The Human Stain is an exquisitely complex novel that delves deep into the examination of race and identity, with politics and human relationships artfully intertwined. The writing, though chaotic, angry, and bitter at times, is also undeniably brilliant. In many respects, this novel was truly ahead of its time.

I read this novel about a decade ago, and recently it has resurfaced in my thoughts. Sometimes a book leaves an indelible mark, and Roth's works often have that effect. Years pass, yet I still find myself reflecting on them. Just the other day, I happened upon an old copy of The Human Stain (complete with my old notes) and began reading it again. Regrettably, I don't have the time to reread it cover to cover at the moment, but I suspect that one day I will. The review I'm sharing today was written years ago, but I've polished it up for this post.

The abundant social satire in The Human Stain is truly enjoyable, especially when directed at the academic community. Roth's ability to make fun of everything so brilliantly can be both distracting and enlightening. His humour, though often dark, contains a kernel of truth that makes you think. In addition to the social satire, the novel offers a significant amount of social commentary and political satire, which I found particularly appealing.

This novel also heavily criticizes political correctness, analysing how it can be misused as a tool. It was written long before the term 'cancel culture' emerged, yet it describes it with remarkable accuracy. The principal character, Coleman Silk, falls victim to cancel culture, being 'cancelled' for using a single word that could be considered offensive.

The narrator of the novel, Nathan Zuckerman, is a well-portrayed character with autobiographical elements. He serves as an objective narrator, tying together all the stories and functioning almost like a private detective. Zuckerman creates a distance from the fascinating and mysterious protagonist, Coleman Silk, and their friendship has a certain similarity to that of Gatsby and Nick in The Great Gatsby.

The plot of The Human Stain, though a bit wordy and chaotic, is incredibly interesting and engaging. It features a complex web of characters and subplots, with the past and present both playing a crucial role in shaping the future. The story of Coleman Silk, an African American who passes for a Jew to achieve his dreams, is both original and thought-provoking.

This novel explores some serious and taboo themes, including the conflict between society and the individual, race, identity, liberty, and personal relationships. Roth's exploration of these themes is bold and unafraid, and his critique of society is often ruthless. Some aspects of the novel can be seen as a critique of modern feminism and PC culture, which may be offensive to some.

In conclusion, The Human Stain is not for the faint of heart. It contains strong language and brutal social satire, but it also asks bold questions and offers a complex and thought-provoking exploration of human nature. Despite its minor flaws, the novel is a successful and deserving recipient of numerous literary awards.

This is one of those books that I truly feel I should have given a higher rating. At least 4 stars. However, I simply find myself unable to do so. Philip Roth is an outstanding writer, and this book is often regarded as perhaps his finest work. The overarching themes in this book are truly inspired. The setting, in the reemergent twilight of America's fixation on sex and purity, like a Puritan hangover, couldn't have been more perfect. Even the title, 'The Human Stain', plays so beautifully on the stain of an all too human sort left by a president on an intern's dress, a stain that would ultimately lead to his downfall.

Sex is a nearly constant theme in all of Roth's novels, along with ruminations on Jewishness and social identity, and this one is no exception. Roth always manages to insert himself in some form into his novels, sometimes indirectly and other times not, but always in a way that leaves us not entirely sure just how much of what we're reading comes from the author's imagination and how much comes from his own experiences.

I quite like Philip Roth, who has long been one of America's greatest masculine writers. If for no other reason, it's because he has endured his fair share of persecution. Whether it's for his alleged sexism (though this seems more likely a product of a libelous ex) or for his startling frankness (as seen in Portnoy's Complaint). The fact that he knows his way around a sentence better than any other living American writer certainly helps. And that holds true once again for 'The Human Stain', a beautifully formulated novel.

So what then is my problem? What is it that keeps me - much as I want to deny it - from adding that fourth star? Simply, that Roth here "doth digress too much." And it's true. Roth has us viewing the life of Coleman Silk from the POV of multiple eyewitnesses, and when that isn't happening, we're dealing with entirely other issues. The awful trials those returning from Vietnam had to endure to try and reintegrate into society (though the scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the novel's best), or entrenched institutional racism, or entrenched institutional classism. All very well presented. But for me, I would have much preferred for Roth to have stuck to what I considered the most intriguing element of the story, that of persecutors and the persecuted. This is fabulously exemplified in the character of Delphine Roux. The epitome of everything one despises about political correctness and the pretentiousness of the academic class. She is so well crafted for instant and lingering despisal and hate that you just know Roth must have known a similar Roux (and haven't we all?).

As a result of all these digressions, this book was something of a slog - until the magnificent fifth and final act of the story began. The climax of which is so perfect and well-done that it just about makes up for the slogging that came before.

In conclusion, it's a worthy and laudable book. One of those that, after reading, you just can't summon up the enthusiasm to wholeheartedly endorse, leaving you apologizing to Roth with an "it's not you, it's me."

In the multitude, one cannot ignore a voice of this kind.

One cannot but feel shaken and prohibited.

One cannot read this book without questioning those few convictions that one tries hard to gather.

I was afraid to read something by this author and I regret not having met him earlier because it really enriches you and whatever you find yourself reading afterwards does not have the same flavor.

We would recommend it.

For me, American literature is the least interesting among all literatures. It doesn't fascinate me with that deadly futility that forces me to explore its depths. Except for Edgar Allan Poe, I haven't found anyone in the history of that literature who is worthy of representing pure greatness. And I admit that the fault lies with me because I haven't read enough of it.

But here I find myself in a very special situation, a situation that forces me to pay attention to that literature and put it at the top of my priorities. This situation is represented by a noble-style human novel, a novel that can change your personal mood and even your important life perspective.

Labels, shame, flaws, taboos, society, all are global concepts that can be found in different cultures and languages. Millions of people have suffered from them throughout their long history. Some of them were defeated by their society and personal shame, while others were able to overcome them and start anew.

We are facing an extremely special novel, through the history of humanity, which is more personal and stranger. So how can one be accused of bigotry when he is in the cell of the persecuted? And how does he resist that accusation? And how does he escape from it? And does he experience a moment of weakness and stand helplessly in front of life and the world, unable to resist? And what makes a classical literature teacher of a noble style follow a woman who is nearly forty years younger than him? And what is the driving force behind that? Is it a physical and sexual urge? Or is it a contract that she entered into and later got out of late?

The novel is a single entity, a high-quality human entity. The author in it deals with the subtlest details of the human soul, revealing to us how we can escape from our destiny. But our destiny never leaves us. It only leaves us to live in our illusion, our own illusion, the illusion of freedom from eternal restrictions and personal obligations, so that it can blow us up once and put us in the mouth of the volcano.

In every sense of the word, the novel is great, great in its events, great in the period it talks about (America in the late 1990s, the days of Monica and Clinton's scandal). And the author was able to skillfully put us in the heart of the fictional time and reveal to us the depths and dimensions of American society.

The author's description is wonderful. Indeed, his description of the expressions of the human face and its details, his description of different human relationships, whether it is a friendship, love, marriage, or even a precise sexual relationship, puts us in the depth of that relationship to make us understand.

The translation of the literary text was extremely good (we must thank Fatima Naout, whom I personally can't handle). But it was a good, understandable, and tasteful translation. Its introduction was useful, and the margins of the translation were more than useful. Overall, the translated text indicates the greatness of the original excellent text.

**Expanded Article**

Scrivevo di là il 1 Aprile un lunedì del 2013

Once upon a time, in a great realm, there was a little boy named Coleman Brutus. He had white skin and green eyes. It was a land where people were divided according to the color of their skin: the whites on one side and the blacks on the other. The whites ruled and the blacks served.

Coleman Brutus was a black with white skin. His people looked at him with compassion because his fairness was a sign of the violence his great-grandmother had endured from a white "boss." He was doubly unfortunate in their eyes, but he didn't see it that way. Far from his neighborhood, mistaken for white, he obtained things that his black brother could only dream of. So why reject what made his life easier, even if only for him? He took advantage of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, where he enlisted as a white.

Discharged, he left his home and native land and began a life as a white man in the capital of the realm. He fell in love with a beautiful girl and introduced her to his mother. He should never have done that: the girl fled when she saw the black mother-in-law. Brutus didn't despair, didn't hate her: the mistake was his. He would never be a black panther. He would be a white man and also a Jew, to enjoy the privileges that that race had in their realm, thanks to the sense of guilt towards them.

Finding a good teaching position, he decided to marry a girl with big, curly, black hair. He went to see his mother again but only to tell her that from that moment on, he would be dead to her, and she to him. He would have another mother and another white and Jewish family to talk about to his wife and children, if he had any. And he had four children, all fortunately white. It was as if Brutus had gone to meet his destiny and not the destiny against Brutus. His career thrived, and for more than forty years, he was a respected white man.

But one bad day, he called two black female students "spook," ghosts. Heaven forbid! The poor Brutus, the white black man, was accused of being a racist, of having meant not ghosts but blacks! The law of retribution of good old Dante. His quick defense was in vain. He could have said that he couldn't be a racist because he was black himself. But he had forgotten that he wasn't white. His life was now his lie.

He resigned, accusing his persecutors of also being the murderers of his wife, from whom he lived separately at home, stricken by a stroke at that moment. To challenge reverse racism (which had been established in the meantime in the realm, accompanied by eternal homophobia: King Billy was accused of fellatio), he started a relationship with a girl forty years younger, an outcast, perhaps an ex-prostitute, who cleaned the toilets in the school and milked the cows in a commune. The girl also had an ex-husband, a veteran of twenty years in Vietnam: very disturbed, very violent, and very jealous. Our hero knew his intention to carry out a double murder-suicide.

When Brutus was found with the beautiful girl inside the car at the bottom of the pond, the rumor spread - all homophobic like in the land of De Andrè - that the old man had lost control in a curve while the lover was performing fellatio on him (the fantasy of a nation!). The thing, needless to say, was believed by everyone, and the poor, unhappy, crazy veteran, the perpetrator of the incident, had to give up his Crime and Punishment, commanding himself, in a desolate heath, his personal Siberia.

Brutus died without his secret being revealed: like any dirty white man. Only one writer suffering from urinary incontinence and a friend of the old Brutus didn't believe in the sordid incident. He therefore decided to write the true story of Coleman Brutus. But like everything that is told in books, it was destined not to be believed, and the true life of Brutus, his work of art, could survive at least that river of words, without being distorted by the superfluous truth of fiction.

In formal terms, "The Human Stain" is pure tragedy, and so it's no use shouting against Roth and his emotional manipulation as it's part of the genre and is in the essence of the fabric of human relationships cut out to be told to us. What we can analyze is how he does it, trying to understand if it's just the exploitation of feelings or if those are there to serve something greater, and there are few doubts when we finish reading the last paragraph. "The Human Stain" is human, its essence is us, and through tragedy, Roth takes us inside ourselves, rids us of the debris of social life, of its fears, guilts, and shames, and forces us to reflect on what's left of us.

Coleman Silk reached the peak of his career as the president of an American university, and his fall is the central theme of the tragedy. Roth focuses on those who will accompany him in that descent, the writer friend Zuckerman (sort of an alter-ego of Roth), and the confrontation between his pre-university past, the present, and the future. This is the backdrop that will allow Roth to explore the most intricate human behaviors, from power to racism, from friendship to family, from love to hate. All this can be seen in the同名电影directed by Robert Benton, which features none other than Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. But although it can give us a clear understanding of the story and is a good film, it is immensely far from the book.

It's not just about the detail or the difference between the different media. The difference here is evidenced by Roth's mastery in handling writing. The way he crafted the plot in an encapsulated and non-linear structure, for which he created characters that are not only superb and interesting but also described in a profuse, intense, and extremely intimate way. With the non-linearity constantly revealing new discoveries as we read and understand more about each character. Roth doesn't use non-linearity just as a device for the reader's participation but rather to enrich what he's telling us, thus taking us deeper and deeper into each of the involved characters.

From some analyses I read, especially in the comparison of Roth's so-called "American Trilogy," in which "American Pastoral" (1997) would be the first volume, "I Married a Communist" (1998) the second, and "The Human Stain" (2000) the third, it seems to be consensus that, although "American Pastoral" won the Pulitzer, "The Human Stain" is the pinnacle, not only of the trilogy but of Roth's work. Probably because it goes further in the analysis of people, focusing on the effects of social conventions that bind and domesticate them, and less on the political components of each of the represented moments.

On the other hand, and contrary to what I've sometimes said here on the blog, the amount of work created by Roth has not come out as repetition, more of the same, but rather as the improvement of his mastery, with this evolving continuously throughout his career. Roth was 70 years old when he wrote "The Human Stain," and that shows. Much of what is said here could not have been thought by someone in their 30s or 40s. It requires life experience, living, suffering, getting things right and wrong. His writing has thus become more intense, intricate, and intimate, being responsible for much of what the experience of his narrated tragedies transforms into.

To finish, I want to leave an excerpt from a passage in which Roth uses a reference to a movement of Mahler, which he describes beautifully, and taking advantage of the multimedia particularity of the blog, I leave the music, hoping to provide a special moment for those who wish to read while listening.

[VIDEO]
Mahler, Symphony No 3, by Abbado

“The walk to the cemetery, three blocks away, was in large part memorable for the fact that, apparently, it didn't happen. At one moment we were paralyzed by the infinite vulnerability of Mahler's adagio, by that simplicity that is not artifice, that is not a strategy, that almost seems to unfold with the accumulated rhythm of life and with all the reluctance of life to end… at one moment we were paralyzed by that rare juxtaposition of grandeur and intimacy that begins in the serene, singing, and contained intensity of the strings and then rises, in waves, through the heavy false ending that leads to the true, the prolonged, the magnificent ending… at one moment we were paralyzed by the crescendo, the ascent, the culmination, and the calm of an elegiac orgy that spreads, spreads, at a determined rhythm that never changes, receding only to come back like a pain or a longing that doesn't disappear… at one moment we were, carried away by the increasing insistence of Mahler…” excerpt from "The Human Stain"

For reading with links, images, and video, read at: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...

Schludrig zusammen geschusterte Ansammlung von allerlei Bedeutsamkeiten und Banalitäten

WARNING: For me, thanks to the reporting on the rather botched film, there were no surprises in the points. That is to say, I was maximally spoiled by the hints about the credibility gaps in the casting. Therefore, in my review, I also do not take into account people who have no idea yet about Coleman Silk's dark secret. You are hereby warned, so don't complain in the comments. I have much better arguments to keep you away from this masterpiece than the hint about the actual racial affiliation of the character played by Anthony Hopkins. I would have liked to have had a warning about the absolutely inconsistent quality of this perennial Nobel Prize candidate, who must continue to live with the stigma of mediocrity in my memory. Without the slightest chance of making amends, even if Philip Roth may have achieved something more coherent in recent years or the author has surely written more in-depth about every man's best friend and his performance ability in old age.

The old quartet players MRR and Helmut Karasek were always around in Philip Roth's novels - and for a good reason. After all, old sacks were the measure of all things for younger women. Even without any financial ulterior motives. This number gets PR somewhat wrong in The Human Stain. A young professor from France shoots the ex-dean off the campus because of a supposedly racist remark about two black students that the old professor has never seen.

His Jewish wife, who belongs to an alternative identity, dies of a stroke during the subsequent argument. The old professor discovers Viagra at the age of 71 and a cleaner for himself who has gone astray due to abuse as a child and was once married to a Vietnam veteran who still stalks her, especially since he blames her for the death of the two children who suffocated in the apartment while she was having sex with her current lover in the truck outside. With the old sack, she has nothing but sex, and with the attitude of a professional, she never stays overnight with Silk, with a single exception that means the end for both of them, but only because the author botched it or the editorial board fell asleep. Because it is never told why Faunia and Professor Silk are sitting in the same car and how the murderous ex-husband, who has been driving around Pittsfield all day, is supposed to know that too, when she always used to drive away alone in any kind of bad weather.

Clichés as far as the eye can see

The old, educated man and the uneducated slut who is actually a good person and would rather be free as a bird is the cliché of the love couple and the main attraction for critical popes in their advanced years, who even allows experienced readers to overlook the remaining recycled elements and other banalities. At the latest since Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, the post-Vietnam psychopath has been a fixed part of American everyday life. Pathological stalkers and ex-husbands have been part of the crime discourse since the mid-eighties. The memorial for veterans came in the early nineties in films and novels. All these already frequently used standards are combined by PR in Faunia's ex-husband, who survives the motiveless suicide attempt by colliding with the car of his ex's lover, who Faunia never had to drive home before. The scene with the second face must have escaped me. Also the last gasp of the old Chevy on the way back from the animal shelter. Errors in the details can happen to any author*, but at such a central point, one must not be sloppy.

Nevertheless, I was even more annoyed about the other cliché. The bottled-up professor and merciless feminist actually dreams of a guy like Coleman Silk, and he would even be available again after Faunia has become engaged to a magpie in the last scene before the accident, or Coleman's ring has been hidden in its cage in the bird station. Some people may even find it tragic or meaningful that the right pot has no longer found its lid, especially since all the reasons for the veteran's suicide attempt were already obsolete. But this sloppiness really disgusts me.

And now - WARNING, HUGE SPOILER DANGER!!!! - I come to the dark secret of Coleman Silk, who changed his identity as a light-skinned colored person with sufficient experience with Jewish boxers. The part about his youth as a colored person was also not really new, but the IXth infusion of novels by African-American authors, to which PR also added his tried and tested Jewish DNA. However, the sports cannon, who could only be the best in all other subjects as well, seemed almost incredibly excellent to me. The change of race through a simple false statement when enlisting in the Navy was quite nice, but somehow also just literary average. In some chapters (e.g. the last love scene), it could already be noticed that the author had really made an effort. One could actually smell the author's sweat and a rather strong masculine scent, but what use are such individual outbreaks of artistic ambition if the overall work is so affected by so many inconsistencies and banalities?

Also, the dealing with the hypocrisy of political correctness is reduced to the complexes of a French professor who simply can't get the right guy in the States, or a few dirty jokes about Bill Clinton and his too indecisive handling of Monica Lewinsky (He should have fucked her in the ass), which are made without the slightest hint of the scenery, no visuals at all. Only a few pages later, the reader is told that Coleman is just eavesdropping on a few young professors on the campus.

* Yesterday I also eliminated a frosted footbridge that sparkled in the evening sun in one of my novels because during the revision the entire plot had been shifted a quarter of a year backwards.

Shaming Censors of Academic Speech: A Pox on the PC Police

My favorite Roth novel. I will miss the lusty old tale-hound.

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told 'That's offensive' as though those two words constitute an argument.” Christopher Hitchens

Coleman Silk, a professor of classics at a local esteemed college, has been accused of racism by two African American students. After noticing they never attend his class, he mumbles: "Do they exist or are they spooks?" Roth brilliantly uses the ambiguous word "spook" with multiple legitimate meanings. Wikipedia's comprehensive definition shows its various uses, only one of which is racially offensive. Silk claims he used it sarcastically to imply the possibility of the students attending as ghosts. I won't digress too much on the issue of "political correctness" run amok in academia, misused as a tool of censorship. The narrator is Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Roth based the novel on an incident involving his friend at Princeton. Silk resigns in anger and raises the stakes when he dates a younger custodian. The irony is that Silk is an African American who has been passing as Jewish and white. Against the backdrop of the 1998 Clinton scandal, Roth develops what I believe is his best novel, raising questions of identity and self-invention. Two poignant passages are: "There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies." and "I couldn't imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing."

____________________________________

**Footnote on Political Correctness

From Roger Kimball, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America: "As with most revolutions, the counterculture's call for total freedom quickly turned into a demand for total control. The phenomenon of 'political correctness', with its speech codes and other efforts to enforce ideological conformity, was one predictable result of this transformation. What began at the University of California at Berkeley with the Free Speech Movement soon degenerated into an effort to abridge freedom by dictating what could and could not be said about politically sensitive issues."

From David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays: "There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact--in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself--of vast[ ]... help to conservatives and the US status quo.... Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed using taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PC progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as 'low-income' or 'economically disadvantaged' or 'pre-prosperous' rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates. [...] In other words, PCE acts as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo."

Intricate and Lingering

This story vividly recalls the time when my law school faced a lawsuit. The details might be a bit hazy as it was quite a while ago. After my first year in law school, my grades were good enough to transfer to any law school I desired. However, my current school presented a sheet of paper with their employment statistics, stating an average employment rate of 80% and an average starting salary of $65,000. Thinking this was acceptable, I continued on my current path, graduating in the top 10% of my class and passing the Bar on the first attempt.

I sent out a whopping 2,000 resumes, yet I didn't receive a single offer of full-time employment. Then, I learned about the lawsuit. Apparently, everything on that sheet of paper was a lie. If a graduate was working a non-legal job, it was counted as employed. That 80% employment statistic included legal graduates working at Starbucks, pushing carts at Wal-Mart, or working part-time as substitute teachers. The true employment rate was closer to 30%. And that $65,000 average starting salary? Again, lies. The school only considered the two or three people who wrote down their salaries.

So, how did the court case turn out? Well, the law school made representations, which were false. The Court found that the school intentionally misled or lied. Students relied on the misrepresentations, and there were damages. But, surprisingly, the students were denied relief. Why? The Court determined that the students' reliance was not reasonable. It was absurd to expect the 21-year-old, naïve, and destitute law students to know that the school was lying. They were supposed to have unfettered access to alumni, be able to call up every single person in their free time, ask about career prospects and current earnings. And the alumni, who were not disgruntled from being cheated, would always cheerfully answer promptly and honestly.

The entire reason I went to law school was to earn a living wage. My parents couldn't support me, and I didn't have the luxury of shaking my fist at the injustice. I had to pivot quickly. I ended up taking some accounting classes and becoming a CPA. While I was able to put food on the table, I spent the next decade burdened by student loans based on lies.

In "The Human Stain," it's the summer of 1998, and Coleman Silk is the Dean at a small college when a false allegation of racism shatters his world. Coleman has been unjustly dealt a blow by the world. Now, most books would either end with a fade to black, paint the protagonist in a sympathetic light like "Oliver Twist" ('oh the poor starving orphan'), or follow the classic vengeance plot like "The Count of Monte Cristo." But Roth, refreshingly, takes readers in an entirely different direction. "He remained unable to gauge what was and wasn't in his long-term interest." Something bad happened to Coleman, but should he let it define his entire life? Is he served by being bitter and shaking his fist at the injustice?

"The Human Stain" has many layers and offers a splendid feast for consideration. It's a classic book that you'll discover something new with each reread. There's a lot about identity, intertwined with complex characters asking deep questions. One of my favorite characters is Professor Delphine Roux. "You really think that this is important stuff in the world? It's not that important. It's not important at all." Interestingly, Philip Roth got into a dispute with Wikipedia over the page for "The Human Stain." A Wikipedia contributor claimed that Roth based the Coleman Silk character off of Anatole Broyard. However, Roth himself denied this, stating that he barely knew Broyard and Coleman was based off of a friend of his who was teaching at Princeton in 1985. Wikipedia told Roth that he "was not a credible source." Now, Roth, are you going to shake your fist at the injustice or take some action? LOL!

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $25.75 from eBay (First edition, First print)
Softcover Text – $11.94 from Blackwell’s

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A wonderful and thrilling book. It is my first Roth and I really want to read everything by this author!

This book has truly amazed me with its captivating story and engaging writing style. From the very first page, I was drawn into the world that Roth has created.

The characters are well-developed and complex, making it easy to become invested in their lives and experiences. The plot twists and turns, keeping me on the edge of my seat until the very end.

I can't wait to explore more of Roth's works and see what other masterpieces he has in store. His writing has a unique charm that makes it a pleasure to read.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story and is looking for something new and exciting to read.

Philip Roth is an undeniably great and imposing figure in American letters. Perhaps he is the greatest, and perhaps the most imposing. When he announced his retirement from writing, famously doing so with a French magazine a few years ago, even I, who had never read a book by him at that point, was a little shocked and a little saddened. His figure is so large that it affects those who know him only by name. Every year, as America is passed over for the Nobel Prize again and again, American literary critics flood the internet with editorials asking when this man's recognition will come. Set aside the absurdity of this outrage - no country has received as many Nobels as the last remaining superpower - and you see a man who has an entire country cheering for him.

I'm not American, and I'm not going to be cheering for him to win the Nobel, even the next American Nobel. But after hate-reading the first two-thirds of this novel and squarely enjoying the last third, I can appreciate how his literary skill is of a high enough standard to be deserving, at least in the eyes of some.

In this novel, we follow the story of a novelist as he tries to exonerate a friend whose life was destroyed by some oddly modern desire to destroy our contemporary man through defamation. In the process, the novelist - that famous Nathan Zuckerman - learns a great secret about the man, something truly impressive yet heartbreaking. I won't share the secret here, as I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, but it's an intriguing secret that I never would have imagined myself. Out of Zuckerman's attempt to exonerate his friend of false charges, we meet a host of characters. The man's children, his mistress, the mistress' ex-husband, the mistress' boss, the man's wife, his mother, brother, and sister, his father, and his great nemesis, a coworker he hired while he was the dean at the local university. It is this coworker, a weekend warrior of the social variety, who seems responsible for the man's downfall. Again, though, I don't wish to say too much. I don't like spoiling books.

The characters, overall, feel a bit cliché. I mean, I'm sorry, but that woman you hired was just a bit too cliché, that great man's sister and his father a bit too classically of that nature we suspect is true but is only real in movies. That ex-husband, you know him already; he's a war veteran and deadly furious about being a war veteran. But maybe the whole cliché thing was the point, in a way, just to make it seem like we're all clichés in a way. Though that doesn't quite fit in with the idea that comes through at the end of the novel (and which itself is broken by that last encounter on a secluded lake in the mountains) - that we cannot know anybody else better than we know ourselves, and we likely can't know ourselves whatsoever. (It's worth pointing out, though, that this second theme is a great deal weaker than the first, which makes the entire theme a little underdeveloped. What's more intriguing is how the characters in this book try to alter everybody else in the book as a result of their meager understandings of the other characters.) This inconsistency is okay. Judging by the reviews I've read here and elsewhere, and the awards this book has received, it wasn't an inconsistency that most people were alarmed by.

It also seems that most people weren't alarmed by the writing. This is rather surprising to me, to be frank. To be honest, entirely honest, because honesty is the only thing we can offer a world that doesn't know us and doesn't seem to care to know us, and how can it if we don't know ourselves as well, the writing was a bit too self-indulgent. Oftentimes I found that what could be said perfectly well with one sentence or one word was bandied around on itself, rolling over and over in a rotating swirl of redundancy. The repetition didn't help; it may have even hindered the clarity, and the lack of precision was ultimately not to the book's benefit. Everything, somehow, felt cloudy as I read the book. I should note that I found the text was remarkably readable given the reputation of the author - he is, apparently, a great wordsmith, a great shaper of sentences, and he apparently uses very difficult language. But no, he is none of these things because he is just writing variations on a theme over and over and over again. Simplicity? Maybe not. Overwritten? Dear lord yes. I don't always subscribe to the idea that one word, one sentence, is better at describing something than a flurry of them, but in this situation, it must be said to be true. Because of the over-writing, I have no clear images of this world or these characters, or even, necessarily, of their feelings and emotions. Where is the earthiness, the physicality, the reality? Isn't this man supposed to be a realist? Why was there so little for me to grasp hold of and chew? The over-writing was not to the benefit of the story; a good editor would have taken this poor attempt at writing poetic prose and converted it to a great, concise, wonderful novella. But how do you do that with Philip Roth, that great man of American letters?

I didn't much like the writer narrator conceit and often felt like it led to too much damned preaching, too many damned questions which Roth wanted the reader to consider but perhaps didn't trust his story-telling had led us to on its own merit. Oftentimes it did lead us there, because Roth is a good novelist. Oftentimes it didn't, because Roth is nothing more than a good novelist. In the last third of the book, which is the best third of the book and when Zuckerman really comes into himself as a character, I couldn't help but wonder that if those questions mattered, Mr. Zuckerman, or Mr. Roth, or whoever you are, shouldn't you be looking for a more honest, more authorly manner of bringing them to the reader? I've read in many commentaries and articles about how Roth's Zuckerman was a means for him to write himself into the books, so that the very idea of being an author of our own reality could be explored a bit. I couldn't help but sense that it was a bit lazy, to be frank. But then again, the authorship question is one that is interesting. I, as a burgeoning author and, besides the idea of being a writer, one who enjoys observing the world and writing stories in my head about how people got to where they are, this idea is one that I could get a hold of, could connect to, and would even really like to explore in the literature that I read and write. I just think that other writers have explored it better in other works and without being so damned patronizing to the reader. If you enjoy this theme, though, I can't recommend highly enough J.M. Coetzee's Foe.

I understand that endings are hard to write. I get that. I appreciate that. You want that perfect line, that perfect scenario, that right flow, that right fit, that thing that feels just right but is impossible to describe because you know it when you feel it or see it, or read it, and maybe you know it after you've written it and after you've re-written it many times. Haven't I said it already? That thing is perfect, and you know it by its perfection. (I'm sorry for the over-writing here, I'm trying to prove a point.) But this book had many opportunities to end before it did, and those endings would have been plenty satisfactory, maybe even better than the one we got. The one we were provided with dragged on, felt unnecessary, and didn't offer me anything new to ponder or appreciate or admire in the characters. But I did feel like we explored something a bit more Coen Brothers-esque, or like Cormac McCarthy. I guess that was nice, if it was also a noticeable shift in writing. That said, that last line, like a dozen or so other lines in the book, is damned near perfect.

I've only ever hate-read one other book to the point of completion, and with that book, I didn't decide I enjoyed it so much in the end. That book remains a source of frustration for me, the sort that you remember spending 5 weeks reading and wondering why you devoted yourself to such drivel for so long for something so unrewarding. In that case, I was ideologically opposed to the writer (and I'll never forgive you for those five weeks, Ayn Rand). In this book, upon completion, I was satisfied. Despite the often bad writing, the cliché characters, the neverending ending, I could appreciate that the mind behind this book was damned intelligent while he was writing it. I'd even say that the bundle of themes he constructed, even if a little conservative in nature and presentation, a little cliché, a little ignorant perhaps, and certainly a little too white and male in its way of understanding America at the end of a century, I would still say the bundle of themes he constructed is rewarding and interesting. Sure, I've not rolled my eyes this much at a book since I read Donna Tartt, and now that I think of it, I can see the pollution of this kind of bad writing in all sorts of contemporary American literature (Which is too bad. There are much better writers in contemporary American fiction who would be much more suitably mimicked. And don't even get me started on the dialogue). But unlike Tartt, there are some great redeeming qualities to this book that were never present in The Goldfinch.

Is this the masterpiece so many make it out to be? No. Not by my reading. Is it good? It is. Will I read more Roth? Yes. But I'll read other living Americans first. Vollmann, Pynchon, Erdrich, Morrison. I'll give DeLillo a try, and McElroy, Ozick, Stegner. I'll let them amaze me and disappoint me in their own ways, and then I'll come back to Roth. Maybe this time something shorter, like his stories which launched his career, in the hopes of finding something a bit more restrained in the writing but still benefiting from a man with a great skill for observing humanity in its most cliché and dark manners.

Roth's Human Stain

In his extensive writing career, Philip Roth has continuously delved deeper into his themes, honing his understanding of human character and perfecting his novelist's craft. His novel, "The Human Stain," is not only engaging but also deeply thought-provoking, making it a valuable addition to American fiction in the early 21st century.

The title itself encapsulates the primary theme of the book. A significant aspect of human life is intertwined with sexuality and physicality. Ignoring or minimizing this aspect can have perilous consequences, a theme that pervades the entire narrative. Roth, with a different perspective from John Updike, writes passionately about the central role of sexuality in human existence.

The story is set against the backdrop of the Clinton impeachment hearings. The main protagonist, Coleman Silk, is a 71-year-old former professor of Classics and Dean of a small New England college. He has resigned due to an investigation into a classroom remark that some deemed racist. His wife of many years has passed away, and he becomes romantically involved with a 34-year-old divorced woman with little education who works as a janitor at the college. Silk's former colleagues, children, and acquaintances are skeptical of this affair. He befriends Nathan Zukerman, an alter ego who appears in many of Roth's novels and tells Silk's story.

Silk has achieved great success, but in part by denying important aspects of his life. He is of African-American ancestry but light-skinned enough to pass for white. At the age of 27, he callously abandons his family to marry a white woman, fearing she would reject him if she knew his true heritage. He never reveals this secret. Roth's book poignantly shows how difficult it is for one person to truly know another.

Another major theme is individual self-determination in life choices, as opposed to following the path of the group one was born into. Roth explores this theme skillfully, with all its pain and ambiguity, through the choices Zuckerman has made. While many might argue that people should stay and develop within their group, Roth seems to celebrate the freedom modern secular democracy offers for people to change and pursue their dreams. However, it's important to note that this is different from completely denying one's origins.

The book is filled with memorable scenes, such as Coleman Silk's early fascination with boxing and numerous literary allusions. There are references to Homer and Euripides, fitting for a classics professor. Euripides, with his naturalism and recognition of the power of sexuality, is an excellent choice for emphasis in this novel. There are also beautiful passages highlighting the power of music, including a lovely description of Coleman's 19-year-old lover dancing in his college flat. Mahler's music and the powerful pianist Yefim Bronfman also feature prominently.
Coleman's 34-year-old lover is vividly described. She teaches Coleman, late in his life, the importance of sexuality, human contact, and the need to see and accept things as they are, as well as understand the inevitability of change.
Readers who enjoy "The Human Stain" might also appreciate Saul Bellow's "Ravelstein," which raises many similar issues. Bellow's novel tells the story of a philosophy professor who, like Silk, specializes in the ancient Greeks, but focuses on Plato rather than Euripides. Both books are narrated by a friend of the protagonist who is a novelist and asks them to write a narrative to remember their lives. Both involve stories of sexual passion and explore the opportunities and challenges in the United States, where people can, in a real sense, become who they are. Roth's and Bellow's novels, the works of two of our greatest writers in their later years, provide a vivid picture of the potential of American life in modern times.
Robin Friedman