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squid_vicious 's review for:
The Human Stain
by Philip Roth
“When Free Speech Turns Into an Orwellian Nightmare” or “PC Culture in Academia”…
I’ve had some first and second-hand experience of that phenomenon. Well-meaning but utterly mis-guided people who find everything offensive, try to hush up people who disagree with them without seeing the enormous irony of using censorship tactics to keep those who think differently quiet. I have seen moral crusaders drag the names of people whose only fault was having a dark sense of humour through the mud, and use concepts like “safe space” and “trigger warning” to get people they didn’t like fired. Petty dictatorships established over the most trivial things blown out of proportion…
“The Human Stain” could be a real story, and it is my understanding that a very similar case actually happened right around the time that Roth published this novel. And because it hit so close to something I have seen happen in front of my own, disbelieving, flabbergasted eyes, it made me cringe a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book. But it was a painful reminder of the weird, broken system of academia that I once held in such high regards. It is also interesting to think that this novel doesn’t take place that long ago: 1998 is still less than 20 years ago, and evangelistic political correctness has only gotten more hardline since.
Moving on to the actual book.
Coleman Silk, the highly respected dean of faculty at Athena College resigns in disgrace after allegations of racism are brought up against him by two black students who felt offended by a remark he made when they were not attending his class. By way of coping with this humiliating experience and with the death of his wife, he launches himself into an affair with an almost illiterate woman half his age. He befriends a writer living in his neck of the woods, and this new buddy will soon find out a secret that Silk has been hiding almost his entire life, and that make the accusations held against him even more absurd and devastating than it seemed at first.
Spoilers from this point on.
Can I just say that I am very late on the bandwagon: this is my first Philip Roth novel, and I am completely blown away by his sophisticated characterization. There are people I have known for ages, but I don’t know them half as well as I now know Coleman Silk. And it’s not just the main character that is portrayed with such details and humanity: the deeply damaged Les Farley and the incredibly self-important Delphine Roux are also rendered vividly. The prose is powerful and gripping: yes, he uses big words, but that’s not a problem for me at all. I love big words! The carefully assembled clockwork of the non-linear narrative structure unveils these people and what you think you know about them dissolves as you explore their roots, their motivations. These characters feel so very real and they will linger in my thoughts for a long time.
This book forces the reader to think not simply about race, but about identity, how our actions shape that identity, and whether or not how other people perceives us ends up defining us. We find out relatively early that Coleman Silk is a black man, who has been passing as white almost his entire life. Only a handful of people have known; most of the world doesn’t see the secret hidden in plain sight, and he has built a fictitious Jewish background for himself that people accept without any questions. The already absurd accusations of racism held against him would be even more absurd if people knew the truth about him, but how can he come out now, after a career, marriage, family – an entire life where it was always taken for granted by everyone that he was white?
Coleman’s nemesis, Delphine, is a much more complex and fascinating creation than I had expected, and as much as I can’t stand her, I loved reading about her. Roth painted such a painfully realistic portrait of a specific group: the highly-sheltered intellectual elite, who have never existed outside of an academic setting and who are not equipped to handle the “outside” world.
And of course, there are the Farleys: Lester, whose PTSD from his two turns in Viet-Nam is so out of control that he can’t tell reality from delusion anymore, and Faunia – the woman life decided to beat up on… Abuse, bad luck and then more abuse is what that woman had to endure, it has made her hard, calcified. She has seen and lived stuff that nobody should ever have to see and live. Coleman is probably originally attracted to her because of her damage, but the ultimate revelation that Faunia isn’t fooled was very touching. Deep down inside, don’t we want the world to see us for what we truly are? And she sees him.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time, and probably re-reading it. A very impressive book that I recommend to everyone.
I’ve had some first and second-hand experience of that phenomenon. Well-meaning but utterly mis-guided people who find everything offensive, try to hush up people who disagree with them without seeing the enormous irony of using censorship tactics to keep those who think differently quiet. I have seen moral crusaders drag the names of people whose only fault was having a dark sense of humour through the mud, and use concepts like “safe space” and “trigger warning” to get people they didn’t like fired. Petty dictatorships established over the most trivial things blown out of proportion…
“The Human Stain” could be a real story, and it is my understanding that a very similar case actually happened right around the time that Roth published this novel. And because it hit so close to something I have seen happen in front of my own, disbelieving, flabbergasted eyes, it made me cringe a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book. But it was a painful reminder of the weird, broken system of academia that I once held in such high regards. It is also interesting to think that this novel doesn’t take place that long ago: 1998 is still less than 20 years ago, and evangelistic political correctness has only gotten more hardline since.
Moving on to the actual book.
Coleman Silk, the highly respected dean of faculty at Athena College resigns in disgrace after allegations of racism are brought up against him by two black students who felt offended by a remark he made when they were not attending his class. By way of coping with this humiliating experience and with the death of his wife, he launches himself into an affair with an almost illiterate woman half his age. He befriends a writer living in his neck of the woods, and this new buddy will soon find out a secret that Silk has been hiding almost his entire life, and that make the accusations held against him even more absurd and devastating than it seemed at first.
Spoilers from this point on.
Can I just say that I am very late on the bandwagon: this is my first Philip Roth novel, and I am completely blown away by his sophisticated characterization. There are people I have known for ages, but I don’t know them half as well as I now know Coleman Silk. And it’s not just the main character that is portrayed with such details and humanity: the deeply damaged Les Farley and the incredibly self-important Delphine Roux are also rendered vividly. The prose is powerful and gripping: yes, he uses big words, but that’s not a problem for me at all. I love big words! The carefully assembled clockwork of the non-linear narrative structure unveils these people and what you think you know about them dissolves as you explore their roots, their motivations. These characters feel so very real and they will linger in my thoughts for a long time.
This book forces the reader to think not simply about race, but about identity, how our actions shape that identity, and whether or not how other people perceives us ends up defining us. We find out relatively early that Coleman Silk is a black man, who has been passing as white almost his entire life. Only a handful of people have known; most of the world doesn’t see the secret hidden in plain sight, and he has built a fictitious Jewish background for himself that people accept without any questions. The already absurd accusations of racism held against him would be even more absurd if people knew the truth about him, but how can he come out now, after a career, marriage, family – an entire life where it was always taken for granted by everyone that he was white?
Coleman’s nemesis, Delphine, is a much more complex and fascinating creation than I had expected, and as much as I can’t stand her, I loved reading about her. Roth painted such a painfully realistic portrait of a specific group: the highly-sheltered intellectual elite, who have never existed outside of an academic setting and who are not equipped to handle the “outside” world.
And of course, there are the Farleys: Lester, whose PTSD from his two turns in Viet-Nam is so out of control that he can’t tell reality from delusion anymore, and Faunia – the woman life decided to beat up on… Abuse, bad luck and then more abuse is what that woman had to endure, it has made her hard, calcified. She has seen and lived stuff that nobody should ever have to see and live. Coleman is probably originally attracted to her because of her damage, but the ultimate revelation that Faunia isn’t fooled was very touching. Deep down inside, don’t we want the world to see us for what we truly are? And she sees him.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time, and probably re-reading it. A very impressive book that I recommend to everyone.