18
figure who is also persecuted by elites and also despises Clinton as one who abandoned
his own roots. Levov has assumed the role of the fair, tolerant and empathetic business
man who sees his liberalism unappreciated and vilified. He imagines “them laughing, the
Weathermen, the Panthers, the ragtag army of the violent Uncorrupted who called him a
criminal and hated his guts because he was one of those who own and have….They were
delirious with joy, delighted having destroyed his once pampered daughter and ruined his
privileged life, shepherding him at long last to their truth, to the truth as they knew it to
be for every Vietnamese man, woman, child, and tot, for every colonized black in
America, for everyone everywhere who had been fucked over by the capitalists and their
insatiable greed” (256-57). It is no wonder that these men are angry but it also no wonder
that these men are unable to channel their emotions since their anger is a consequence of
their most creative (and destructive) act, the making of themselves. Their anger is in fact
their last political stand since none can return to the past they so deliberately rejected.
III
Roth’s American trilogy certainly provides the democratic theorist with a much
more detailed image of the American populist than those offered by both his critics and
defenders. He explores the sources and nature of populist feelings of resentment, envy
and rancor and suggests that they are part of the burden that mobility places upon citizens
in America. If one incorporates Roth’s insights, one could conclude that populist anger is
neither fully undeserved or irrational. Nor are these populists, however much they fail,
lacking in resources or creativity in responding to their plight. Reingold, Levov and Silk
may not be entirely likeable men but their struggles are not untypical of citizens who live
in a society that not only permits but values, and even demands, mobility.
Convention