Rating: 
Summary: 20th Century Chronicler Extraordinaire
Review: I had not read much of Roth's recent works because of his anger and verbosity. However, when I saw the synopsis of this tome, I figured I would try again. To my pleasant surprise, I found it to be terrific. Although it was slow reading and verbose at times, I was amazed by his ability to chronicle events of the most recent years, and to describe what our society has become.I think that this book is a must read for anyone who wants a to understand the American experience and psyche for the last years of the 20th Century.
Rating: 
Summary: Daring, But Substandard, Roth
Review: Philip Roth is a fearless writer and here takes on the story of Classics professor Coleman Silk, a black man who "passes," living his adult life as a white. A brave undertaking, to be sure, and the first two chapters in which this story unfolds--first through an account of a budding friendship between Silk and Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, then in a flashback to Silk's youth in East Orange, New Jersey--are typically brilliant Roth: acerbic social commentary, mordantly incisive confessional observations, engaging ideas cloaked in simply beautiful writing. The second chapter is itself a powerful, finely wrought tale. For me, however, the book looses its way and its power, in two dimensions: in the narrative choices Roth makes--repeatedly chopping up Silk's story into multiple, shifting points of view, that seemingly "pad" the narrative with the doings of less consequential characters--and in the characters themselves: unsympathetic, at times simply unbelievable, and motivated implausibly, or, alternatively, all too predictably. Although I welcome Roth's continued attention to the American social scene, and to the particularly American pathologies that in Roth's recent work derange worthy Americans, if one more inhabitant of the Rothian universe pitches Nathan Zuckerman with a story that needs telling, that only Nathan can tell, I swear, I won't buy the resulting book. (But of course I will. Because Roth's our great master and chronicler, and because mediocre Roth surpasses very good anything else.)
Rating:
Summary: Came across a 20th century gem by accident
Review: I came across this novel by accident and was quite pleased when I began to read. Mr. Roth has managed to engross me with history comparisons and bygone formalisms. Some of which I wish still existed. He has also managed to write a very human novel, full of opinion on relevant issues ushering out the old millenium. I would divulge plot but I think a true reader should not be spoiled by my synopsis.
Rating:
Summary: Good book. 3.5 stars.
Review: I liked this book quite a lot. Set in a small academic community in New England, the novel is about an aging classics professor who in his youth, by incredible strength of will and at great human cost, has dramatically reinvented himself. The plot is driven by the ludicrous excesses of political correctness in contemporary American universities, which appear silly but have dangerous consequences. Several real-life examples of decent people pilloried on PC in the academy sprung to my mind while reading. However, I found the academic drama is much less interesting than the social one, and the human one, presented in this novel. The main character, Coleman Silk, is a light-skinned black man who, at the cusp of his adult life, decides to reinvent himself as a Jew, and spends the rest of his life seamlessly passing. The cost of this act is great: the loss of the family that created and adored the golden boy. Yet what is rejected by Coleman is not blackness but predetermination, the embracing "we", and what is gained is not whiteness but the freedom to be self-determining. His incredible egoism is pretty impressive. While Coleman is a great vehicle for this idea (the idea that race had to be rejected for the individual to emerge), I think the most fascinating character in the book is Coleman's lover, Faunia Farley. Faunia is the illiterate, white, 34 year old cleaning woman taken by the professor, in his 70s, as his lover. Faunia's life reveals the same incredible will to self-determination, regardless of the tremendous costs involved, both to herself and others. Yet hers is a more unusual and, I found, more moving story, one that is slowly revealed throughout the book, and which I won't give away here. I didn't think this book was great, partly because of an excess of gratuitous viciousness! I often felt like Roth was just using the novel as a vehicle for attacking certain social types who really annoy him. (And I'm sure they are really annoying.) This viciousness is pretty funny, no question, but also basically distracting from what I found more interesting. What I really liked about the book was Roth's insight into what race means and does, and the falseness racial categories contain. Ultimately, in fact, race loses its uniqueness and is shown as just one manifestation of the heavy weight of social constraint that Coleman and Faunia battle in their attempts to become themselves. And this, too, is an excellent point.
Rating: 
Summary: Secrets and lies in the search for self
Review: 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:
Summary: Brilliant - wonderful point of view tricks
Review: I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long, long while. I suppose the characters are more extreme than most of those in American Pastoral but they are beautifully handled. An early scene where the 2 old professors dance is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. One thing Roth does in The Human Stain and American Pastoral both, which fascinates me, is use the first person as an excuse to dive into what is essentially an omniscient narrator who reveals things that first person narrator really could never know. In so doing, Roth, through sleight of hand, revives 19th century's favorite narration technique, opening up possibilities for future novels to take on that sort of grand epic sweep that hasn't been possible for a hundred years. For this alone, Roth deserves a statue in his honor.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly written
Review: I get lost sometimes in writing that is so artistic and powerful you feel swept up in an author's grasp. You feel like he can lead you anywhere. Roth is one of those writers who may not be the best story teller, but can he paint a word picture? Can you just get lost in his prose? Can he make you stare at a sentence for a minute or two after you read it, making you think somehow he's changed your life with one good swift kick in the groin? Yes to all of the above. I recommend this book if you like a great writer. If you love the power and energy in a well written paragraph even if it tries to do too much and even if it's point isn't really a point but it leaves you thinking none the less. It's a tragic look at a desperate life. But in the end, I found myself uplifted.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Compelling
Review: Philip Roth has written a penetrating novel that illustrates something very important about university life today. He treats the threat from the political left, now the power elite on campus, as something more ominous than a misguided fashion that will soon pass; he sees the desire purge dissenting faculty as an effort to degrade and dehumanize any dissidents and destroy what remains of genuine learning. Even more importantly, he has dissected and displayed the psychological basis of the desire to reconstruct or muzzle old-school faculty, and created compelling archetypes easily recognizable to anyone familiar with the current academic game. The events are described in the voice of several characters, each with a dramatically different but always pathetic take on things. Roth has an amazing ability to inhabit the minds and souls of all his characters, but none better than Delphine Roux, the young French literary theorist whom Coleman Silk--the 71-year old classicist--hired in a weak moment. She uses the apparatus of deconstructionism and its rarified vocabulary, along with a relentlessly feminist take on the world, to immunize herself from attack from colleagues and to belittle classics and traditional critics she either has not read or cannot understand. In Roth's portrayal of this woman, her style masks a lack of learning and scholarly confidence, and her political ideology is a weapon to use against anyone who threatens to expose her as the flake that she is. She, of course, was glad to see Silk purged from the faculty after accusations of racism, on grounds that he is also an obvious sexist. He once showed no sympathy for a student who complained she couldn't understand his lecture on Euripides because of his "engendered language." Roux takes the side of the student. Silk responds with magnificent sermon on the slovenliness of political correctness. In the end, Roth's story emerges as a deft but deadly attack on what has become of the university. But he also treats the story of Coleman Silk as a metaphor for what has become of the entire political system, run by official victims who slay and consume those who dare bring into question their absolute power. A very effective and compelling read.
Rating:
Summary: Sporadically Involving
Review: There is much to recommend in Philip Roth's latest literary effort - the engaging/moving story of Coleman Silk's childhood and his eventual rejection of his family and his African-American heritage, the character of Les Farley, forever damaged by his experiences in Viet Nam and doomed to live a haunted and isolated life, and the on again/off again narration of Nathan Zuckermann, a frequent fixture of Roth's literature. When this book is good, it's great. When it's not, it's rather ponderous. With the exception of American Pastoral, which ranks as one of the greatest books I have ever read, Roth's novels of the past decade read more like social diatribes than narrative fiction. The anger he sees in the world seems propelled by his own disillusionments with love, women, sex, Viet Nam, the breakdown of the American family, etc. etc. He is also (and perhaps some will argue) a raging misogynist. His female characters are some of the most grotesque figures I have ever encountered in fiction and in the Human Stain, they prove to be the book's weakest feature. Delphine Roux and Faunia Farley are just not well written. Delphine comes across as a monster, which is fine, but Roth never gives the reader any insight into why she behaves as she does. The passages which focus on her are the least interesting. Faunia Farley isn't a monster, but one does not feel particularly compelled to sympathize with her. She comes across merely as a sexual figure, not very bright and much maligned by everyone in the book with the exception of Coleman, whose connection to her is dubious. Is she a victim or the cold-hearted, manipulative catalyst in Coleman's ultimate downfall? Is Delphine intended to be read as a victim? She seems more an indictment against the radical feminism inherent on some college campuses. Roth, as the author, clearly despises her. But why? (And thru it all runs the thread of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal.) So I give this a rather half-hearted recommendation. Roth remains one of my favorite authors and I still look forward to the release of his books. I liked this more than I Married a Communist but for a great read and for those who have never read a Philip Roth novel - my highest recommendation goes to American Pastoral. That is literature of the highest order.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting subject, not as interesting in execution
Review: I had trouble deciding whether to give this novel 3 or 4 stars (they need give a ½ star option on here!). The novel brings up many interesting subjects, such as race, identity, extreme political correctness, and the tendency of many people to use moral righteousness as a weapon in bringing down those they don't like for more petty reasons. These issues were all dealt with in a fair and intelligent manner. In fact, having attended a very liberal university myself, many of the situations in this novel, such as a student claiming a class text is "sexist" to avoid having to struggle though it, and the tendency of many in academia to jump on any comment, word, or statement that could possibly be construed as politically incorrect, regardless of its context, came off as frighteningly realistic. Unfortunately, the ideas that are brought up are actually more interesting to think about in theory than as they are presented in the book. The biggest problem, as an earlier reviewer noted, is that too much of the story is TOLD vs. being SHOWN. In fact, the most major event in the novel, Coleman Silk uttering the word "spooks" in his classroom and the subsequent commotion it causes, is really just kind of briefly mentioned in passing as having happened. This is not to take anything away from Roth's skill as a writer; his prose is beautiful and flowing as always. However, actually seeing some of the novel's events in action as opposed to simply being told by the narrator that they happened would have made the novel a lot more interesting to read. Also, I found the character of Les Farley to be too much of a caricature. It seemed like Roth took all the stereotypes of a deranged Vietnam vet and threw all those characteristics onto one character. I also had trouble with the Delphine Roux character. I appreciated the fact that Roth tried to add depth to her as the novel went on, after initially having her come off as one-dimensional. However, I found her motivations for wanting to bring down Coleman Silk vague at best and silly at worst. "The Human Stain" is worth reading for the bold statements Roth is gutsy enough to make about our culture, but he could have addressed them in a more engaging way
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