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dorareadsstuff 's review for:
The Human Stain
by Philip Roth
It's cuckoo bananas that this book was written in the year 2000.
I'm not much of a politics girlie either but the parallels, or predictions, Phillip Roth makes between cancel culture, identity politics, and the general way the world, but especially America, addresses race today, are so impactful and witty and horrible and true, that it was hard for me to hate Coleman Silk.
His resolve to follow his life the way he decided to is something I would never have the cajones to do. Although this decision ultimately separated him from society, his family, his workplace, his "lovers", and even parts of himself, for the kind of freedom he wanted, this method was:
"Highly Effective But Largely Colorless"
(as Anna would collage it)
It would have been so easy for Roth to get lost in the sauce of academic injustice and first-world problems but he was a good writer so he included other perspectives. He included heartbreakingly strong Faunia and Mrs. Silk. Unstable Les, loving Louie, and unshakeable Walt. Foreignly French Delphine and lost little Markie and idealistic Lisa. Wild Iris and wise Steena and free Ellie. It was (all you English majors ignore the following literary sacrilege) like a condensed, modern, accessible— American— War and Peace. Little bits of the world trickled in through all the characters. The characters who all felt so much, who all held stories within themselves, from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of trauma.
My least favorite? The "stained" perpetrator.
Nathan Zuckerman, the Jewish narrator, only finds out about Silk’s “identity” at his funeral after talking to a relative. He then embarks on the journey of writing, researching, overthinking, and imagining every past interaction as he steps more into his role of a self-aware-meta-puzzle-solver, only to arrive at the circular conclusion that the truths are endless just as are “the lies within ourselves.” Every stain that this Zuckerman recluse was exposed to he thought stemmed from Silk. Everything he had neatly tucked away within himself, due to his faulty prostate or elderly and tired mind alike, "rushed in." Even in the wilderness with Faunia and the crows and Les and the lake, their rituals of purity, he writes for her:
“the fantasy of purity is appalling. It’s insane. What is the quest to purify if not more impurity?”
The unreliability of it all was enough to make me go insane but the little glints of truth shining through were enough for me anyway.
Very readable. Well-written. American. Human.
4/5 stars
I'm not much of a politics girlie either but the parallels, or predictions, Phillip Roth makes between cancel culture, identity politics, and the general way the world, but especially America, addresses race today, are so impactful and witty and horrible and true, that it was hard for me to hate Coleman Silk.
His resolve to follow his life the way he decided to is something I would never have the cajones to do. Although this decision ultimately separated him from society, his family, his workplace, his "lovers", and even parts of himself, for the kind of freedom he wanted, this method was:
"Highly Effective But Largely Colorless"
(as Anna would collage it)
Spoiler
Isn't that what he was striving for the entire time? Not to be defined by his race or the way society perceived him, aka "them," but to live out the American dream as the ultimate self-made man? And yes, technically black and white aren't colors they're shades, but concerning society's eyes, I think the only non-color is white. Coleman Silk wanted not white freedom but a blank canvas, and that's what he got. Only to have that taken away too.It would have been so easy for Roth to get lost in the sauce of academic injustice and first-world problems but he was a good writer so he included other perspectives. He included heartbreakingly strong Faunia and Mrs. Silk. Unstable Les, loving Louie, and unshakeable Walt. Foreignly French Delphine and lost little Markie and idealistic Lisa. Wild Iris and wise Steena and free Ellie. It was (all you English majors ignore the following literary sacrilege) like a condensed, modern, accessible— American— War and Peace. Little bits of the world trickled in through all the characters. The characters who all felt so much, who all held stories within themselves, from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of trauma.
My least favorite? The "stained" perpetrator.
Nathan Zuckerman, the Jewish narrator, only finds out about Silk’s “identity” at his funeral after talking to a relative. He then embarks on the journey of writing, researching, overthinking, and imagining every past interaction as he steps more into his role of a self-aware-meta-puzzle-solver, only to arrive at the circular conclusion that the truths are endless just as are “the lies within ourselves.” Every stain that this Zuckerman recluse was exposed to he thought stemmed from Silk. Everything he had neatly tucked away within himself, due to his faulty prostate or elderly and tired mind alike, "rushed in." Even in the wilderness with Faunia and the crows and Les and the lake, their rituals of purity, he writes for her:
“the fantasy of purity is appalling. It’s insane. What is the quest to purify if not more impurity?”
The unreliability of it all was enough to make me go insane but the little glints of truth shining through were enough for me anyway.
Very readable. Well-written. American. Human.
4/5 stars