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Loading... Human Stain (original 2000; edition 2001)by Philip Roth
Work InformationThe Human Stain by Philip Roth (2000)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The prose is like poetry it reads so well. ( ) "modern literature" I almost got to the end (the fifth and final chapter of this tragedy) but found myself skimming more and more, and finally couldn't take any more of the mindless ranting, or of the despicable qualities of the characters. I thought the race aspect (the protagonist being a light-skinned black man posing as a Jewish person) was interesting, but then it went downhill. I get that the characters are supposed to be human and therefore flawed, and I get that the narratives are also human and therefore unreliable, but couldn't find much to appreciate in any of them, and felt like the pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness blathering wasn't helping (maybe 1-2 pages would suffice instead of 5 or 8 or 10?). Yes, we can hardly blame the Vietnam vet for his PTSD-related issues and yes, we should support our veterans way better, but this was a miserable way of communicating that idea, especially if I also have to endure being inside the head of the empty shell that was left of Faunia and the frustrated, friendless Delphine. Coleman/the narrator's account of Coleman was likeable (and had a reasonable, balanced voice) but like I said, then it went downhill. Ugh. Skip the whole thing. This book somewhat made me cringe whilst reading it, but I think I appreciated it a lot more after discussing it at book club - there was a lot to talk about in it. I really don't think the female characters are any good, they just don't make sense and I really didn't need reminding of the size of Faunia's breasts quite so often. The central conceit of the book (Coleman Silk's secret) doesn't really hold up to any light scrutiny. But there are some great bits of writing in it too and some thought-provoking stuff. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesZuckerman Bound (8) Belongs to Publisher SeriesBiblioteca Sábado (11) Gallimard, Folio (1355) rororo (23165) Иллюминатор (66) Is contained inHas the adaptationHas as a commentary on the textAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: 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 his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley, a woman half his age with a savagely wrecked past - a part-time farmhand and a janitor at the college where, until recently, he was the powerful dean of faculty. And it's not the secret of Coleman's alleged racism, which provoked the college witch-hunt that cost him his job and, to his mind, killed his wife. Nor is it the secret of misogyny, despite the best efforts of his ambitious young colleague, Professor Delphine Roux, to expose him as a fiend. Coleman's secret has been kept for fifty years: from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman, who sets out to understand how this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, had fabricated his identity and how that cannily controlled life came unraveled. Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that are as tragically determined by the nation's fate as by the "human stain" that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I MARRIED A COMMUNIST. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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