his upper lip.
Although it doesn’t meet the expectations one has of a Roth novel, Our Gang is at times very funny; it’s just that too often it’s laboured and repetitive. This edition reproduces two prefaces that Roth added; one before Nixon’s impeachment hearings and one after his resignation, both of which are better than anything in the book itself.
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