PM

PM is a left-wing New York City tabloid whose force in the novel comes from both its outspoken reporting and its place in the Roth family’s daily life. As a countervoice to Lindbergh, it challenges the Republican candidate in print; as a newspaper Herman Roth brings home, it becomes something Philip Roth can hold as evidence that the new administration is still being scrutinized.

Identity and editorial position

PM is described as a new left-wing tabloid that costs a nickel. Its slogan declares, "PM is against people who push other people around"—a compact statement of the paper’s opposition to political intimidation. Herman Roth begins bringing it home after work alongside the Newark Evening News, placing its arguments within the family’s ordinary routine rather than at a distance from the household’s growing fears.

Coverage of Lindbergh’s nomination

After Charles A. Lindbergh receives the Republican nomination, PM mounts an extensive challenge to the candidate. It runs a lengthy editorial, news stories, and columns across virtually all thirty-two pages, including anti-Lindbergh commentary in the sports section. The breadth of the coverage makes opposition a sustained editorial position, not an isolated reaction confined to the front page.

The paper also uses photographs to make its case. Its front page features Lindbergh’s Nazi medal, while its Daily Picture Magazine presents photographs of his 1938 tour of Nazi Germany, culminating in a full-page image of him shaking hands with Hermann Göring. The magazine says it publishes images other papers suppress; alongside the Lindbergh photographs, it shows lynch mobs, chain gangs, strikebreakers wielding clubs, and conditions in American penitentiaries. This juxtaposition places the candidate’s association with Nazi Germany within a broader record of violence and abuse that the paper insists readers should see.

Place in the family’s experience

PM matters to Philip not only for what it reports but for what its continued scrutiny seems to demonstrate. After Lindbergh takes office, Philip reads the paper his father brings home, first for its photographs and comic strip and increasingly for its reporting. Alongside Walter Winchell, Dorothy Thompson, Quentin Reynolds, and William L. Shirer, the paper’s staff is among the voices watching the administration. For a child who fears that American life is changing with alarming speed, the paper offers documentary evidence that public criticism has not disappeared.

That role gives PM a double presence in the narrative: it is a political actor in the public argument over Lindbergh and a physical object in a child’s effort to make sense of that argument. The paper cannot remove the family’s fear, but its pages make opposition visible and legible inside the home.