Cold
War Fantasy
Francine
Prose has offered up a Cold War fantasy. She has Simon Putnam, who despite his
name, is a Coney Island Jew who recently graduated from Harvard with a folklore
major. Through his uncle he ends up being a very junior editor at the snooty
publishing firm, Landry, Landry, and Bartlett. There the very naïve Simon is
chosen to edit a bodice-ripping fantasy that turns the very frumpy atomic spy
Ethel Rosenberg into a Mata Hari who has sex with her Soviet controllers and
her prosecutors.
The
book entitled “The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic” was presumably written
Anya Partridge who has very kinky tastes about the places to have sex. Further
the book was supposed to be a bestseller that would financially rescue the
failing publishing firm. Of course, Simon does not ask why he was chosen to
edit the book and he is looped into Anya’s life with a series of sexual
encounters. Not only is Simon naïve about his assignment, but he also has a
habit of falling in love way too easily.
The
story is all personal to Simon because his mother knew Ethel Rosenberg from her
neighborhood and the book opens with the execution of the Rosenberg’s in June
1953. All of this is going on against the backdrop of the growing power of
Senator McCarthy and the misadventures of the early CIA.
Prose
is way too sympathetic to the Rosenberg’s, especially Ethel. Her husband Julius
was running a vast spy ring more encompassing that stealing atomic secrets. And
Ethel was no communist wallflower, she was into the party up to her eyeballs and
Julius’ work. Whether she deserved to be executed is a separate question, but
remember the Soviets wanted her dead too.
Prose
knows how to write, and if her politics did not get in the way it would have
been a better book.
For the full Amazon URL see: Cold War Fantasy (amazon.com)
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