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"The mere brute pleasure of reading -- the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing."
The Human Stain
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The Human Stain
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1 journaler for this copy...
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Purchased from a monsterbookstore in Nanaimo, BC, while on a service call with Mr. goatgrrl. We watched the movie (starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman) the night before, and I was curious about how faithful it had been to Roth's novel.
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Set in a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts' Berkshire Hills, The Human Stain tells the story of an ageing classics professor, Coleman Silk, hounded out of his job over bogus allegations of racism and seeking solace in the arms of Faunia Farley, a woman half his age who cleans at the college. (In the film version, Coleman and Faunia are played by Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, left.) Coleman's story is narrated by Coleman's friend, sixty-one year old writer Nathan Zuckerman (The Human Stain is the eighth book in Roth's "Nathan Zuckerman" series -- the others are The Ghost Writer (1979); Zuckerman Unbound (1981); The Anatomy Lesson (1983); The Prague Orgy (1985); The Counterlife (1986) (winner of the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award); American Pastoral (1997) (winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction); and I Married a Communist (1998).) Zuckerman, now living in an isolated cabin in the Berkshire woods, is recovering from surgery for prostate cancer, a procedure which has left him incontinent. The underlying theme in The Human Stain is 1990s "political correctness". In the first pages of the book, narrator Zuckerman rails against "America's oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstacy of sanctimony", a rant which sets the political tone for the rest of the novel. But The Human Stain tells a much greater story than this -- its characters and the lives they live cover an ambitious swath of late 20th century American experience. I loved reading this novel because it evoked so many memories of my own university experience -- I felt validated by Coleman's fury at the anti-intellectual touchy-feely-ness that infected 1980s and 90s campuses! At the same time, I felt while reading The Human Stain (as I did while watching the movie) that Roth had attempted to pack too many divergent storylines into one novel (Les Farley's Vietnam experience, Coleman's upbringing in East Orange, Faunia's life on the dairy farm, the fate of her children, the atmosphere in the Classics department, Zuckerman's friendship with Coleman, Coleman's relationship with his sons and daughter, etc.) Nonetheless -- a highly recommended read. There's a reading group guide for The Human Stain here. The Guardian's John Mullan wrote a series of thematic reviews of The Human Stain: (1) The Framing Device; (2) Amplification; (3) Email; and (4) The Alter Ego. Finally, Salon magazine ran a March 2002 piece on Roth's "Nathan Zuckerman" series here. The Human Stain (2000) was awarded the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award. |
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