Fantastic book beautifully writen

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	• The Human Stain: A Novel Philip Roth Vintage, 2001 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 194 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A tremendous read..

I read this book based on recommendations from friends, I have seen the movie and found the actors from the movie getting in the way of the book. It took a significant amount of time to get rid of the images of Anthony Hopkins etc. Take it that the book is a very pale image of the work, and it would be better not to see the movie prior to reading the book.
The writing, as you would expect is exceptional. I did find a significant amount of the language quite crude, however it is still a masterpiece. There are elegant swipes at the academic pseudo-liberalism and infighting, a significant swipe at over-analysis, great characterisation and significant plot points interweaving throughout.
So the only quibble I have is the narrator - Nathan Zuckerman writes this book about his friend Coleman Silk, Coleman's secret is gradually revealed etc. however the narrative voice slips too often from Nathan to what can really only be Coleman's interior self. I think the slow revelation of Coleman's steely, inhuman determination can only be illustrated by a third party, the narrative therefore should not contain so much of what Coleman felt, even if sometimes it is expressed as Zuckermann's view of what Coleman might/must have felt. This aside, it's a tremendous read

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One of Roth's best...

This book pretty much has a little bit of everything: a scathing attack on American sexual and racial pathology, an impassioned defense of un-castrated male and female sexuality, an apologetic celebration of the sexual instinct regardless of age or class boundaries, a full frontal assault on the inanity and hypocrisy of the politically correct American academy, an examination of our nation's tortured racial and class history, an existential meditation on the power of imminent mortality to upend and transform our everyday lives---this is in short, an incredibly rich and dense book, happily carried along by Roth's incomparably superb prose style.

Yes there are slow spots where he rambles a bit too much and gives us a lot more social history than we particularly care for, but once you learn to skim through those sections it is really a brisk read. I kind of wish there was less about Lester, the nutty Vietnam vet's interior landscape, and more about the relationship between Faunia Farley and Coleman Silk. The ending has an interesting Zen-like, not-knowing/unknowable quality to it that is both ominous and fascinating. If you are looking for a neat, all-questions-answered resolution this is not the book for you.

Needless to say, it's worth reading even if you've seen the movie, which is actually pretty good for a novelistic adaptation.

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Mixed feelings

Let me just start with the silliest comment: the only way to find out whether you like this book or not, is by reading it. Most reviews here and on Amazon.uk reflect ambivalent feelings. After turning the last page, mine was not altogether negative, but not entirely positive either. This was also my first book by Philip Roth.

Ageing but vigorous professor Coleman Silk is accused of racism in the classroom and forcefully rejecting it (in vain), he chooses to retire after a long, fulfilling and esteemed teaching career. His tale is told by his friend, writer Nathan Zuckerman. Hardly acknowledging each other for years, a friendship begins and Zuckerman tries to understand the multiple facets defining Silk's personality. Unbeknownst to him, he will later discover a secret that Silk has kept for decades, a secret which his life had been, and still is, based on.

Looping around the main theme, there are other characters who are connected with Silk and bear relevance. In the background, Coleman's parents and siblings. Their beginnings, the struggles to send all their children to proper schools for the best education possible. We then have his wife, a strong, independent personality who died during the `racism ordeal', and their four adult children (it's 1998 by then). Silk's bursting rage and pain towards these two -to him- related events (the accusations and his wife's death), find a degree of comfort through the acquaintance -later developing into something much more- of Faunia, a janitor in the Athena college where he used to teach. Faunia, a tormented soul herself, does not seem to be left alone by her ex-husband, Les, who keeps stalking her after a terrible tragedy struck at their home some years previously. Some other characters from the past who are irretrievably connected with Coleman, pop into the picture. His former girlfriend, Steena, met and loved in his twenties. The young French dean at Athena, Dolphine Roux, who supported the racism accusations. Zuckerman himself finds a niche for some of his personal details.

So many people, so many different personalities, so many tragedies. This book explores a variety of themes -race, rape, depression, death, loneliness- which make it certainly for a substantial, full-of-texture read. It also speaks of love, love for a profession, for a person, for life in general, but the intricacy with which the author interpolates this concept is open to debate. This is why I cannot define in full its identifying quality, or, for that matter, what exactly I did not like about this book. Perhaps a certain dislike for the structure of some of the chapters: sentences which do not see a full stop, a pause, for an entire page for example. This rendered the read a bit tedious. Also, I found the numerous references to the Clinton/Lewinski's `interlude' somewhat irrelevant to the core of the story and if the purpose was to pinpoint that Silk's own story began to unfold back then, in 1998, well, it was clear enough already. Not to mention the final paragraphs -and this is not a spoiler- when an incredible and unrealistic conversation ensues in a cemetery. I mean, was that to supply the reader with some final `answers' -which could not have been `real' anyway since it was all a mental image?- .

And yet. Coleman Silk is a personage. And his secret, the secret from which we are often distracted due to a number of superimposed, unnecessary (to me) details, is the central theme of this book. Like it or not, mixed feelings or not, I've never written such a long review before. There must be a reason, although I myself am not sure what that is. What I am sure about is that this tale is so imbued with wrenching issues that it cannot fail to dazzle, provoke and stimulate conversations.

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Fantastic book beautifully writen

Amazing book, written by a master, I recommend this to everyone. It is poetic, and real, one of Roth's best novels. If you enjoy reading this book is for you.

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

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.

Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."

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