Jerome Charyn seems at first [in The Franklin Scare] to be writing a historical novel about the last days of FDR—the action takes place in 1944 and 1945—and he gives us Yalta, the altruism of Mrs. Roosevelt, and the obtrusive campaign of Dewey. But he refuses to offer official versions. He is after bigger game. By introducing perverse, mad and unreal characters, he suggests that "History," as we were taught it, is simply another story.

Charyn mixes categories. He takes apparently factual details—say FDR's passion for stamps—but he dwells upon them so that they become "magical" and distorted. He thus affirms that solemn greatness is close to dreamy vanity—and by doing so, he subverts in a shrewd, childish and comic manner those virtues and deeds which we have applauded. He writes a revisionist fiction about FDR, politics, and the nation itself.

Charyn continually stresses the...