Rating: 
Summary: Great novel about human foibles and a good yarn too
Review: "The Human Stain" is a fictional work that includes a detective story, a cultural commentary, several personality portraits, and a darn good yarn too. It's about a college professor who is forced from his position as dean because he is accused of using racial epithets during a class lecture. Isn't that a familiar story at Brown and other school?You can't say a lot about the characters in this story because that would give away the plot. But Roth's novel is an attack on the militancy of college-campus political correctness and the feminists whose Roth character believes are hypocritcal. Further the book is a discussion of the roles that race plays in America and what is means to be raised as a Jew. There's lots of other themes too including man's preoccupation with sex which is, of course, what Roth writes about frequently. The character Faunia refers to the novel's title, the "Humain Stain", when she says "That's what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The human stain." The "he" she is referring to is a crow in the pet show. Faunia likes to talk to crows. She's supposed to be the village idiot in this novel, but she's more comples than that. In the same paragraph Roth mentions another bird, a swan. Writing of the Greek gods, Roth says they are like humans in their cruelty--leaving stains of excrement and semen wherever they go--and their desire for erotic love. He writes "...[Zeus] to enter her bizarrely as a flailing white Swan." This is a direct reference to the poem by William Butler Years "Leda and the Swan" which Roth quotes at length in his novel "Portnoy's Complaint"--whose very title is a psychological term for to the desire for erotica and the angst that causes because of cultural mores. The poem reads in part "How can those terrified vague fingers [Leda] push the feathered glory [the Swan] from her loosening things?". This book is a riveting read, long passages held me for page after page. I could not put it down as Roth takes us inside the mind of Delphine Roux, the French teacher at Athena college who has created so much trouble for Coleman Silk, the main character in the novel. Roth reveals her thoughts as she reflects on her status as a beautiful expatriate intellectual utterly alone in the word. She is miserable because she is despised by the female faculty members who hate her for her good looks and who, consequently, refuse to read her published writings. She hates Coleman because her isn't intimidated by her beauty like so many of the men are. She feels lost as a expatriate: caught between two oceans and not certain to which shore to seek refuge. She's a woman who desperately wants erotic love. But she can't abide the many suitors she has at the school. She goes to the New York Public library--anyone who lives in New York will tell you that the adjacent Bryant Park is a great pick up place--and looks wistfully at her intellectual peers: handsome men reading difficult books in those hallowed halls. If only she could find someone like that at the far flung, mountain-enclosed school where she's surrounded by shallow thinking Philistines masquerading as intellectuals. One fascinating feature of this novel is that it's all written in one voice. There's no effort to reproduce accents like, say, William Faulkner would do. And there's no effort to change the substance of the language from one character to the next. Whether it's the uneducated Faunia speaking or the highly educated Coleman Silks, they all speak with the erudite voice of Philip Roth. I find this technique a good one: why sully the great language in a novel just to sound like one of the locals? That's my complaint with Irvine Welsh who writes in Scottish patois. This novel spoke to me directly in two particular ways. First Roth writes of the death of two children. My own children are alive and O.K. but I felt compelled to rush to them as I read Roth's harrowing account of the two children dying a ghastly death. It was such a page turning horror tale, as good as the only Stephen King I read, and had me so upset by the end that I almost flung the book across the room. I haven't been moved by a book like that in a long time. There should be a preface at that chapter: "not for the faint of heart". Secondly, Roth wrote was speaking to me again, on the subject of living alone in the woods--since that is what I do--with Henry David Thoreau like authority. The narrator of the novel is a writer who has fled the city for the quiet of the woods. (Doesn't Philip Roth live like this too?) Roth says, "The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements...is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plenitude as capital, silence and wealth exponentially increasing....The trick is to find sustenance in [He quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne] 'the communication of a solitary mind with itself''. These words give hope too any person attempting to go it alone away from the noise of the city.
Rating: 
Summary: A disturbing assumption
Review: Although I found the narrative and the writing quite enjoyable, as usual with Ph. Roth, I was very disturbed by the assumption on which the novel is based, namely that the central character, Coleman Silk is a black man who passes for white, and that this constitutes an "original sin", an implicit lie about his origins. First, I do not recall anywhere in the novel when he says or writes that he is white. It is just what people believe. Does it mean that to avoid committing that "sin", Silk should at all times wear a poster bearing the words "I am really black", or that he should speak black, act black and write black, whatever that means? Moreover, Silk "passes for white", which means that he is not all black, he is mixed-race. Why does Roth describe him as just black? He might be 40-60 or 50-50, or 70-30, but what is the issue here? Does having one black ancestor qualify one as black, or is there another threshold? It is strangely reminiscent of the "halbjude" concept so in vogue under the Third Reich. It seems that Roth got entangled in what happens to be a non issue. Or am I missing the point?
Rating:
Summary: For the deep thinker
Review: I do not usually see a movie and then get the book, however the movie so inspired me that I had to pick up the novel. The novel is an in-depth journey of the relationship of a wrongly accused of racism college professor/dean (played in the movie by the wonderful Anthony Hopkins) who finds himself in an unlikely intimate relationship with a much younger, illiterate and emotionally troubled janitor (played by Nicole Kidman in the movie). The author really delves deep into these characters pasts, their emotional states and, in frank language, their sexual relationship. This is a great read for late at night before bed, when the reader is likely to have quiet surroundings for the purpose of concentration; this is not a light read. But definitely worth every minute! See the movie, too!
Rating:
Summary: Has Stayed With Me For Some Time
Review: I read THE HUMAN STAIN some time ago and thought then that it was quite good. After time, however, I realized that I thought back to this book more frequently than other books that I might originally have thought to be better. There are aspects of this book that touch a person but do so in such a gentle way that one may not initially realize the impression.
Certainly the book provides a poignant story of political correctness run amok. As one who spent way too much time in graduate schools, the possibility of a couple of hyper-sensitive students purposefully digging for the most pejorative interpretation of an ambiguous statement certainly rings true. What rings even more true is the complete lack of backbone of the university administrators and their kangaroo court investigation of the incident. THE HUMAN STAIN would be worth reading if it were nothing more than a cautionary tale of how badly our universities have degenerated.
But the book is far more than that. Coleman Silk's story of a light skinned black man passing as white so that race would not interfere with his life and career is simply captivating. What strikes a reader most is the price to be paid for such a decision. Silk has to make a total break from his family and has to do so not merely by passively ignoring them but by actively telling his mother of the decision. This scenario captures something essential about the universal human dilemma of whether to accept who one is and where one came from.
Coleman Silk's relationship with Faunia Farley also represents something essential about the human condition. People, especially those who have been damaged in some way, often find they need another person to accept them and validate their emotional pain. If the individuals in such a relationship are quite different from each other, they often do not analyze each other's issues but rather accept the experiences and the person who lived through them. This relationship is well portrayed in THE HUMAN STAIN.
I have not read any of Roth's other books and therefore I cannot say how THE HUMAN STAIN compares to his other works. I can say that the book made a lasting enough impression on me for me to recommend it to others. Coleman Silk's journey is well worth taking.
Rating:
Summary: Near Flawless Performance by Mr. Roth!
Review: I think the main theme here is the petty, rancerous bickering that has inflicted such a huge segment of this country. Mr. Roth's story occurs during the summer of 1998, among the nastiest,most sanctimonious, and pettiest during the over 200-year life of the Republic. He also shows how all of us, at least those of any dimension whatsoever, really have many lives, many secrets, and how difficult it can be to escape them. All the main characters, from the Professor Silk, his relatives, his girlfriends over the years, the anguished Vietnam vet,the French faculty member, and the rest are thus portrayed. Also of note is Mr. Roth's near-magical ability to make seemingly dull everyday routines like milking the cows, going to a Chinese restaurant,etc. interesting. This is the ability and talent of true artist. No one can doubt that Mr. Roth fits this description!
Rating:
Summary: A full meal of a novel
Review: I was in the hands of a true master throughout this great book. Insightful and rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: Hopeless
Review: I'm afraid I simply couldn't get through this book. I realize Mr. Roth is an outstanding contributor to contemporary American literature. I quite enjoyed "Portnoy's Complaint". I was prompted to read this novel after having watched the film version starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. I disliked the film, but thought perhaps the text on which it was based would be more palatable. Alas, no.
For being so charismatic a character (by description of the omniscient narrator, anyway), Coleman "Silky" Silk is utterly boring. While his life as a "passer" (being African-American but "passing", successfully [almost always], as Caucasian) is of note, particularly the aspects of self-negation he inflicts on himself in order to be recognized as a white man, makes for a worthy theme, Silk is completely dismal to READ about as the protagonist. I found myself completely at a loss as far as caring what his impetus was or what his actions and their consequences were.
Faunia Farley is even less memorable. She's coarse, uneducated, and brash -- qualities the refined academic Silk finds sexually arousing after he is widowed. Fine. Then there's the token "crazy-ex", the Vietnam Vet who wants to kill everyone (surprise, surprise!). Of course in the end he does kill Coleman and Faunia, but I am certain if one makes it to the novel's conclusion, one simply wouldn't much care.
I was truly saddened when I couldn't even force myself to get to the 100th page of the hardbound edition of this book. Hopefully I will find Roth's "Plot Against America" more rewarding for my efforts.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeply relevant
Review: In short, but expansive descriptions, Roth takes us inside the psyche of his characters and reveals in the process much about our American selves. Read it if you dare.
Rating:
Summary: An Everyman's Book
Review: Literary critics who have written about "The Human Stain" like to discuss how well it describes the "public zeitgeist" and how Roth is one of America's best examples of "aesthetic relentlessness," both of which are true, but I prefer to say this is simply a great book by a fantastic author. Roth is more accessible then critics would like you to believe--his unique style flows well, he creates realistic and lively characters and he tells compelling stories. "The Human Stain" is about Coleman Silk, a long time professor, who resigns in disgrace after being accused of racism. After the resignation, he battles the college hoping to regain face, but he also beings dating a much younger woman who works as a janitor at his former school. Through the narration of Nathan Zuckerman, this intense action plays out and Silk's unique and hidden life history is revealed. This book is a great examination of political correctness, higher education, love and especially race. It is a tremendous novel, certainly one of Roth's best, and I would highly recommend it to all readers, especially those who enjoy excellent prose, fiction and controversial themes. More specifically, I would also recommend it to people who have experienced a small New England college town--it will be an excellent reminder, both good and bad, of that life and will challenge the memories you have. This is a truly great book.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Roth
Review: More wonderful writing from Roth. His take on race is a unique and fearless one and his writing is, as usual, wonderful. Certain passages just burn into your brain with their mix of anger, shock, and emotion. Some parts were simply jaw-dropping exercises in writing, and my friends and family who have read the book agree. I'd say what they are, but that would ruin the book.
There are obvious parts that are unfortunate, namely Roth's standard depiction of women. There are two main women. One is an untalented, vindictive and irrational professor, the other is an abused illiterate. Roth's defense of the relationship at the center of the book is a bit unsettling, but admirably fearless. A 4 star story balanced out by (as dumb as it is to say this) 6 star prose. How many other writers are this relevant at this age? Bring on the Nobel.
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