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Carnival of Shame: Doctorow and the Rosenbergs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Robert Detweiler
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Extract

“Literature can turn language, for the moment at least, against the sentence of death.”

Considering the national and international furor provoked by the sensational early 1950's “atom spy” trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, one may be surprised that these dramatic and traumatic events have not inspired more literary artistry than they have. But a prominent playwright, Arthur Miller, did write The Crucible (produced in 1953) in part as a response to the rabid McCarthyism of that era, and two highly regarded novelists in a later decade composed ambitious novels drawing directly on the Rosenberg affair: E. L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover in The Public Burning (1977). In 1987, Sidney Lumet produced the little noticed film Daniel, based on Doctorow's novel, and still more recently Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels in America, with Ethel Rosenberg as one of the characters, has been playing on Broadway.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 6 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Religion and Twentieth-Century American Novels , Winter 1996 , pp. 63 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1996

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References

Notes

1. Poirier, Richard, “Pragmatism and the Sentence of Death,” in Wild Orchids and Trotsky: Messages from American Universities, ed. Edmundson, Mark (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 338.Google Scholar

2. Doctorow, E. L., The Book of Daniel (New York: Random House, 1971; repr., New York: New American Library, 1972).Google Scholar Numbers in parentheses following quotations from this and other texts are the page numbers of the quotations. Coover, Robert, The Public Burning (New York: Viking Press, 1977).Google Scholar

3. Walsh, William Thomas, “Is Communism Dangerous?” Commonweal, February 8, 1935, 421.Google Scholar

4. Newsweek, July 8, 1946, 22; Nation, August 14, 1948, 173.

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6. Leuchtenburg, William E., A Troubled Feast: American Society since 1945, updated ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), 29.Google Scholar For a wealth of illustrations of American fear of communism as evidenced in one State, see Carleton, Don E., Red Scare! Right-wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985).Google Scholar

7. Quoted by Ross, Andrew, No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 42.Google Scholar

8. Robert, and Meeropol, Michael, We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Walter, and Schneir, Miriam, Invitation to an Inquest, 4th ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1983)Google Scholar; Radosh, Ronald and Milton, Joyce, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983)Google Scholar; Philipson, Ilene, Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths (New York: Franklin Watts, 1988; repr., New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

9. West, Rebecca, The New Meaning of Treason (New York: Viking, 1964), 281.Google Scholar Radosh, and Milton, , The Rosenberg File, 571 Google Scholar, summarize the speculation regarding a Rosenberg-Cohen relationship, report that the FBI refused them access to the Cohen/Kroger file, and conclude: “If there is material pertaining to the alleged Rosenberg-Cohen link, it is undoubtedly among the Rosenberg-case FBI files that still have not been released.”

10. LeClair, Tom, The Art ofExcess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 112 Google Scholar; Morris, Christopher D., Models of Misrepresentation: On the Fiction of E. L. Doctorow (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Ross, No Respect; Carmichael, Virginia, Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).Google Scholar

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12. Fiedler, Leslie A., “Afterthoughts on the Rosenbergs,” in The Collected Essays of Leslie Fiedler, 2 vols. (New York: Stein and Day, 1971), 1:33.Google Scholar

13. Many critics have remarked on this. See Carmichael, , The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War, 131 Google Scholar, for example: The Book of Daniel is “not about the Rosenbergs but about the idea of the Rosenbergs.”

14. E. L. Doctorow, interview with Levine, Paul, in E. L. Doctorow, Essays and Conversations, ed. Trenner, Richard (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1983), 62.Google Scholar

15. Quoted by Philipson, , Ethel Rosenberg, 294.Google Scholar

16. My information on Greenglass comes largely frorn ibid., passim, but especially 279-81.

17. Ibid., 223ff., offers evidence that the Rosenbergs were indeed planning “an extended trip” in June of 1950.

18. The scene with the woman jammed through the fence is one from Doctorow's youthful memory and described also in his novel World's Fair (New York: Vintage International, 1992), 152.

19. Robert and Michael Meeropol, We Are Your Sons.

20. Yet, the Meeropol brothers appear to be remarkably normal persons leading relatively normal lives.

21. Ross, , No Respect, 27.Google Scholar

22. Philipson, , Ethel Rosenberg, 294.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 344.

24. Snell, Bruno, The Discovery of the Mind, trans. Rosenmeyer, T. G. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), 167 Google Scholar; cited by Schneider, Carl D., Shame, Exposure, and Privacy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977; repr., New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 110.Google Scholar

25. Schneider, , Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, 110.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 82.

27. Radosh, and Milton, , The Rosenberg File, 418.Google Scholar An editorial in the Nation praises the Rosenbergs in their final moments: “Guilty or not, [they] went to their deaths with a composure and dignity that won praise even from hostile newspapers” (Nation, June 27, 1953, 534).

28. Fewell, Danna Nolan, Circle of Sovereignty: A Story of Stories in Daniel 1-6 (Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1988), 65.Google Scholar

29. Harter, Carol C. and Thompson, James R., E. L. Doctorow (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990), 41 Google Scholar; Parks, John G., E. L Doctorow (New York: Continuum, 1991), 43 Google Scholar; Forrey, Robert, “Doctorow's The Book of Daniel: All in the Family,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 12 (1982): 173.Google Scholar

30. Trenner, , E. L. Doctorow, Essays and Conversations, 46–47.Google Scholar

31. Carmichael, , The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War, 187-90Google Scholar, has a helpful discussion on “anal logic” in The Book of Daniel.

32. Schneider, , Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, 71.Google Scholar

33. Fewell, , Circle of Sovereignty, 161-62.Google Scholar

34. Harter, and Thompson, , E. L. Doctorow, 47.Google Scholar

35. Carmichael, , The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War, 153.Google Scholar

36. Ibid.