The Human Stain : A Novel

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Summary: The Human Stain
Review: In a long writing career, Philip Roth has progressively deepened his themes and his understanding of human characteras well as his skill at the novelist's craft. His novel, "The Human Stain" is both entertaining and thought-provoking. It is a worthy addition to American fiction of the early 21st century.
The title of the book sets forth its primary theme. A major part of human life is tied to human sexuality and to physicality. People ignore or downplay this aspect at their peril. This theme is reflected througout the book. Roth, even more than John Updike and with a different perspective than Updike, writes with a passion about the central role of sexuality in human life.

The story unfolds agains a backdrop of the Clinton impeachment hearings. The chief protagonist of the book is Coleman Silk, a 71 year old former professor of Classics and Dean of a small New England College. Silk has resigned from the college as a result of an investigation over a classroom remark that some found racist. His wife of many years has died, and Silk has become romantically involved with a 34 year-old divorced woman with little education who works as a janitor in the college. Silk's former colleagues, his four children and his acquaintances are leery of his affair. Silk befriends Nathan Zukerman, an alter ego who appears in many Roth novels, who tells Silk's story.

Silk has become highly successful but has done so in part by denying important components of his life. He is of African-American ancestry but light enough to pass. (Many American novels utilize the theme of "passing" for white.) He callously walks away from his family at the age of 27 in order to marry a white woman for fear that she would reject him if she were aware of his ancestry. He never reveals the secret. Roth's book suggests in a poignant way how difficult it is for one person to claim to know another.

The theme of individual self-determination in life choices, as opposed to following the course of the group into which one was born, is another major theme of the book. Roth develops it well, with all its pain and ambiguity, in exploring the choices Zuckerman has made. Many people probably would assert that people need to stay and develop within their group. This isn't Roth. He seems to me more qunintesentially American by celebrating the room modern secular democracy gives people to change and follow their stars. But, very simply, this is a different matter from denying one's origins altogether.

The book is full of great scenes, particularly of Coleman Silk's early fascination with boxing, and of literary allusions. There are allusions to Homer and Euripides, as befitting a professor of classics. Euripides, with his naturalism and recognition of the power of sexuality, is an excellent choice for emphasis in this book. There are also fine passages emphasizing the power of music, including a lovely description of Coleman's 19-year old lover, when he was young, dancing in his college flat. Mahler's music, with its feel for the earth, also figures prominently as does the powerhouse pianist, Yefim Bronfman.

Coleman's 34 year old lover is well described. She helps teach Coleman, very late in his life, the importance of sexuality and of human contact, to try to see and accept things for what they are, and to understand the inevitability of change.

Readers who enjoy this book might also enjoy Saul Bellow's novel, "Ravelstein" which raises many of the same issues. Bellow's novel tells the story of a philosophy professor who, like Silk, specializes in the ancient Greeks -- Plato rather than Euripides. Both books are narrated by a friends of the protagonists who are novelists and who request them to write narratives to remember their lives. Both involve stories of sexual passion and speak of the promises and difficulties offered in the United States where people can, in a real sense, become who they are. Roth's novel and Bellow's novel, the products of two of our finest writers in their old age, present good pictures of the potential of American life in our modern day.

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Summary: A tree died for this? Sheesh!
Review: My mother once said to me when I was a young girl that in my life there will be ten books I love with a passion and ten books I hate with a passion

The Human Stain comes under the "ten books I hate with a passion" remit.

I really wanted to like this book, honest! All I can say is that I am glad I only paid a $1.50 for it in a thrift shop and didn't go out of my way to order it new because I would have not only been disappointed but I would have been downright annoyed at myself for throwing away my very hard earned pennies!

The Human Stain is quite simply a very BIG HUMAN stain of jumbled words, unlikable characters (except for Faunia Farley) and a plot that is so flimsy and full of holes you want to scream out your frustration whilst jumping up and down on the book in a bid to beat the breath of life into it! However there is only so much jumping up and down on a book you can do until you realise you are flogging a dead and buried horse.

So what do we have that makes this book extremely infuriating and teeth grindingly awful? In a nutshell that answer is the anti-hero/protagonist Coleman Silk, a 71 year old recently dismissed for racism College Dean, living a lie for nearly half a century, fornicating quite happily with a 34 year emotionally crippled College Janitor and trying desperately to justify his wasted life (despite doing so many noble and good things in that aforesaid wasted life) before kicking away from this mortal coil.

What is so agonizing for me as a read is that this book could have been so much more than what it was, but what it ended up being was a pile of literary trash of little merit other than a wonderful concept that was totally ruined in the hands of the esteemed Mr Roth.

I have no problems with the use of profanity in books, its comes with living in an enlightened society but Mr Roth takes it to heights I didn't think was possible, I was almost impressed, almost but not quite...

Coleman Silk's sexual escapade with the brittle and emotionally broken Faunia is flung into your face at every available opportunity and you are left feeling somewhat queasy, (or more bluntly sick to your stomach) especially as you are aware that Faunia is so damaged by her own tragic history, molested as a little girl by her step-father, called a liar by her blinkered mother who refuses to believe she has married a pervert, physically and mentally abused by her ex-husband a emotionally, drug addicted and very unstable Vietnam vet and mother to two dead children, killed in a fire and blamed for their death by her ex.

And what is Coleman Silk doing to help Faunia? He's merrily banging her bones and lamenting over his dismissal as Dean to Athena College, something he could have avoided if he had revealed his own racial heritage (he passed for white when he was actually Black) but pride wouldn't let him and he allows himself to be destroyed in much the same way a martyr to a supposedly just cause would.

This book got two stars only because of the creation of Faunia and the idea of a College Dean being fired because he was supposedly racist only for everyone to eventually find out that he was actually Black himself, I really liked that irony and thus I feel a generosity of spirit that perhaps I otherwise wouldn't have.

We only glimpse tiny fragments of Coleman's past life as a Black man and his reasons for leaving his racial heritage behind, it's like being given sips of delicious lemonade and then being told, "Sorry, there isn't any more, nor is there EVER going to be any more," so hard luck and this is one of several reasons why I found this book so hard to digest and come to terms with.

Finally I can only hope and pray that the film with Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman is much better than the book, I don't think that can be too difficult because the book is so atrocious (with certain exceptions listed above!) I don't think the film can be much worse.

Rating:
Summary: Get past the agenda
Review: Roth is, perhaps, this country's greatest master of the written word. His style is unparalleled and a privilege to read and study. The plot of The Human Stain, though at times tedious and overdrawn, is nevertheless worth the read. The characters are engrossing and well developed and you genuinely come to care for them. The struggle with this book is in getting past Roth's liberal agenda. His apparent point that what takes place behind closed doors is nobody else's business is valid enough, but when those doors are in the White House, and the producer of "The Human Stain" lies to the country about what has taken place, this is a problem that a 300+ word novel about a college professor passing for white cannot atone for. I'd rather be subjected to the blatant liberalism of a Time magazine cover that declares "How the scandal was good for America." A different title and about fifty less pages would have made this a far more enjoyable read. (I invite you to read my book, Living Dead Man, available on Amazon or through my website, www.mbernier.com.)

Rating:
Summary: A gem
Review: I enjoyed "The Human Stain." Heck! It's my favorite Phillip Roth book yet! Beating out "Sabbath's Theater"... "The Human Stain" is a fascinating book.

Coleman Silk, professor at Athena college, resigns in the midst of a scandal. He's accused of calling two black students "spooks." Thing is, he himself is black, but he's been passing for white since the Second World War. Roth's long-time protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman, is there to tell the story.

The irony! That a black man is accused of being a white oppressor! That a black man who has passed as, and enjoyed all the advantages for being white for so long cannot admit to his past in order to save himself!

The connection to the past. Silk's "passing" is a story of another time, of segregation, of the nation before the struggle for civil rights. It's a story of America in the Second World War. But the racial divide that existed then, and the choices Roth's characters made then still dog his protagonists to the present. You can't escape your past. You can't change the way things were. Silk spans an incredible time of immense change. It finally does him in.

And then, the feeling of this book. An old man's book. A book of lament, of regret. Zuckerman's impotency after colon surgery forever ends his sexual escapades. He's forced into solitude and contemplation. He's forced into passivity, into the role that his women characters usually inhabit. But the book still manages to celebrate life. Silk's last sexual escapade is depicted as a man's final free moment, his final stab at an immediate and sensuous life, sexual life free from anxiety and expectation. And perhaps Zuckerman can appreciate it all the more because of his own deficiency.

Interesting note: I grew up in the Berkshires and recognized much of the setting from firsthand experience. One place Roth writes about is Pleasant Valley bird sanctuary in Lenox, Massachusetts. That's the area where Fauina Farley visits the raven.

I actually attended the Pleasant Valley's summer camp, first as a camper, then as a junior counselor. So you see? I knew that raven, the old, sly bird who had a bent beak! ...and I felt like Roth had stolen something from my own childhood, my own memories, something that was personal. A detail I would use in my own writing... Funny, that.

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Summary: Roth Captivated me with thoughts, not Political Statements
Review: All In all an intense book. I would recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for vocab. Roth has every word at his disposal, it seems, when it comes to describing the way people think.

This book describes so succinctly the turmoil and oppositional forces going on inside a preson's head at any given time, and as it is doing so it reveals the characters themselves so completely and aggressively it leaves the reader reeling.

The idea here is that, could we see inside each others skulls, the intense, sometimes profane, insane mixture of unconscious thought is not pretty, logical, remotely politically correct, or even believable and we all gaurd secrets.

To some of my fellow reviewers:

Roth's book is all about the consequences of trying to hold secrets - you cannot hide from what you are, because in doing so it still defines what you are. If people know about it they will shape their impressions around it. If you hide it, you will shape your life around hiding it. Its still there whether to try to escape, ingnore, or embrace it, and the way the characters deal with thier secrets is not a political, racial, or righteous statement by roth - or the characters, it merely shows how confused we all are.

Clinton, Coleman, Faunia, Delphine some reviewers here have said they are "un-believable" characters. How do you define believable when most of the book is a stream of consciousness, how can you be so presumptuos as to say what should or should not an issue for a character and in the process ruin the careful crafting of nueroligical turmoil within these people?

And as for Roth advocating white superiority, as one reviewer suggested, what is wrong with you? This character (Coleman) shapes his own life - its about his decisions, his motives, and his own choice. If coleman sees being white as superior then we can either love him, hate him, be apathetic or whatever. He made his being black an issue for himself that became eventually became a stain on his own mind because HE thought he was wrong in not telling people, It is all the internal workings of this one man, Coleman Silk. The author never passes judgement, he leaves it to us to judge Coleman's decisions and way of looking at the world.

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Summary: No matter how hard you try, your past knocks on your door
Review: 'The Human Stain' is another great book by one of the best North American writers ever. Philip Roth has assuredly written some of the most critic and acid novels on America issue --and the Western world as consequence. In this novel he deals with the wave of political correctness that covers this side of the world from the 90's on.

From the early 90's everything you say or do has more than its simple meaning. There is always a hidden agenda, even if you don't mean that --or even if you haven't considered that. People started using terms such as 'afro-Americans', but they didn't care about the afro-American rights, as long as they use the 'right' term. Surrounded by this hysterical blindness the protagonist of this novel, a professor named Coleman Silk, is forced to look back to his past and assume things he supposed to be long forgotten.

His downfall spiral began when he referred to a couple of absent students using the term 'spooks' that in his context meant ghosts, but, as he finds out later, it is also a pejorative term to Afro-Americans. He's forced to retire and his wife dies in consequence of all this trouble.

Silkman reaches Nathan Zuckerman asking to writer the professor's memoirs. The writer doesn't accept, but the professor ends up doing it himself. In this process of rediscovery we learn a lot of his past and how much he had to reinvent himself in order to survive. We also find out about his love affair with a young and problematic janitor, whose ex-husband brings them a lot of problems.

In this novel all about finding out who you were and what was made you --i.e. who you are now-- the master Roth is able to go deep into the wound of correctness and the need of lying and faking who you are so that you can be accepted. As Silkman finds out, people didn't like or admire who he was, but who they thought he was.

With his analytic vein, the author shows the American dream going bad, proving that the end of the century --and this new one-- is damned with a disease of people being fake most of the time.

Using his razor sharp style, Philip Roth has delivered another winner, a novel full of undertones and truth that may make people feel sick. The reading can go a bit slow, but it is not a problem, because in the end one gets more than he/she expected. Not recommended to everyone, but to those who like literary novels.

Rating:
Summary: A Literary Stain
Review: I don't know what Roth was trying to get at in this long and pointless novel, but it's obvious that whatever it was, he missed it by a country mile. Perhaps this novel is a sign of Roth's slowly encroaching senility. That would be the only valid excuse for a book as mediocre as this one.

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Summary: An Everyman's Book
Review: Literary critics who have written about "The Human Stain" like to discuss how well it describes the "public zeitgeist" and how Roth is one of America's best examples of "aesthetic relentlessness," both of which are true, but I prefer to say this is simply a great book by a fantastic author. Roth is more accessible then critics would like you to believe--his unique style flows well, he creates realistic and lively characters and he tells compelling stories.

"The Human Stain" is about Coleman Silk, a long time professor, who resigns in disgrace after being accused of racism. After the resignation, he battles the college hoping to regain face, but he also beings dating a much younger woman who works as a janitor at his former school. Through the narration of Nathan Zuckerman, this intense action plays out and Silk's unique and hidden life history is revealed.

This book is a great examination of political correctness, higher education, love and especially race. It is a tremendous novel, certainly one of Roth's best, and I would highly recommend it to all readers, especially those who enjoy excellent prose, fiction and controversial themes. More specifically, I would also recommend it to people who have experienced a small New England college town--it will be an excellent reminder, both good and bad, of that life and will challenge the memories you have. This is a truly great book.

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Summary: The Human Stain:A Novel by Philip Roth
Review: It was a waste of time reading this book!

Rating:
Summary: If you're p.c., this book isn't for you.
Review: I am a Roth fan. I love his irreverance, his ability to catch a milieu, to paint a picture with words. I love that he is not politically correct and that he can see a candid picture of academia and share it without watering it down or being an apologist. Thank you Mr. Roth.