Philip Roth’s Our Gang, the Politics of Intertextuality and the Complexities of Cultural Memory

This essay presents some reflections on the connections between intertextuality and cultural memory with particular attention to Philip Roth’s Our Gang (1971). This novel is composed of dialogical and monological parts that inscribe Roth’s satirical portrait of an American president called Trick E. Dixon into American cultural memory. Dixon’s sophistical rhetoric employs hilarious intertextual references that highlight the seemingly inescapable absurdity of American political life. At the same time, Roth’s Our Gang offers an implicit literary reflection on the power of literature.