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a more implacable and realistic position. The novel illuminates
these facts by its protagonist's hypothesis about what really hap–
pened. Danny Isaacson eventually comes to believe that his
father and the man who apparently pointed a finger at him dur–
ing the trial were actually conspiring together not as spies, but as
Communist comrades who were protecting the actual spies, who
fled the country. Daniel's mother only discovers this hi.dden real–
ity at the trial and is appalled at the gamble her husband has
taken with their lives out of his patriotic confidence in the Amer–
ican legal system. Doctorow presents Paul Isaacson as a man
who has deeply internalized the sentimental Popular Front
ideology, which celebrated Jefferson, Paine, and Lincoln, while
calling Communism " twentieth-century Americanism." More–
over, Doctorow's hypothesis responds as well to the actual fact
that Mrs. Sobell, one of the Rosenberg defenders at a fundraising
rally, proclaimed that "Julie and Ethel could save their own
skins by talking, but they will never betray their friends." When
someone pointed out that her remark hardly squared with the
premise of their total innocence, she fainted.
In
fact, the arrest of
the Rosenbergs did alert others to flee, and one such couple was
arrested in England in a house as overloaded with espionage
equipment, according to Rebecca West, as the ark was with
animals.
Doctorow's story illuminates the historical case by tran–
scending the sterile opposition between those who accept the
politically given terms " guilty" and "innocent," as if the cold
war rhetoric of the government or Communist propaganda
about witch-hunts were the only genuine alternatives. His narra–
tive reformulation of the issues not only prevents the novel from
collapsing into sentimental melodrama; it also can prevent his–
torical discourse from suffering the same fate.
I have argued not for seeing history as fiction, but for seeing
some fiction as analogical history in contrast to those novelists
who disdain narrative except as a technique to be subverted in a
narcissistic calling of attention to the artifices of artistic clever–
ness. While I salute documentary drama, historical novel, and
imaginative journalism for moving into the dangerous border
country where fiction and history overlap, I am also anxious to
put critics on guard against the popularity of those who under–
estimate the hazards of travel in such border country, or who
