Roth often writes uncomfortable Americanas which if I were an American, will induce self-reflection and even perhaps self-loathing. I had the same impression when I read American Pastoral, that he turns the concept of the American dream — that the next generation will do better than this one — on its head. In American Pastoral, the American life as we ideally know it to be — the nuclear family, the steady well-paid job and civil society may not be necessarily what the next generation is looking for. That these civil comforts are in fact, a nightmare for some.
I have the same feels here for The Human Stain. It is after all part of the same trilogy of books (with I Married a Communist in the middle, but of which I haven’t come across yet). The Human Stain amongst other things, is the great nation’s 42nd president’s mishap when he blew and missed his load on a young White House intern. The novel starts off at this time, when America was reflecting on its own values in relation to this scandal, and Bill was in the process of being impeached.
And the stain brings us to the main character of the book, Coleman Silk. After decades of tenure in a comfortable university as a dean of faculty, Silk was accused of racism by two of his African-American students. Really, it was an honest mistake, but when you’re somewhere at the top, the sharks are out to get you. This scandal caused him to resign his post, just shortly before his planned retirement which comes with a cosy pension plan. Silk left his job, Clinton kept on being the president.
Silk at this time, also started having an affair with a woman much pretty much half his age, as he is in the early seventies. Fauna Farley is nothing like him, as she works as a janitor, illiterate and penniless. She lives rent free in a farm run by two lesbians in exchange of her labour milking cows. A significant part of the book, and for me, the best part of the book, was this dynamic between Coleman and Fauna.
The novel is written from the point of view of Nathan Zuckerman, a mainstay in Roth’s opus, as he only takes the role of a neutral observer. It also jumps with small reveals here and there, as Zuckerman writes from a retrospective of events that had happened, things that had only been recently uncovered about Coleman, that he in fact was an African American himself.
From the first chapter to the second, I went “HUH”, because the academician that we saw in the first chapter was a pretty vanilla white Jewish dude. In the second chapter, we are revealed his origin story, that he comes from a respectable black family, that his father works decades as a server in the train carriage, and he wants the best for his sons to attend college. Coleman has a better time being a boxer, but went to the primarily black college from the pressure of his family. But when his father died, he dropped out. And this is where Coleman decided to pretend to be white — Jewish even. He enlisted as a soldier and pretty much got away (most of the time) with his new found whiteness. He eventually married to a white woman and had children of his own.
And this is where the book hits so deep. It is absolutely fucking heartbreaking when Coleman had a conversation with his mother to let her know that her grandchildren will never know her, that she can only love them at a distance. He will tell the world that both of his parents are dead, even though this is only half true and it’s only a small part of the lie. For his whiteness, Coleman found a successful career, domestic joy and public respect.
But what is Roth telling us here? It is not something that we don’t know already, that the systems in place favour those with lighter skin colours, no matter if they were white Protestant, or white Jewish or it seems, white black. White anything by default has the most advantage. Coleman swapped his identity easily and for a while he seemed contented, but when he was suspended for his comments on his black students, he shot himself in the foot by retaliating to the decision. Things would have been fine if he had copped on in the chin and everybody forgets the scandal.
I do think the question that Roth raises is whether Coleman is to blame? I cannot answer this. Coleman enjoyed the advantages of being white to the cost of his family and his roots. This is personally not the price I’m willing to pay. But I have never been an African American, facing all the prejudices that I can only read about in the news. Coleman was born with a handicap of his African American identity but won the lottery in the shade of his lighter skin tone. And even to the end, his children was not aware that they are also part African American, to the point that one of them also tried to be in touch with a non-existent Jewish identity.
It is a brilliant book for introspection. We know that America is not a fair place already, and African Americans from humble families have limited success, even with college education. I loved Coleman’s relationship with Fauna, because it was a purely sexual relationship — a mature self-aware relationship where you also care deeply about the other person. But the relationship isn’t perfect, especially if we consider Flora’s psychotic ex-husband.
But it is Coleman Silk who is the star here, the antihero. His identity is beguiled by his true self and though this makes him a hypocrite, he was in control of his own life. Here is a passage to ponder on:
But to dare to be nothing more than correct had never been his aim. The objective was for his fate to be determined not by the ignorant, hate-filled intentions of a hostile world but, to whatever degree to humanly possible, by his own resolve. Why accept life on any other terms?
From this perspective, I have so much to respect on Coleman’s choices. If the system fails you, why not take the bull by the horns and take control of your own life in spite of the system?
But read the book for its beautiful prose, this book is a Roth masterclass. Read it for its characters who hit too close to home. Read it for self-reflection of your own identity and others who don’t share the same shade where you are in the Venn diagram. Read it for literature’s sake.
