The Human Stain
by Philip Roth(1997)
Novelc. 360 pages
“It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk set out to write the book that he hoped would restore to him his good name.”
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One great work, every day
by Philip Roth(1997)
“It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk set out to write the book that he hoped would restore to him his good name.”
Philip Roth(1997)
Coleman Silk, a classics professor, is destroyed by a false accusation of racism, and his secret is darker and stranger than anyone suspects. Roth wrote this at the end of his American trilogy, using the Clinton scandal as backdrop for a meditation on passing, on identity, on the cruelty of political correctness. The prose has Roth's characteristic energy, the sentences coiling with fury and irony. The narrator is Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's longtime alter ego, now aging and impotent. America in 1998 becomes a study in hypocrisy. Silk's secret, when it comes, reframes everything. The stain cannot be removed.