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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
“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.
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
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4. Newsweek, July 8, 1946, 22; Nation, August 14, 1948, 173.
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7. Quoted by Ross, Andrew, No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 42.Google Scholar
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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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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.
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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
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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.