The Human Stain
by Philip Roth
Award: PEN/Faulkner Winner 2001
Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2002, LA Times Finalist 2000, NY Times Finalist 2000
Date Read: July 29, 2023
Coleman Silk is an unusual character with a very interesting life and, possibly, a more interesting death. Born to poor parents who worked hard to educate their three children, Coleman is the black sheep of the family, insisting on boxing and going his own way in life. When he finally reaches Howard University, an HBC, and feels the sting of overt racism, he knows that is not the life for him.
He has no intentions of following intellectually in his father’s footsteps but Coleman is the most like his father out of all three kids. Of course, with black skin and a Jewish heritage, the futures available to them are not infinite.
After joining the navy and fighting in Vietnam, Coleman attends NYU and seems attracted exclusively to white girls. Because he can easily “pass” he never divulges that he’s black to any of them except Steena. Instead of telling her he’s black, he invites her home for Sunday dinner to discover it on her own. After the shock dissipates, she tells him that she just can’t. She’s not that strong.
Eventually he meets Iris, another white girl and is instantly taken with her. He knows better than to make the same mistake he made with Steena so he cuts his family completely out of his life. Even though he becomes a professor at Athena University, has four kids of his own and is successful in his own life, he never exposes his family to his black East Orange roots.
His entire world comes crumbling down one day when he refers to two absent students in one of his seminars as “spooks.” Coleman says this because he has never met the two students over the course of the entire semester, so he uses the word as it relates to a ghost. The two students are actually black and file a complaint with the administration that Professor Silk used a racially derogatory term in reference to them. As Silk says in his own defense, he had never even met the students so how would he have even known they were black?
Rather than rallying to his side, the administration and his colleagues abandon him and bereft, he quits before they can fire him. He doesn’t know for a fact they will fire him but he doesn’t want to give them that chance. The entire fiasco distresses Iris so much that she passes away. Coleman blames her death on Athena University.
In his now single retirement, he meets and begins a sexual relationship with Faunia. She works an odd assortment of jobs – from milking cows, a college janitor, cleaning the post office to even cleaning up crime scenes – and professes to be illiterate. She’s also nearly 40 years younger than Coleman. But their odd match brings comfort and companionship to them both, a reprieve from the brutal realities they both face.
Faunia comes with her own baggage in the form of an abusive ex-husband who continues to stalk her. He has picked up her trail with the professor and threatens them both so when Coleman and Faunia end up dying in a car accident, Zuckerman (Coleman’s author friend and the main character in the The Complete Zuckerman novels) instantly believes they were forced off the road by Les.
In his death, Coleman becomes even more notorious than in life. The rumor around town is that Faunia was blowing him when they crashed. Their affair comes to light with all the judgement that entails. Professor Roux who has a love/hate relationship with Coleman falsely accuses him of ransacking her office and publishing an email to embarrass her. With all these details mounting up, a life and legacy that Coleman had worked hard to create comes burning to the ground.
Although this is only the briefest summary of The Human Stain, Roth is really at his best here. This may be tied with American Pastoral for my favorite Roth novel. The level of detail and insight and current affairs that he pulls into his narratives provide such a rich and realistic environment for his characters to come to life. He is at his ultimate here.
Comments
Post a Comment