Philip Roth is one of America's most prolific and successful authors. Many critics have marked him as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature at some point during the coming years. When the New York Times asked hundreds of the most prominent critics, writers, and editors to pick the best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years, six of Roth's novels made the top spot repeatedly. The essay accompanying the results of this survey stated that "[i]f we had asked for the single best writer of fiction over the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won."Roth was born in 1933 and grew up near Newark, NJ--much like the protagonists of The Human Stain and many other Roth novels. Roth was recognized as a great writer at a young age, publishing Goodbye, Columbus in 1959 (when he was just 26). After receiving the National Book Award for this volume in 1960, he went on to publish a number of other texts that form the fundament of postwar American literary fiction. From 1969's Portnoy's Complaint to 1979's The Ghost Writer to more recent works, such as American Pastoral (1998), The Plot Against America (2004), and The Human Stain (2000), Roth has managed to write books richly evocative of the era in which his readers live.
The book we'll be reading in class--The Human Stain--is one of Roth's more recent, but it manifests many of the themes that have preoccupied the author since the beginning of his career. The complexities of race in America is a primary subject in the novel, as is the relationship between men and women and the way they negotiate the vagaries of power in their sexual relationships. Roth is also deeply interested in the links between autobiography and writing, as well as those between the family and the individual, in The Human Stain. As you read The Human Stain, think of how its rendering of race and ethnicity compare to that portrayed in Beloved. What picture of contemporary America emerges in Roth's novel? What does it say about race, gender, and the academy--not to mention the links between Jewish and African American identity as symbolic poles in America's self-fashioning?
Although this is a heavy (even dark) book on the surface, the ideas introduced are often light and humorous. I particularly enjoyed Roth's evaluation of Viagra with Silky Silk. The impact of modern medicine has certainly changed the life lived by the human. I find it interesting to think about the significance of Viagra in the modern world. It has such a huge impact on Silk's life and has left a void in Zuckerman's life. Just think if Robert Herrick had Viagra, would this poem exist?
ReplyDeleteThe Vine - Robert Herrick 1592-1674
I DREAM'D this mortal part of mine
Was Metamorphoz'd to a Vine;
Which crawling one and every way,
Enthrall'd my dainty Lucia.
Me thought, her long small legs & thighs
I with my Tendrils did surprize;
Her Belly, Buttocks, and her Waste
By my soft Nerv'lits were embrac'd:
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung:
So that my Lucia seem'd to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curles about her neck did craule,
And armes and hands they did enthrall:
So that she could not freely stir,
(All parts there made one prisoner.)
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts, which maids keep unespy'd,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took,
That with the fancie I awook;
And found (Ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a Stock then like a Vine.
Tim Navaro
ha ha! good one.
ReplyDeleteColeman is an example socio political stress. He should during his lifetime have been free and happy and respected for who he is truly, a light skinned african american who is brilliant and physically powerful. He is everything that a man strives to be like but in terms of social politics he has to deftly skirt the nagging problems of never being wholly himself even though who he is , is amazing in and of itself. He is a great man and should be allowed to be the great man that he is but unfortunately it isnt that simple.
ReplyDeleteI think that Roth is painting great character portraits in this novel and I can see why he is held in such high esteem.
One thing I can admire about Roth's style is the way he reveals the human psychology behind racism with his portrayal of Lester Farley. I just get a kick out of that section where Farley goes off on how he is so disgusted imagining how Faunia is having sex with a "dirty old jew college professor" (I think I combined all his separate remarks into one there). The irony of course is that Coleman is not even Jewish. What I took from that is that so much of racism is based on assumptions that are really irrelevant to reality anyway.
ReplyDeleteIn this novel, It is easy to translate racism into the much broader concept of prejudice. For example, Delphine Roux and Coleman's family are incredibly prejudiced against Faunia because of her alleged illiteracy. In other words, they consider her to be below them in social hierarchy, and, because of this, they disapprove of her relationship with the ex-professor. Roth's decision to focus on both racism and prejudice makes the novel more applicable to modern life.
ReplyDeleteKatherine