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Title: The Human Stain by Philip Roth ISBN: 0375726349 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.79
Rating: 5
Summary: Human Truth and Fiction
Comment: Coleman Silk, ("Silky Silk") a humanities professor at Athena College, resigns from his job in disgrace because of a supposedly racist remark he has made about two black students. The ensuing brouhaha leads to the death of his wife. Silk then begins an affair with Faunia Farley, (surely one of the most engaging, earthy seductresses in modern fiction) the school janitor, who is thirty-four years his junior.
Silk's relationship with Farley, who is being stalked by her ex-husband and his confessions to Rothian alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, fuel the narrative for this novel.
But what is absolutely brilliant in this novel is the unraveling of the metaphoric strands of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in which Silk finds himself enmeshed in the web of contradictions of contemporary America and its past.
The novel also goes beyond the facile reading of race. This novel questions the political construct of race and asks, Are we ONLY products of our past? What is the price we pay for the personal and collective fictions we construct to become ourselves? What do we really know about anything or anyone? Does self-actualization mean killing one's past and by extension one's biological parents? Can a successful identity be built on a lie? What does it mean to live an authentic life given the constraints of race, gender, etc.? If an authentic life is built on the contradictions of a society, does this diminish the validity of all subsequent lives that are built on the original fiction?
Roth probes the question of identity deliberately and provocatively, and the structure of the novel is fascinating because of the multiple perspectives on events-visited and revisited by Silk, Zuckerman and Faunia.
And those sentences! Wow!
The Human Stain is a brilliant work of a modern master.
Rating: 4
Summary: Secrets and lies in the search for self
Comment: The Human Stain is not the best of recent Roth (but then there are few contemporary novels from whatever country as impressive as Sabbath's Theater or American Pastoral). However, it is confirmation that Roth is one of the most necessary of contemporary writers.
This concludes a trilogy of loosely related novels taking a personal examination of important events from post WWII American history. Each is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman (Roth's altar ego), and again Zuckerman is present, but - generally - not intrusive.
Set against the backdrop of the Lewinsky affair, Coleman's own fall from his position as Professor of Classics and dean of a department for a "racist" remark is a tragedy, and filled with anger, on behalf of his friend, Zuckerman traces Silk's life, and his final days (including an affair with a cleaner at the University).
Roth's writing has a passion. His prose may not be smooth and elegant, but there is real emotion underpinning it. Anger at the nature of modern society, the dumbing down, the compartmentalising of people.
Roth's characters are more rounded than in the first Zuckerman trilogy. His subjects now seem real. His writing about a writer, and his problems writing seems to be behind him.
This is a book about learning, about ignorance, about dignity, about shame.
It can be contrasted with the cool prose of JM Coetzee's Disgrace, winner of the Booker Prize in the UK. This novel looks at the fall of an academic after an affair with a student. It is a well written but cold novel. No-one can accuse Roth/Zuckerman of writing cold fiction.
The novel is uneven, but there is much that is poetic in the midst of the righteous anger. Also, in Les Farley, and Ernestine Silk Roth has created two of his most memorable characters.
Many years ago Roth wrote a hilarious baseball novel, The Great American Novel. Roth's recent work (beginning I feel with Deception) has been of an extremely high quality. And it is with this body of work, rather than in that thirty year old fiction, that Roth has finally caught that mythical beast. The cumulative work of the new Zuckerman trilogy and Sabbath's Theater truly are Great American Novels.
Rating: 1
Summary: Is Roth advocating white racal purity?
Comment: "The Human Stain" strongly advocates the "one drop" definition of "black" (tacitly neglecting to mention the African ancestry in Latinos, Arabs, etc.). Roth takes the position that the protagonist, "Coleman Silk," had committed a terribly immoral act (somewhat comparable to child molesting or worse) by not immediately informing everyone in his life of his partial black ancestry. No OTHER ancestry is held to this standard. Roth would have us believe that the physically and culturally white Coleman Silk was "really" black and had deceived and somehow tainted everyone around him by not confessing to the apparent crime of black ancestry in a person who does not show it. Can you imagine a book where a character is condemned for not revealing any NON-BLACK ancestry?
The Human Stain is a thinly disguised attack on the late New York Times book critic, Anatole Broyard, a fellow European-American who deserves respect, not this kind of racist condemnation.
"The Human Stain" has side issues of political correctness in universities and a weeping, "abandoned" mother (a la "Imitation of Life"), but these are only minor distractions that hide the real issue: How can "Coleman Silk" be guilty of "passing for white" IF Roth is NOT saying that "black" genes are inferior and IF he is NOT saying that white racial purity is real or desirable. If racial equality is real, then "Coleman Silk" is not guilty of ANY racial sin or crime. You cannot pretend to be against racism and at the same time advocate a doctrine based on the racist assumption that "black" genes are tainted and destroy the right of white people to call themselves "white."
The Human Stain miseducates people of good will and leads people of mixed ancestry to believe they have no choice but to submit to a "one drop" rule that has no legal standing but strong advocacy from the gatekeepers of our culture. If "black" ancestry is NOT inferior, why isn't "Coleman Silk" white? Change the "black" ancestry to American Indian, and there's no problem with calling Coleman "white."
Some reviewers tried to draw a comparison between Coleman Silk and a "self-hating Jew" (which Roth has been accused of being). The comparison is invalid. The Jewish heritage is a real one in which Roth takes little or no pride. The "black" identity assigned to "Coleman Silk" is a stigma no more valid or worthy of respect than the "Aryan" and Jewish "races" of the Third Reich.
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Title: American Pastoral by Philip Roth ISBN: 0375701427 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: I Married a Communist by Philip Roth ISBN: 0375707212 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Dying Animal by Philip Roth ISBN: 037571412X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 09 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics) by Ford Madox Ford, Thomas C. Moser ISBN: 019283620X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth ISBN: 0679749004 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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