4.5 stars for The Human Stain

books:


	• The Human Stain: A Novel Philip Roth Vintage, 2001 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 197 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A Life Based on a Lie!

Dean Coleman Silk had kept a secret that he was actually light-skinned African American who passed for Jewish and maintained that identity for the rest of his life. According to Philip Roth's alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, Silk chose to live this way. While most of us would abhor such a decision, Roth helps us to understand how Silk who probably never fit in the African American world because he was too light but let people assume he was Jewish. I felt so bad for his family who he disowned. His poor mother who was never acknowledged to Iris. Who was Iris anyway? Maybe she would have accepted, she appeared to be more understanding that COleman gives her credit for. You just don't sympathize with Coleman because you don't understand how somebody could live a lie and how it effected his family's life as well as his children, wife, relatives and friends. You wonder if he told the truth, how much richer his life would have been. Maybe Iris and her family would accept their African American relatives.

for more information click here

Off Color

With each novel that I read of Philip Roth's, I become more of a fan. With the hot button issues of race, religion, and sexuality addressed in the book, it would seem hard for Roth not to make this an interesting read. As a whole, I enjoyed the book. Lacking any real surprise, the book's ending is somewhat anticlimactic and far too drawn out.

Parallel to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Coleman Silk has a scandal of his own. Forced to resign from the university that he made great after referring to two absent students as "spooks" without knowing their race. The irony of the resignation is that Silk is concealing his black heritage. Bitter towards the world, Silk becomes a recluse taking only an association with an author and an illiterate custodian into his new world. The custodian brings baggage including an abusive former husband that still carries the scars of Vietnam. The former husband is not the only person the disapproves of the relationship. Seeing his relationship with the custodian as exploitive, one of his bitter former colleagues takes the offense to further damage Silk's image.

Roth alludes to Silk's death enough times before it happens that he almost does not need to tell that part of the story. After the death, Silk's author friend Nathan Zuckerman continues to explore Silk's life but only find more bitterness from Silk's family and place blame for Silk's death. It seems to be a literary device to address certain themes one last time.

"The Human Stain" is a fast paced novel that is easily engaging with the numerous conflicts that evolve. The book only loses steam in the end. Were it not for this flaw, I could give it five stars.

for more information click here

4.5 stars for The Human Stain

In this book Roth sets the story of an African- American college professor who has spent his adult life "passing: as white against the backdrop of the Clinton -Monica Lewinsky scandal. The character of Coleman Silk is shattered by an ironic and unfair accusation of racism at the school that forces him to end his career while preserving his secret. He begins an affair with a female janitor at the school who is divorced from an angry and unbalanced VietNam Vet from whom she had suffered abuse. Her tragic past collides with SIlk's tragic present resulting in the story's slow build toward a disasterous end. An American tragedy that has people victimized by circumstances beyond their control as well as by their own decisions , the Human Stain is a complex story that examines hypocrisy and racial, economic and social biases in American Society.

for more information click here

a contemptible pleasure

Not only have I not been so moved by a book for a while, but I hadn't been moved by a book by Philip Roth in an even longer time. I had a brief fascination with Roth back in graduate school, and then all interest for him fell by the wayside.

Then, a student of mine, one with whom I could talk delightfully about DeLillo, Barthelme, even Beckett, told me that she had read _American Pastoral_, and that it had changed her life. When I went to get said book, I found out then (and only then) that this book was also written by Roth. I knew of the movie, and had thankfully not seen it yet, and decided to get to this one first.

Roth does have a tendency to get a little long-winded, with paragraphs that cover pages at a time, but I think that man has earned the privelege at this point. The scope and depth of character that he achieves, all in the name of the search for personality, is overwhelming. Coleman Silk is both sympathetic and repulsive, probably a staple of Roth since _Portnoy's Complaint_, as this classics professor is undone by a simple miscontruing of context--turns out, the missing students that he wonders aloud about the possibility of being 'spooks' are black, and this man who is steadfast in his ego and place in the world goes more than a little haywire and winds up befriending writer Nathan Zuckerman in order to have his tale told--but does Coleman want the REAL story, or just his own version of it?

Zuckerman, of course, delves into the depths of the relationships among people in this academically incestuous town. Coleman is demanding and secretive, but to extreme ends, which also makes him quite sad. Roth even explores with alarming pathos into the mind of Les, an abusive ex-husband who is a Vietnam vet. There is a constant fight here when it comes to happiness and identity--those who think, and those who experience, and Roth adeptly never comes down on one side or another.

There is, of course, something a little gratuitous about Roth's handling of Delphine Roux, a female literary critic and language professor who seems unable to please herself in any way, once she lets herself think about what she is doing, but the entire cast that Roth creates pales her out enough to make her presence not so scathing.

There were times that I struggled with this book, and got angry at its direction, but I would only offer that as testament to its brilliance--to develop intricate feelings and revulsions over a book is something to offer as a highlight.

for more information click here

Identity check

On one level, this is the story of an old-school classics professor, formerly the powerful dean of his New England college, who is driven to resign on charges of racism then further alienates members of the community through his subsequent actions. On another, most strikingly, it is a book about identity and the degree to which we may reinvent ourselves, not merely building on our backgrounds but even rewriting them. On yet another, it is a meditation on the American decline from the postwar years through the trauma of Vietnam to the moral relativity of the Clinton era. On all these levels, Roth succeeds magnificently. Perhaps he is over-fond of extended ruminations which almost become sermons, and I also wonder whether the campus politics setting would work for all audiences. But he has a wonderfully sly method of keeping the reader on his toes by interjecting important events and disclosures almost as asides, while revealing layer upon layer of his increasingly interesting characters.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

NY Times Top 25 novels of the last 25 years.
Philosophers' Favorite Fiction
Books Read in 2008 Part 2
The Great American Novel
Books that Cast Light

search for books
human, novel, stain

Impressum / about us