The novel of American authoritarianism

Abstract

Fictional literature portraying the descent of the United States into dictatorship is assessed critically and divided into three cultural-historical phases, each specific in class modality. Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1890) and Jack London's The Iron Heel (1907) project a plutocracy violently imposed to forestall working-class revolution. Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here (1935) and other mid-century novels envision a demagogic American authoritarianism, with working-class and lower-middle-class grievances exploited to amass personal power. In the Cold War and neoliberal eras, class recedes from salience in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004). Despite Atwood's brilliant evocation of totalitarian patriarchy and the extraordinary interiority of Sherwood Anderson's Marching Men (1917), the novels of American authoritarianism are on the whole characterized by aesthetic implausibility, one-sided apprehension of authoritarianism's class dynamics, and failure to treat white supremacy as central.