The Human Stain

It's been almost a month since I last posted. Summer had something to do with that. The other was the summer reading I was doing. I got myself hooked on the Pretty Little Liars series for a novel or four. It's light and breezy and kept me entertained when it was too hot to bother, but not really worth my two cents.

In the meantime, usually at night, when temperature cooled down a bit, I gave The Human Stain a try.

I've read a novel by Philip Roth before.

The Plot Against America which was a brilliant depiction of a world where WWII didn't go as history tells us. The same concept as The Man in the High Castle, but more grounded in lives the average reader can relate to.

The Human Stain is also a work of poetry. I've read a few reviews here and there and sometimes he gets blasphemed for using to many adjectives as if he has a dictionary with words he needs to tick off before he can call it quits.
It's indeed a lot of fancy words to take in, I'm not going to deny this. In the beginning it's a little annoying because you can say what you want in only so many words, but as I got pulled into the story I stopped noticing it. It just was part of the charm this story had, which delivered quite a astonishing truth.

Synopsis
Coleman Silk is born a very pale black. So pale he can go about pretending he is white. Being born in a time where being black still meant missing opportunities, he chooses to enlist as a white man in the army and continues to live out a life as a white Jewish college professor at a small university in New England.
Coleman being called a racist by two black students, is the event that sets this novel in motion. His outrage, his succumbing to his fate and eventually gaining something from a bleak future is the thread that you'll follow until the end.
We look at Coleman's life through the eyes of Nathan Zuckerman, a local writer, who is forcibly introduced to Coleman when the latter bursts through his door demanding him to write his story, to write up the injustice of being called racist.
Together they go through the final coming of age, the age where nothing really matters anymore since it's all winding down.

Roth's language is superb, as I have mentioned before. It's like reading poetry turned into an intriguing story with lifesized characters set in a time almost everyone can relate to.

It's packed with every kind of wisdom you'd want in a novel and a few scenes got me thinking. The one that got me most was where the reference to the title is being given.

It's where Faunia, who is Coleman's sexual interest, talks about wanting to be a crow. She's just daydreaming and hearing the distant cawing of these majestic birds. She wonders why she is human and ponders about the simple life of being a crow. Being the one bird that doesn't budge to conventions, who is just practical and cruel.
She remembers this one crow who has been raised by a men and when he got set free, other birds picked on him. Would've picked him to dead, if someone hadn't made sure he got a safe place. The other crows didn't like this one, as if they could sense he didn't belong, as if they knew he was raised by humans. Tainted by a human stain.

The Human Stain takes us to every decade of Coleman's life, but most of it is during Bill Clinton's reign over America. When he's caught having sexual relations with Monika Lewinsky and when America's hypocrisy is at its best. It's the best setting possible for this novel. It creates the right atmosphere needed for a novel about racism and bold choices.

Review of The Plot Against America

In Short

Imagine, a world where World War II is being fought without the interference of America, where the ruling president is a closet fascist, where jews are targeted for being warmongerers and where fear and ignorance is all around.
This is the picture that Philip Roth has painted in this magnificent novel. Instead of President Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh is elected president and his main goal is to keep America out of the European war. So far he's following the course of history, as president Roosevelt also meant to keep America out of the war, but the lengths Lindbergh goes to keep his promise are mindblowing.
Signing a threaty with Germany and Japan to not interfere in each others dealings and turning a blind eye to the suffering of Europe, is his way to give America the peace he promised.

During this political game, we follow the every day life of a jewish family with two children. They are depicted as being Philip Roth's actual family and the book is mainly told in his voice, being a 9year old child at the time.
His way of seeing the truth and how he deals with his family anxiety, fear and perpetual amazement at how their world turned on a dime, is something unique. A childish view on a large scale problem.

My two cents

First of all, I have a penchant for WWII literature, being non-fiction or fiction and this delivered plentiful.
I loved the novel from the beginning to the very end and am certain that I'll reread it someday and find so much more inbetween the written lines than I did now.

Roth's way of telling his story reminded me strongly of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. How a child sees the big bad world and how they come to deal with it. With being all grown up, we lose touch with the child we once were and it is amazing how different they react to circumstances.
With having a newborn, I'm more susceptible for this kind of narration and instead of taking it all for granted I stopped to think about what he did or thought of all the events happening around him.
For instance how an aviation hero suddenly became a thing to fear for jewish people. How his brother changed from being his role model, to someone his parents were weary of and eventually to a artistic don juan. How his father suddenly lost his temper.

The way Roth describes the rise to presidency of Lindbergh, eventually getting elected and how some other rats of our history gotten into congress, is so well constructed you could see it enfolding right before you. Adding to that the fact that in real life the republicans have asked Lindbergh to go for president, but he declined, makes it all the more so.
This is a path history could've taken, not too farfetched. Outwardly nothing much seemed to have changed, but the general atmosphere has been transformed into one of ignorance and fear. Antisemitic riots, nazi lobbyists, general intolerance for the jewish race, all things that could've happened in an America ruled by the wrong president.

The Plot Against America is a brilliant work of fiction, almost lifelike. I was sad when I finished it, just because I finished it. If that doesn't say enough.

Personal rating: 4 stars
Page count: 400 pages
First published in 2004