"The Human Stain" by Philip Roth

This celebrated, prize winning book was published twenty-five years ago this spring. It is very much aa American state-of-the-nation novel of its time, but a lot of its themes still very much resonate today. Things have not moved on so much.

Philip Roth (1933-2018) is not a writer I ever find easy, and this book while clearly brilliantly written, thoughtful and clever is not one I can say I hugely enjoyed reading. It is I think too filled with anger to be truly effective. It deals with issues of race in the USA, both the appalling racism of the mid twentieth century and more wokish thinking about milder racism in more recent decades, both of which send Roth into a rage. He also deals with the Clinton / Monica Lewinsky affair and with the plight of Vietnam War veterans. There are autobiographical elements mixed with the imagined characters and plenty of beautiful touches that humanise the characters.

The plot revolves around the resignation of a senior classics professor on the grounds that he referred to two absent students as 'spooks' without realising either that they were black or that this can be used as a term of racial abuse. Things spiral out of control from there and the end has an operatic quality. Is this though really an accurate portrait of American academic life? I hope not. I hope there is satire being deployed. If not the following comment made by one of the characters would be pretty prescient:

'Sounds from what you have told me that anything is possible in a college today. Sounds like the people there forgot what it is to teach. Sounds like what they do is something closer to buffoonery'.

The problem with this novel as a reading experience is the complete lack of light to compliment the shade. There is no humour deployed at all. It is a very long, if eloquent, rant. The satire is biting, but aspects of the plot are not so plausible. That said, I stayed with it to the end, was impressed by the writing and suspect it will stay with me for quite some time.