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Summary: academia exposed -- right on the money
Review: This is a terrific book. The rants on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair are enough to have you gasping for breath in the aisle, and that's before his brilliant comic creation, the pretentious, Ecole-educated Delphine Roux. Having spent many years in higher ed., I can attest to the fact that Roth is so on the mark that it's a bit frightening. He nails the entire feminist-marxist-elite on the head. For me, Roux's panic as she desperately looks for a mate in the New York Review of Books personals and by accident sends the email to her department is the highlight of the book. I have MET her before, I'm sure of it. My favorite pages of the book were the Roux monologues as she rationalizes her whole existence and her snobby education. I'm a longtime fan of Roth and have read almost all of his books, even the old ones, but this is one of his very best. He is just so "on." His portraits of academia, politics, race-relations, plus his electrifying writing make this thrilling from start to finish. Previous to reading this book, I had read two "light" novels. After one page of Roth, I felt the power of words again. Not only is this one of Roth's best books, it's one of the best contemporary books period as it lampoons many areas of our lives. The whole "spook" incident was so lifelike (the black students the professor was supposedly insulting had never actually shown up in class and he had no idea that they were black since he'd never seen them) that I bet colleges everywhere are shaking in their own hypocrotical shoes. Roth emerges as one of the best 20th century chroniclers.
Rating: 
Summary: An almost perfect book
Review: In American Pastoral, Philip Roth wrote about the paradigmatic American man of the last half of the Twenthieth Century, struggling against social, economic and political forces that overwhelm the strongest individual. In The Human Stain, he tries again and, while the results are not quite as gripping as American Pastoral, this book is both insightful and well-written. The flaws come mainly in Roth's tackling political events (political correctness on college campuses and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal) without allowing enough temporal or psychological distance. As with all Roth novels, the book is not written chronologically; what keeps you reading is not to find out what happens, but to observe the impact of events on the characters. And, the characters are great, from the protagonist to those on the fringe. At times, the author's prose is a bit dense and over-written, but that is typical Roth, who challenges his readers to hop on board his philosophical train. The rewards for sticking with him are great and well worth the effort.
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Summary: "The last and greatest of all human dreams"
Review: When I read these lines on page 334, I got it--Eureka! Coleman is Gatsby: "Was he merely being another American and, in the great frontier tradition, accepting the democratic invitation to throw your origins overboard if to do so contributes to the pursuit of happiness?" The connections are not merely coincidental: the first-person narrator, also a character in the novel, with a peripheral attachment to the plot; the sudden, violent traffic death; the family representative at the funeral; the wide focus at the novel's close which contextualizes the story in a broad temporal, physical landscape. And Roth crafts transcendent passages--times when his prose leaves readers reeling: "I supposed there were now as many questions in his mind about me--and my mission here--as there were in mine about him. This great bright arched space, this cold aboveground vault of a mountaintop cradling at its peak a largish oval of fresh water frozen hard as rock, the ancient activity that is the life of a lake, that is the formation of ice, that is the metabolism of fish, all the soundless, ageless forces unyieldingly working away--it is as though we have encountered each other at the top of the world, two hidden brains mistrustfully ticking, mutual hatred and paranoia the only introspection there is anywhere." Zuckerman meets Les Farley against this timeless natural backdrop just as Nick Carraway strips the houses and lawns to "the island that flowered {here} for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh green breast of the new world." In his superb trilogy of the last fifty years, Roth humanizes the sufferings of an era: Coleman Silk; Faunia Farley; Les Farley; Swede Levov; Eve Frame; Ira Ringold. As I type this, I see that the names themselves offer a motherlode of symbolism. Read the whole trilogy; underline, circle, write notes in the margins. This stuff will make you think.
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Summary: Read This Book
Review: Written in the year 2000, this is a book about people at the latest turn of the century examined in the context of the political situation in America during their lifetimes. Focusing on character detail and development, Roth successfully paints portraits of complex beings, seemingly related to one another by the one trait that they cannot escape: they are all human. The examination of Coleman Silk's life: his beginnings and end, his triumph, his tragedy, his relationships, and most importantly, his secret enables the reader to relate to the protagonist. Silk's humanity (his faults, tendencies, patterns of behavior, etc.) contains the indelible aspects of what many will recognize to be similar to those within ourselves and the people around us. This book will draw you into its plot and individual character examinations and will leave you with a more complete and accurate understanding of the "core" that is present within many human beings.
Rating: 
Summary: A minor achievement
Review: Nowhere near as good as Roth can be. Although it contains flashes of great writing the overall experience is pretty tedious. In addition to the Vietnam war vet cliche discussed in other reviews the attempt to intergrate the Monica Lewinsky scandal into the fabric of the narrative calls to mind Joe Eszterhaus' horrible "American Rhapsody." The story itself is very disorganized and given the basic premise -- a light skinned black man passing for white accused of making racially loaded comments -- there is a surprising lack of irony. Needed to be revised, but when you're Philip Roth what editor is going to have the guts to send you back to the drawing board?
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Summary: Book Review
Review: "The Human Stain" is a glimpse into the life of a man who has lost everything: his job, his wife, his colleagues. Faced with having to redefine himself in totally unfamiliar ways, he abandons the prior structure and inhibitions of his life and allows himself to explore territory which many consider "off limits." Though he picks rather dangerous routes to explore, we watch him, through the course of the novel, rebuild his friendships, sense of self, and expectations for his life. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the novel is the accuracy with which it keys into human insecurities as well as human habits. We see the story not through the eyes of the protagonist, but through the perspective of his friends and associates who are quick to judge the way he rebuilds his life. "The Human Stain" forces the reader to examine her own responses to a number of astonishing moments where we uncover, piece by piece, the entire life of a man who we are meeting in his "twilight years" following his greatest tragedy.
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Summary: I hate to be a critic but. . .
Review: I read The Human Stain for school so of course I wasn't able to appreciate it as thoroughly as I might have otherwise. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the rhythm and pace of the book as well as the way the story and charactors unfolded. By juxtaposing the story of Colleman Silk and the misadventures of Bill Clinton, Roth succeeds in illuminating the irony of political correctness, relationships, and the capriciousness of life. The charactors in this novel are multidimensional and complex; with his ear for dialogue and insightful descriptions, Roth makes them whole. Roth's diction and decriptions complete the world of Athens and East Orange perfectly by capturing nuances and details. Although this is not a book that I "just couldn't put down," once I was reading it I found it to be thoroughly engaging.
Rating:
Summary: Intense but worthwhile
Review: The dynamic of the "Human Stain", a life and situation spiraling downward, will be familiar to readers of "American Pastoral" and "Sabbath's Theater", two other recent novels by Philip Roth. This time the victim is Coleman Silk, the dean of a small college, whose life unravels after he is falsely accused of making a racist remark. Once again, this book has fierce integrity, as well as wonderful moments of spare articulateness, where Roth turns wonderful phrases, such as "ecstasy of sanctimony, piety binge, or pulpit virtue-mongering." My favorite pages were 146 -151, where Roth works in some observations about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky without breaking his narrative. I also liked the ironic ending, where Roth actually lets a crazed character begin to heal emotionally and reverse a desperate flow in life.
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Summary: Provocative. Beautiful. Unfinished?
Review: In many ways, this might be Roth's best work. Certainly, the central idea is audacious, perverse and just this side of taboo--in other words, right up the author's alley. For the first time in a long time, Nathan Zuckerman comes off as a fairly decent guy--not to say that he's terribly likable, but he does seem human this go round. The unlikely romance between the "passing" professor and the wilfully illiterate divorcee is as touching as anything in Roth's canon and the secondary characters (the shell-shocked Vietnam Vet, the prissy French intellectual) are rendered with striking vividness, even if the narrator has the tendency to poke a little too much condescending fun at them. For the first three-fourths of the book, everything feels exactly right, from Zuckerman's wistful narration, to the professor's richly textured history and eventual downfall at the hands of a puritanical, politically correct establishment, to the bizarre and hilarious support group meetings in the Chinese retaurant. Then, suddenly, two main players are killed off in a most detached and convoluted fashion, a minor character from the back story resurfaces to sum up the "Big Idea" and the thing ends--on a haunting, lovely note, to be sure, but I was left wanting more. There seem to be gaps in the narrative, too many blank spaces and deleted scenes. What we do have on the page is uniformly gorgeous and provocative, but it seems as though either the author or his editor truncated the thing, stripping it down to only the essentials--not necessarily a bad thing (where was this editor for the long-winded "American Pastoral", I ask you?), but the reader comes away feeling slightly cheated. It is to Roth's great credit that we care about these characters so much that we actually crave more of them, that we want their story to continue or, at least, open out to more fully reveal their world. I have to recommend this work--it is vitally important both a literature and social commentary--but I also have to chide the author for witholding a little too much of his precious insight and marvelous prose.
Rating:
Summary: Better philosophical treatise than character study
Review: Philip Roth may be the smartest person alive but not necessarily the best novelist. There are many passages in the book that are extraordinarily perceptive and articulate, not to mention funny, and Roth's grasp on American is pitch-perfect. To read Roth is to think better. However, this is a vigorous novel of ideas, a tour de force riff on racism and deadly political correctness, not a character study, and therefore feels a trite contrived, a bit forced. The people in the book were ultimately opaque (except, perhaps, for the Roth-ish narrator Nathan Zuckerman, which is significant: Roth's best subject is Roth). A brilliant book because Philip Roth is brilliant and a worthwhile read, but one wonders if the great Roth should write less fiction and more essays.
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