Welcome to Sunday Book Review. Because reading is the basics for all learning. But also because a good book is a great way to, well, get away. In these times, getting away is good for the soul and good for our sanity. Why book reviews? I can't live up to our friend Truth Partisan's ability to lead into these reviews, but I'll give it a try. I'm more likely to read books recommended by folks I respect and trust and have some understanding of their personality. Though most of us here at Corrente don't know each other personally, we probably have a reasonable understanding of each other. So we'll look to each other to get ideas of how to spend our evenings and weekends.

Today I'll give a brief review of the last book I finished, The Human Stain. While extended commentary on the books you've been reading will help us get a better idea of the book, we'll be happy with just a single sentence or even a list. I read a lot of nonfiction and some "highly praised" books, but also enjoy a trashy "mind candy" book as much as the next person. So, put on some slippers, grab that cup o' coffee and share with us what you've been reading. As for the tardiness, well, I'm a west coaster. On to the review...

Commonweal describes Philip Roth as a "master chronicler of the American twentieth century." In the very first pages of The Human Stain you get an idea of Roth's recollection of the 1990s in the U.S.:

[I]f you haven't lived through 1998, you don't know what sanctimony is. They syndicated conservative newspaper columnist William E Buckley wrote, "When Abelard did it, it was possible to prevent its happening again," insinuating that the president's malfeasance--what Buckley elsewhere called Clinton's "incontinent carnatlity"--might best be remedied with nothing so bloodless as impeachment but, rather, by the twelfth-centure punishment meted out to Canon Abelard by the knife-wielding associates of Abelard's ecclesiastical colleague... Unlike Khomeini's fatwa condemning to death Salman Rushdie, Buckley's wistful longing for the corrective retribution of castration carried with it no financial incentive for any propective perpetrator. It was prompted by a spirit no less exacting than the ayotollah's, however, and in behalf of no less exalted ideals.

I was still a teenager during the 1990s, but I remember this mindset quite well, escpecially in the rabid pack mentality dominant in political discourse. This rush to judgment on personal affairs, the preaching of supposed moral and intellectual superiority pushed me decidedly against the Republican party and against conservativism. Oddly, some ten years later, it was this same rabid group behavior during the Democratic Party that pushed me out of the Democratic Party. What Roth captures in The Human Stain does not appear to be limited to one party or the other, one ideology or an other. It seems, rather, that the desire to feel superior, to mock, ridicule and attack our rivals is an inherent human quality.

Roth uses four primary characters to tell the story of the rabid turn of the century America. The book's narrarator, Nathan Zuckerman, pieces together the lives of three other characters. At first, there is a seeming detachment to the main protaginist, Coleman Silk. By the end of the book, Zuckerman makes a decided leap to the side of the now deceased Coleman Silk. This shift shares many common similarities with my journey to jump to the side of Bill Clinton during the impeachment fiasco. It was not that Clinton was some saint, it was that the behavior exibited toward him was so perverse and engulfed in hypocrisy that it was hard not to feel sympathetic.

We are introduced to the seventy one year old Coleman "Silky" Silk at the end of his career as professor and dean at a small New England college. After referring to students who had yet to attend a single one of his classes as "spooks", in an obvious reference to invisible entities, a controversy erupts that leads him to resign in disgrace and to have his wife die soon thereafter. Unbeknownst to him, the absent students were African American who took offense to the "spooks" reference. Rather than apologize for the supposed offensive words, Coleman argues that there is no way his reference can be construed in the manner in which it was. He receives no support from his colleagues on the matter and resigns and blames the death of his wife on what he feels was a manufactured effort to destroy him.

As Coleman is getting accustomed to his disgrace, he becomes involved in a sexual relationship with a thirty four year old woman who is a janitor at his former college, and professes to being illiterate. The story of Faunia Farley is tragic. Sexually abused by her stepfather, she leaves home at fourteen and becomes involved in prostitution. Her abusive marriage to a Vietnam veteran ends soon after the death of her two children. The tragic nature of Faunia's life soon becomes a weapon for one of Coleman's biggest detractors.

Delphine Roux is a young, attractive and ambitious department chair at Coleman's old college. A product of high French society, the pretensious twenty-nine year old is eager to make a name for herself. She learns of Coleman's affair with Faunia and hastily sends an anonymous letter to Coleman stating that everyone knows of the affair, assuming that the relationship is solely about Coleman taking advantage of a vulnerable woman. Through the course of the book, we learn about Delphine's feelings of both superiority and inadequacy as well as her loneliness and effort to find a companion eerily similar to Coleman Silk.

When Coleman and Faunia die in a car crash brought on by Faunia's crazed ex-husband, rumors abound about his affair. The charge is made that it was, in fact, a suicide-murder attempt, that Coleman wanted to humiliate Faunia at the very end of their lives by killing them while she is performing fellatio while Coleman is driving. Though these rumours are not supported by police investigation, the lie is accepted and propogated. Another demonstration of human's ability to pass along lies as if they were truth.

It is not hard to see the analogy of the Coleman-Faunia-Delphie triad to the Clinton-Lewinsky-Republican triad. The affair of two people being construed by opponents to feed into a frenzy to mask feelings of inadequacy. In that sense, The Human Stain captures quite well, the rabid frenzy of contemporary American society. Our ability to infuse into our opponents the most sinister of motives despite the lack of evidence. Indeed, we learn that Coleman Silk is a light skinned African American who lived his adult life as a white jewish man (he made the choice before the civil rights movement in the mid 1950s). We also learn that Faunia was, in fact, literate and most likely had the power in her relationship with Coleman.

The Human Stain is a tragic tale which provides lessons for us all. Well worth the read, for the story and its lessons as well as its powerful prose.