DL's: The question has been asked about the Discussion - on a schedule or??? As for me, I probably will have it read before the discussion but I'm perfectly content to follow along with a Discussion schedule.

I was wondering if we should read the book before the 1st of September or begin reading it then. Just wanted to follow the general flow of things here.

My recommendation would be to start The Human Stain shortly before September 1, and read with us as the discussion progresses. (I'll have finished it by then, but only because I prefer to have finished the book when I'm leading the discussion.) I WOULDN'T read it too far in advance of Sept. 1, if you're going to finish it before the discussion starts, since it's so easy to forget details.

I actually have the book now - the library came through on my "hold" far too soon!! - so I'll get a discussion schedule up in the header in the next week or so.

The other thing that you should all know is that Charlie W. has created a link to another SeniorNet discussion of Philip Roth. It's in the header up above. The discussion there focuses on all of Roth's work, with an emphasis on the two books Roth wrote prior to The Human Stain - I Married a Communist and American Pastoral. Together, the three books have been characterized as a loose trilogy. However, if you like Roth, that other discussion is the place to talk about anything and everything Roth - and to start right now, rather than waiting for Sept. 1

Hairy (Linda?), most of us have experimented with how much of a book to have read before a discussion starts. I still have trouble reading (slowly) along with a discussion schedule, but reading the whole book beforehand isn't trouble-free for me, either---exactly what Sarah said, loss of details. Added to that, if I'm in more than one book discussion, it can be really frustrating to be in the middle of reading two or more books SLOWLY. It's easier than it used to be, but I'm still looking for just the right balance---for myself. That's the purpose of my post anyway, to encourage you to do it both ways and see which fits you.

Thanks for the advice. I have the book but think it is too soon to begin for the same reason you all gave - afraid I will, I will, I will, ah, ah, for, for, forget, yes that's it! I am noticing that more and more these days. I hate it!

Looking forward to the book and the discussions here. I think I may have read possibly Goodbye, Columbus by him many, many years ago, but, there again, I don't really remember!

Yes, it's Linda. Hairy is our dog's nickname. When initially signing on to AOL, they wouldn't take all the names I gave them, so my husband shouted out in the background "Use the dog's name! Hairy, take Hairy!" So, in desparation, I did and they took it never realizing what a crazy place this internet can be and how people can misconstrue my intent. One gal said she pictured a really well-built guy with long hair - like something on the cover of those juicy romance novels. Yikes, I didn't intend that!

Here is a link to a Philip Roth biography and research page:

http://www.ngc.peachnet.edu/Academic/Arts_Let/LangLit/dproyal/roth.htm

Great link, Linda. Nicely organized.

I think that link is also up in the header.

Linda, what kind of dog do you have? I volunteer with dogs at the SPCA.

Hairy is a sandy colored critter that was sold as a cocker spaniel but has never looked much like one. He grows hair all over - even his eyelashes grow! He is part cocker and some kind of terrier, we think, kind of looking like Benji only a tad bigger - just a tad. We call his Sandy or Hairy or Hairold D. Sanderson. My husband named him on the way home in the car from the pet store. He was on sale. He is one of the nicest dogs we've ever had.

Sorry if the link is the same as above. There is so much to look at at SN I am still getting adjusted.

Try this little blurb about Roth:

http://www.emanuelnyc.org/bulletin/archive/39.html

Linda

I haven't yet read this but I have read many of his prior works. I particularly liked "American Pastoral" because I thought the characters were well delineated. How does "The Human Stain" compare?

Hi, Callenss and welcome to the Books! You're two up on me, I guess, I am looking at as we speak, but have not read, American Pastoral yet, so I can't answer on either count.

But now did you read I Married a Communist, that's supposedly one of that trilogy, too?

I reread in two days recently Goodbye, Columbus, which I loved but which was not as I remembered it. I love the way he writes, and it's hard to put down, so am really looking forward to Stain in September.

We are so glad to welcome another Roth fan here, do draw up a chair and stick around, you are welcome and we look forward to hearing your opinions!

ginny

Welcome Callenss - I too loved American Pastoral. I haven't read Human Stain yet since I'm "saving" it for our discussion which will start September 1, although I have the book already and it's screaming to me to start reading it!!

We are discussing American Pastoral in Talk About Philip Roth and invite you to join us there!!

Boy that's SOME book!

ginny

Oh, Dear. Were we supposed to be done reading this book by September 1? I haven't even started it yet!

Lorrie

No - we start the discussion September 1 - it sounds like Joan couldn't stop herself from reading early (I had that problem too, but I forced myself to put it down).

If you want to finish reading before Sept. 1, just don't reveal any secrets early. I understand there IS one in this book.

Oh, boy, I'd better get busy. Time is marching on, isn't it? I can't seem to stop reading these page-turner thingys.

Linda

I'm a bit of an inveterate highlighter when reading and, sometimes when it really gets good, I have to go to underlining. In reading this, I'm forced to Code Three reading - highlighting, underlining and "*'s". Some of this stuff gets ya - right in the labonz. Know what I mean?

That good, huh? That's great! I've heard some good things from someone else who is reading it, too. How encouraging!

Linda

Yes, I sure know what you mean, Charlie, I highlight also and the entire book is yellow, I don't know HOW we can discuss this thing, I'm glad to have all you fine people to discuss it with! My entire BOOK is yellow!

No joke!

And it's yellow with exclamation marks and question marks and all sorts of marks in the margins, too. There isn't enough yellow for this book.

ginny

It is good!! Instead of the marks in the book this time, I am opting for post-its because I have a hunch my husband might read it when I am finished. I began reading it this morning and am anxious to get back to it.

~ Linda

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Can't wait for this discussion to start. It really sounds like you're enjoying it.

I had to return my original copy to the Library when they wouldn't let me renew it. I've just been notified that my next copy is IN! I think I'm allowed to start reading it now, don't you? After all, it stared at me for about a month begging me to read it. I almost succombed - picked it up seriously one night and started reading. Then my conscience got the better of me.

So it'll be my "virgin" read. Can't wait. Can't wait to start talking about it with all of you on 9/1.

Love,

Sarah

Yes, it is good. I thought I might read Harry Potter #2 as I was reading this, but each time I sit down to read, I pick up Roth's book instead. Until mañana! - Linda

Linda - I have to laugh every time I see your screen name - until I remember that's your canine friend!

So glad you'll be joining us to discuss this book!

Sarah, I blame the name on AOL. They wouldn't take any screen name that I tried. It was close to Christmas and I was getting anxious - my husband called out from behind me...the dog, the dog - try the dog's name! I did and it worked never thinking the remarks I might have to endure with it! But, it's worked out ok, I guess. And he is a good dog; I don't mind sharing his name. Here is Hairy's Profile

Still into the book today and still making little notations and reading away. I sure am glad I found your group!

Hairy - I volunteer at the SPCA and I always imagine your critter to look like Blondie on the attached page (scroll all the way down)

http://www.sfspca.org/adoptadog.html

He is close to Blondie's looks. Often just a bit shaggier. Has a similar smile, ears are a bit longer, color is about the same. Neat! what a nice idea to put that up for people to see. One of my daughter's friends stopped over yesterday to show her a dog she had just adopted. It was 6 months old with beautiful black hair - medium size, part lab and maybe shepherd or Australien shep. Wonderful temperament...sweet!

When we begin discussing the Human Stain, what shall we begin with...so many pages, the first "chapter" or "part"? Or the whole book?

~ Linda

Linda - in the next several days I'll put some discussions questions up here.

What do you all prefer - that we go by blocks of pages, by issue, by character, something else?

Who plans to join us on 9/1?

Does everyone have the book? Have you started reading yet? Enjoying it so far?

Hi, Sarah! I've just now started reading the book, and Wow! It's really quite attention grabbing, isn't it?

I'll be chiming in along with the others, so how you all want to do it is okay with me. I personally like to go over chunks of a book at a time, but that's no criterion.

At my snail's pace in reading, I'll probabley be through reading the book just as September 1 comes around.

Lorrie

Sarah - I've almost finished the book, and have enjoyed it immensely. Roth challenges us with complicated issues, whether one might accept his particular world-view or not - he doesn't write down to the reader. We should thank him for that. Pesonally, I would prefer some type of structure, because without it, we sometimes leave great chunks of a book untouched. But I'm comfortable with whatever the group decides. Thanks.

I finished the book several days ago and it's still with me. As I've written elsewhere, he's fearless; in an almost anti-politically correct way, he'll take on any complex issue. This book is overflowing with them. In that way and others, I agree with Charlie that he doesn't talk down to the reader. He's in your face, insisting that you take on the issues with him.

I'm ok with any kind of format for discussion. And I agree, we'll miss some things if people like me are left to roam unchecked. Tug on the rope as needed.

HA! If Betty needs "reigning in" - I'll leave that to someone else!!<Grin>

I'm in, I love the book so far, but am reading it tonight and tomorrow so it will be fresh, even tho the pages are totally yellow with notes.

I always like structure, what kind is up to you, Sarah!

Great company assembled so far, and everybody is welcome!

ginny

I'm in! And I should be finished in a couple of days or so. I don't care what the plan of attack is but I agree that we might do better with some form of structure. Going by characters might be one aspect, but we need more than that. He discusses so many aspects of human nature; it's a lot to discuss. A couple of things in the news lately remind me of the book. Did you see the one about the husband was dying and told his wife a secret? And, of course, the Lewinsky thing coming up again.

:::anxious to get back to my book!:::

Linda

I'm in, Sarah! However you wish to do it is okay by me.

I haven't quite finished the book yet, but will be far enough along to join in discussions on the 1st.

One comment: The Viagra people must have been overjoyed to read this book!! Hahaha

Lorrie

I know the discussion officially starts tomorrow, but here are some questions to start the discussion off.

Hearing no strong preferences about structure, why don't we take the book chapter by chapter, starting with Chapter 1 - "Everyone Knows"

Why the title "Everyone Knows" for the first chapter?

I was struck by the names - of characters and places. Coleman Silk, Pierce Roberts, Herb Keble, Steena, Faunia, Athena, Adelphi. For a book that starts out talking about race, these names tell you little about the race of their owners. Coleman Silk - a Jew? Herb Keble - an African American? Is this deliberate?

Lots of Greek myth here too - Athena, Adelphi, the discussion on page 4 of The Iliad: "All of European literature springs from a fight." Why these references?

Love the discussion of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair - and the country's (and Joe Lieberman's) reaction: 1998 . . . in America [was] the summer of an eormous piety binge, a purity binge, when terrorism - which had replaced communism as the prevailing threat to the country's security - was succeeeded by cocksucking, and a virile, youthful middle-aged president and a brash, smitten twenty-one-year-old employee carrying on in the Oval Office like two teenage kids in a parking lot revived America's oldest communal passion . . .: the ecstasy of sanctimony." All true, in my mind. Do you agree? How does this view of America in 1998 set the stage for this book and what is to come?

"[T]hey had dreamed of the brazenness of Bill Clinton. I myself dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadistically like a Christo [remember Christo's fence?] wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing the legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE." What does Roth mean here?

Silk is outraged by the accusation that he is a racist. He rails against African-Americans by talking about their supposed blame of the Jews for all that plagues them: "Thrown out of Athena . . . for being a white Jew of the sort those ignorant bastards call the enemy. That's who's made their American misery. . . . What is the major source of black suffering on this planet? . . . The same evil Old Testament monsters responsible for the suffering of the Germans." Interesting. As a Jew, I've never perceived this as the relationship between blacks and Jews. Thoughts?

On "spooks." When I was in high school, a black friend was very upset by the teacher's use of the term "niggardly." This came up in another context recently, and I completely understood why the person was offended. And yet, the words themselves were not used with the intent to be racist, nor are they racist words taken literally. Should one be offended by words that are not designed to hurt, but hurt nonetheless? Does this take political correctness too far - or, in fact, do people have the right to be offended even if no offense is intended?

Were you surprised that Coleman Silk so quickly seemed to get over leaving Athena under a cloud? First he's asking Nathan to write a book about how his wife was murdered by political correctness, and next thing you know he's thrilled about his affair with Faunia and not at all angry. Sounds as if he wanted out - of both his marriage and Athena. Did this turn of events surprise you?

Can someone decipher the following for me: "I hate the bastards. I hate the f'g bastards the way Gulliver hates the whole human race after he goes and lives with those horses. I hate them with a real biological aversion. Though those horses I always found ridiculous. Didn't you? I used to think of them as the WASP establishment that ran this place when I first got here." Will someone explain the horse reference?

What is the significance of the letter Silk receives from Steena - the classic shiksa - Danish/Icelandic, pretty, marvelously tall. Voluptas. Psyche's daughter. The personification to the Romans of sensual pleasure. Can someone tell us about Voluptas?

More to come.

Sarah, Sarah, it's only the last day of August, I think many of us are gearing up for the words yet to come. I am cramming like mad to get some more of the book read before we get into more discussion here, and I must confess I keep going back over some of the chapters to look at them in a different light.

I don't think I would like Phillip Roth in a personal sense, but Oh, how that man can write!!

Yes, I thought his abrupt resignation from the college was maybe premature. His indignation over that idiotic accusation is understandable, but I feel that he might have been premature in "jumping the gun" so to speak. Anyone else?

Lorrrie

Why the title "Everyone Knows" for the first chapter?
Well, for one thing, this seems to be one of Roth's themes. Although the title of the Chapter is taken from Delphine Roux' letter ("everyone knows" is the fear weapon of choice for the anonymous letter writer), Roth intends it in the ironic sense also. Of course, everyone does not know - they only think they do. And usually they're far off the mark. This is Roth on what we think we "know" about those around us. Very little in his view.

these names tell you little about the race of their owners
In fact, he's throwing us a bit of a curve - at least to me. Coleman Silk hints of blackness (Coleman denotes Coleman Young, to me; Silk is a great boxing name and whispers of pimp smoothness). And the name Herb is chosen very deliberately, I'm sure - another curve ball. He's throwing these at us and letting us see how we perceive the names. Brilliant. As early as page 15-16 we get a mixed signal on Coleman's heritage:

All in all, he remained a neat, attractive package of a man even at his age, the small-nosed Jewish type with the facial heft in the jaw, one of those crimped-haired Jews of a light yellowish skin pigmentation who possess something of the ambiguous aura of the pale blacks who are sometimes taken for white.

And then again:

because his name didn't give him away as a Jew - because it could as easily have been a Negro's name - he'd once been identified, in a brothel, as a nigger trying to pass and had been thrown out.

Love the discussion of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair - and the country's (and Joe Lieberman's) reaction
I too thought this part was great - and I don't want to derail the discussion of on a tangent right off the bat here - but I am particularly troubled these days by what the Dems are about with Joe Lieberman's left-wing religiosity. Beware Roth's "ecstasy of sanctimony", (or Hawthorne's "persecuting spirit" as Roth points out) this desire to make-over the world as a "cozy and safe" place.

"A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE" - What does Roth mean here?
Why are we always disappointed when our idols fall short, our artificial role models emphasize to us once again that - we're all mere mortals with blemishes, foibles?...Even the President has that Human "stain."

The same evil Old Testament monsters
I'm unclear on this myself and look for others insights. Maybe he's just refereing to The Philistines.

I remember the "niggardly" incident vaguely - I think they also used it on The Practice tv show as one of their cases, if I'm not mistaken. My father - a musician - used the term "spade" and to a lesser extent "spook" back in the fifties. Back in the forties, I suspect, these terms were easy "hep" identifiers for those "cats". Dig? I bet the perjorative intent was almost non-existent at inception. These were terms used by a fringe group (pop musicians) and they really were a fringe group in those days, to easily talk about another fringe group. As the fifties evolved and the Civil Rights movement, well our perception of these words - and indeed our cultural conception of negroes...blacks...Afro-Americans...African Americans evolved also. The language is not static and neither is the place at the bottom rung of our so-called social laddder.

Lorrie - I think Coleman's resignation makes sense in the context of his character - he's a classicist, a bit austere and imperial, don't you think? Delphine Roux called him on this as I recall - and what she had to say rang true. He would not be one to suffer fools, etc. Great start Sarah. You've touched on only some of the issues/questions in just Chapter 1 - and I've touched on even less. So much here. I'm going on vacation Saturday for a week, and though I'm very much looking forward to it, I hate that I'm going to miss out on a week of this discussion!!

Charlie

Wonderful questions, Sarah!!!

The title Everyone Knows---the 2 associations Charlie listed, (1) anonymous letter, (2) Roth's theme, have something in common with a third association. The word "spooks." Everyone knows it's a perjorative reference to Blacks. Yet, they don't. In all three cases, the knowing is a surface certainty that fails when put to a test of reality. In fact, the accusation of racism is a specific test of Roth's theme of how often we're wrong when we feel so certain that we understand another person.

Sarah asks, so what if there is no intent to hurt, but the words (or actions) do hurt. I'm amused when I read that some think this is only a recent issue, or that it is only tied to "politically correct" issues. This is an old issue. Ignorance and innocence are old perpetrators. And what an interesting subject to contemplate. At what point does ignorance become laziness or obstinacy. How long is the grace period of ignorance. Are there true cases of innocence when blame cannot be assigned? Roth didn't choose a very ambiguous example, did he---in the word "spooks." Did he set us up to feel Coleman Silk's outrage? And reverse hurt, of course. The hurt caused by innocence was felt on both ends.

The deeper issue that Roth avoids, as he does with other issues in the whole book, is the broader hurt by words (or deeds) that are not so ambiguous. He could have chosen a word to be uttered by Silk that most would have thought was hurtful (whether Silk did or not, whether he was innocent of its use or not). Then we might be discussing a mindset, not just an innocent word. But Roth let us know there is no mindset of racism here. (At least, not the standard idea of racism---Silk's life may include racism of his own making.)

A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE. Even though Roth's recurrent theme is that we're often wrong when we think we understand another person, HE is so often right on target in expressing what so many people think/feel/say. That banner declaring humanness is an accurate picture of how many of us felt. That others DIDN'T feel that---Roth might say that's another example of being wrong when declaring we know another. (But you're wrong. No, no, but YOU'RE wrong. Hey, YOU are wrong....)

Betty, don't you think that Coleman's particular choice of the word "spooks" reflected the exactness that his own father had insisted upon concerning the meaning of words?

This is a brilliant book. Yes, Charlie, Roth is throwing curves from the very beginning. I've more or less figured out what Silk's "secret" is, and like a good little girl, won't mention it here, but that doesn't mean I'm still not confused. I keep going back to passages where I think I must have missed some clue.

Lorrie

"VOLUPTAS"--------(ROMAN MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTER)

GODDESS OF SENSUAL PLEASURE

Lorrie

Sarah: I don't have the book but I'm lurking.

Robby

Charlie's comment on Coleman being imperial holds well with the notion that Coleman's being set up as a tragic figure. He's come to Athena as a classicist. The Greek allusion begins. He performs the modern equivalent of an heroic task, running the weak professors out of the university. He has a flaw that brings him to grief --- his autocracy. He's brought down from a high place by the fates because of his inadvertent word choice "spooks". He has not paid enough attention to the chorus that speaks the will of the community which might go like this: " Stray not from polictical correctnes, or you shall suffer." Finally, we meet him in exile, stripped of his imperial trappings, his only friends a reclusive novelist and an illiterate charwoman from the university staff.

We can't lose sight of the fact that Silk's use of the word "spooks" was absolutely color-blind. He had no idea who he was referring to in the use of the word. He was using it in the precise sense in which it was originally intended - not in any colloquial sense in reference to race. So not only were Silk's words not intended to be hurtful - they couldn't even be taken to be hurtful except in a climate of hyper-sensitivity, political correctness, which is what I believe Roth intended here.

Lorrie, you're exactly right when you say that "Coleman's particular choice of the word "spooks" reflected the exactness that his own father had insisted upon concerning the meaning of words." Roth is pretty clear, here, I think in laying this out in detail.

Dansker - "Imperial Silk" - I like that - hadn't put the two together. You put the whole Classicist thing in proper perspective so that it makes perfect sense now. Thanks.

Charlie

Since I'm going to miss the Chapter 1 discussion - I'll be out of town until next Sunday - let me clear the waste basket of my mind with some random Chapter 1 thoughts:

1. Speaking of names and their Rorshach like associations. Doesn't the name Lester Farley have tatoos all over it?
2. Roth's technique of having Nathan Zuckerman take up the task of writing the story of the main character, is of course, the same conceit used in the two previous books of this trilogy: Zuckerman is driven to write the story of Seymour Irving Levov (The Swede) in American Pastoral, just as he is driven to uncover the truth about Ira Ringold in I Married A Communist
3. In The Human Stain, Coleman's wife Iris is described (pg 13) as "an escapee fresh from two nutty anarchist parents." In American Pastoral, two (seemingly) ultra-normal parents are cursed with an anarchist daughter. Bit of a reversal there.
4. In a wonderful passage (pgs 44-5), Zuckerman speaks of how his friendship with Silk came about at the time he was recovering from prostate cancer. Made him realize that despite his having embraced a life of seclusion, a solitary life of renunciation, he was in fact, lonely. He sorely missed "the entanglement with life." Entanglements which, being a writer, he wanted to unravel - and when he did: "all the world's malice came rushing in." And it's true, isn't it? The summer of '98 WAS a time of malice, a time "when the smallness of people was simply crushing."
5. The fate of Faunia and Coleman is introduced rather abruptly, I thought - but effectively (on pg 51): "After they were buried four months later..."
6. And these words from pg 52: "Nothing lasts, and yet nothing passes, either. And nothing passes just because nothing lasts." These are the types of Roth sentences that are like a mirage: They shimmer before you - at first with a brilliance, and profound - then vapid and meaningless - and then with a permanence of truth that nearly surpasses our ability to understand. One stands in awe.
7. Roth tackled the failure of family, despite doing everything "right" in American Pastoral. And I though back to that book when I read this passage from pg 61: "Because of his unmistakable enmity for his father, Mark had made himself into whatever his family wasn't...". I've known these people.

At least I'll get to read all your posts when I get back. Bye now.

Charlie

Phillip Roth works the juxtaposition of Clinton's transgressions well with the fall of Coleman. Without rebeating the Clinton-Monica thing to death he alludes to it from time to time. Is he encouraging us to relearn that tragedy still forms a part of our existence? Saying read about Coleman, watch Clinton in the future?

Concerning Coleman Silk's quick switch from grief, perhaps it was his furious, passionate and exhaustive two years of note taking that served as a form of bibliotherapy. Weren't Iris and he rather distant before the "spooks" incident, only drawn closer when fighting with the powers that be to set them straight about Coleman's miscue? Iris dies, the notes are concluded and Coleman's passion subsides. Or, rather, is redirected to his "rebirth" through Viagra and Faunia Farley.

Speaking of names, "Faunia" evokes the late sixties and seventies rather well. It sounds like fawn, if I read it correctly. It suggests the whole "natural look" period. One can't help but see a fragile deer when the name appears. How ironic that she is so tough, so durable when we meet her.

Yes, absolutely, Silk's use of the word "spooks" was absolutely "color-blind," as Charlie writes, or as I like to think, absolutely innocent. Yet, that is how Roth sets us up to see this as a tragedy, a result of overwrought, over-sensitive political correctness. It's too bad Roth couldn't have found a more realistic conflict, one in which Silk's innocence was not so absolute and the demands of the college not so caricatured. There is no conflict, at least on the issue of who is wronged.

Dansker, how could Silk's being in tune with the "chorus" (I love that) have prepared him not to utter "spooks"? He had no idea it had another meaning. This chorus was ready to cry "foul deed" at ANYTHING he did.

Lester Farley---oh, yeah, Roth had a good time with that name. Say the last name aloud several times and his image goes down even more.

On the other hand, I'm willing to see Roth's caricatured "conflict" as somehow deliberate. It would have been more interesting to ME, though, if he'd chosen a more realistic tug of war.

I will be joining in more when I can. I have about 50 hours of schoolwork to do in addition to my regular load. Deadlines - Deadlines!! I want to look over my notes and Part 1 again and then, hopefully, will have something semi-sane to say.

At one point I remember thinking, "Is this a tragedy or pathos?" Surely there was a tragic flaw. Hmm.

I loved the words "ecstasy of sanctimony". I have repeated it often since they said they were going to do more study on the Lewinsky affair. Bill Maher, when being interviewed recently by Larry King, said that is ironic that a young Jewish girl caused a Jewish man to get nominated for the office of Vice President of the United States of America. I would love to hear what Roth has to say about that!

I am here every day with you! Love the comments and questions. What a fantastic group!! I am full of respect and awe here!

Linda

i admit to lurking here...and i see you, my new friend hairy. so sorry i didn't order the book...no time to read it in time to discuss it here. but i am enjoying all your comments...saw bill maher make that comment about lewinsky/lieberman on larry king. (one of only two or three television shows i receive in english) sometimes i really miss being able to tune in to so much interesting stuff in the states.

don't you just hate it when people admit they lurk.

Not to throw a "curve ball" but "spooks" is also a term left over from the Cold War that means a spy...usually covert.

Great posts everyone. Welcome back dansker and fairwind, welcome betty, ed, charlie, hairy and robby. Where's lorrie?

betty, charlie, ed: On the "spooks" thing, I think it's less clear cut than some of you. For example, do you ever use the term "spade" (except when playing cards)? It's a word that has fallen out of use - probably because it's other meaning is offensive.

Same with spooks. Can't remember ever using that word. Again, it's a perfectly ok word in some contexts - but it's also a hurtful word when used in a certain way. It has just fallen out of the language - probably for that reason.

I'm trying to think of other examples. Niggardly was the one I used initially. Chink in a wall. Finger in the dike. Do we really need these words anymore given that they also are exceptionally offensive and hurtful to others?

Another subject: I don't understand why Coleman cares if anyone knows about his relationship with Faunia. Do you? Why keep it a secret? He has nothing to lose - he no longer occupies a position of prestige. She's a consenting adult. Why does Roux think she's exposing something by writing that letter? I'm missing something here.

I understand Viagra does not act as an aphrodesiac - it simply increases blood flow and helps with the mechanics. I may be wrong here, but I think it's incorrect that the Viagra would make Coleman feel like a new man, in love with sex, invigorated. I think that's pure Viagra myth.

Why does Roth tell us that Nathan is incontinent from prostate cancer? Why the long explanation of the lengths to which Nathan goes to keep the problem in check?

Both of these examples (Viagra, incontinence) suggest to me that Roth is fixated on growing older. This didn't come through nearly as much in his other books. He IS getting older, I guess. It just comes as a surprise!

Why doesn't Faunia want to learn to read? What in her past - in this day and age - would cause a woman to keep herself in ignorance? Reminds me of that movie "Children of a Lesser God," in which the deaf janitor does not want to be taught to speak by the William Hurt teacher character. Is Roth stereotyping the working class here - they are abused, illiterate - and don't want to improve themselves?

Is Coleman supposed to be degrading himself with Faunia? Is this just a natural progression of his having left Athena in disgrace - he's turning to the more human, stained side of himself - escaping the safe and proper, the dry, boring, academic side of life in order to experience being truly human? And is being human to degrade oneself, to do things that bring shame upon oneself? Or is it just to like sex, to have a sex life? Not sure what Roth's view is here.

I loved the analogy Roth drew between Faunia and Coleman and Coleman's friend and the ugly women. Do you think Faunia is with Coleman because no one else will have him - because he's the equivalent of an ugly woman? I think women choose older men for very different reasons than those men use to choose women.

Charlie referred to this quote about similarities between Jews-African Americans:

"All in all, he remained a neat, attractive package of a man even at his age, the small-nosed Jewish type with the facial heft in the jaw, one of those crimped-haired Jews of a light yellowish skin pigmentation who possess something of the ambiguous aura of the pale blacks who are sometimes taken for white."

This too was a revelation for me. Never heard that comparison made. But the relationship between blacks and jews has always been fraught with complications. I saw a program the other night - can't remember what it was - in which the jewish character and the black character got into an argument about whose people had suffered more. Why do we always have to compete in this way?

Lorrie, why don't you think you would like Philip Roth?

Dansker, great analogy between this book and Greek tragedy and myth. The use of the term "mythological" creeps in quite a bit in this first chapter (yes, we're still on the first chapter). Does anyone know the ancient myths? Can you illuminate us about how this story mirrors those stories?

Betty, I liked your point about ignorance, and that at a certain point people are accountable for their own failure to understand that certain words hurt. I wince when much older men call me a girl. There's a part of me that wants to give them a pass - things have changed, they're old, they don't realize, etc., etc. And then I think - how long has it been an insult to call women girls? Decades! So wise up, I think. You don't get a pass on ignorance anymore!

---------------

This Lester Farley is truly a scary character. It makes me think about what is in the heads of so many of the Vietnam vets that roam the streets of America. How can anyone go through such an experience and not go crazy? And yet, it's frightening to know what's in his head.

Are you suspicious about Lisa and Mark, Coleman's twins? Why does Mark hate Coleman so much? Why the sudden shift in Lisa's attitude? (I am deliberately avoiding reading ahead this time, because I understand Coleman has a secret and I don't want to know what it is until I get there). I suspect, without knowing, that Coleman's secret has something to do with his kids. (If you know, don't tell us, but if you don't know, what do you think the secret is?)

Maybe Mark's rebellion - his support of Nixon, his choice to become an Orthodox Jew "while the rest of his family, taking their cue from their anticlerical atheistic parents were Jews in little more than name" - is entirely predictable. Every kid needs to rebel just a little bit. I am far more traditional than my untraditional parents. But I sense something sinister at work here. Do you?

Do you think Mark is right, that if Coleman had simply apologized for the "spooks" remark, everything would have been alright? Somehow, I suspect not. And yet there was something deliberately self-destructive in how Coleman reacted to the whole episode. As if he wanted to escape from his proper life into the depths of "humanness."

Oh, now I see. There was something in your first long post, Sarah, that made me think---oh, she doesn't know it yet. Something beyond the main secret. And all this has reminded me how manipulated a reader (of Roth) can feel. How he pulls that off without more ire from us, though, is on the long list of things to hate to hate about Roth. One measure of his skill is that he can get away with things other writers really can't. His theme of the unknowability of a person, though, must be his justification for misleading us about more than one character.

All I read about this book, Betty and Joan, was that there was a deep secret buried within it. I have held off and held off and held off reading it through because I knew that would change how the discussion went. First try with this experiment.

I'd asked, Joan, upfront about how people wanted to do the discussion. Everyone was utterly flexible, so I decided on the chapter by chapter method.

I must say that discussing it slowly like this helps me (not sure it helps anyone else!) focus on little details that I might not focus on if I were discussing the book as a whole. I've tried discussions both ways, and like both.

Betty - your post is SO intriguing. So he has misled us about more than one character? Fascinating. Do you reallly hate this about him? Do you hate Roth?

SarahT O, I wish that I had time to read this book. Classes have begun again and what with the reading for that and the Papers, endless papers, I just don't have time. However, I saw something in a recent post of yours that I found interesting. I teach novels second semester to freshmen, usually four or five novels. We read all of them in chunks. They can read ahead if they want, but we keep the discussion focused on the part assigned. It's also easier for me to direct a discussion since they aren't all over the map.

Anyway, wish I could join you,

Maryal

No, not hate about him, Sarah---hate to hate about him. (double negative is all I can admit to)

I agree with Linda, the air here is deliciously rare, I'm loving it!!!!!

I definitely think Coleman felt that Faunia ---loved that connection, DANSKER!!-- WELCOME back! was beneath him. Those old Classics professors really think they are something, and having ONCE been one, he remains one in the eyes of the town. Everywhere he goes, people KNOW who he was and what he did.

I often think of the Doonsbury cartoon in which the Classics professor is telling the President of the College how he would run things in the private sector, and the President replies, (and I thought he said Coleman !!??!! but I could be wrong there, hahaahha) "But XXXX, you're a Latin professor. And the guy replied, "And a darn good one, too, I'd be snapped up in a minute."

That's the way they think. And when you realize that for years the classics graduates were the #1 pick for the CIA, you realize they just might have something there.

At any rate, the references to Greek mythology, I think, are there to reinforce his Olympic like status as well as illuminate the ivory tower the university occupies...Maybe. Town and Gown.

---

I, too, have stopped using the word niggardly, altho it's a perfectly good word, for obvious reasons. This morning I looked up the origin of the word in the OED and I think you may be surprised, I was:

niggardly: 1. Having a niggard's nature: close fisted, stingy sparing: 1571.
2. Of actions, qualities, etc, mean miserly. 1561
3. Such as a niggard would give: meanly small; scanty 1599.

niggard: perhaps of Scandinavian origin. 1. A mean, stingy, or parsimonious person; a miser.
2. A false bottom for a grate, to economize fuel (dial) 1688
3. As adj: miserly, parsimonious, mean; unwilling to give or spend anything.
4. Of actions or qualities; niggardly, ungenerous; 1672, 5. Scanty: 1751.

Apparently this word is like the word gay with no reason whatsoever for its pejorative sound and still apparently means cheap?

Interesting.

I think Philip Roth is writing about himself with all the physical stuff.

Faunia irritated me for some reason, and I did think twice about the Vietnam vets when I read that one, but Faunia could have left town and perhaps her illiteracy was introduced to show why she could not leave.

ginny

Are we still talking about Part 1 or Chapter 1 or have we gone beyond? It doesn't bother me because I have finished the book, but some may not have finished yet. I'm kind of lost as to what we are discussing at the moment. Still sitting here typing out piles of paperwork to meet a deadline. Wish I were typing out my notes from The Human Stain...soon, hopefully, soon!!

There were times I didn't like Coleman very much. Would you say he is a likable man/boy? First Part?

This book certainly speaks to us as seniors. Yes, Roth is older now and is growing up with us. I thought a paragraph on page 44 might be worth quoting, if we are allowed.

"The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements, allurements, and expectations, apart especially from one's own intensity, is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plentitude as capital, silence as wealth exponentially increasing. The encircling silence as your chosen source of advantage and your only intimate. The trick is to find sustenance in (Hawthorne again)'the communication of a solitary mind with itself,' the secret is to find sustenance in people like Hawthorne, in the wisdom of the brilliant deceased."

"Organize the silence" - that jumps out at me. I love it!

Now, much of this is extreme, due to Zuckerman's and Coleman's lifestyles at the time, but I do find myself seeking solitude much more than ever in my life before for sustenance, for a re-energizing that seems to occur - and often while reading a book!

I could relate to the part about Lisa, his daughter, trying to teach 30 some students to learn to read and then going into a more one-on-one job with them with Reading Recovery and finding herself still frustrated at the end of each day. It can be very frustrating, but I do love to teach them to read. There is such a wealth of things out there for them to read these days. When I began teaching children's books were nothing at all what they are today. Where the Wild Things Are began a whole wave of children's writers which has come into it's glory - especially this year.

Early on Faunia says, "I am dumb beyond my years." Hardly - she has a depth and wisdom when need be.

The two men dancing was quite a scene, and later Zuckerman says, "Coleman Silk danced me right back into life again." That was touching.

I like the way Roth hits on so many human foibles and finds the perfect words to describe them and opinionate on them. The Press, the politicians, the general public and their "ecstasy of sanctimony" was extremely well done. And the banner on the White House would have been a just response to them all. (A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE) Clinton is, after all, a human being - not to be an object to be hurling thing at. "Let he who is without sin..." is certainly applicable.

Well, I've said more than enough for now. Thank you for letting me have the floor for awhile.

Linda

Wonderful comments, Linda (Hairy). I, too, identified with the growing need for solitude---and the tension so well described by Roth with the continued need to be connect with people. As with other things in life, one makes us appreciate the other. Ebb and flow.

Hairy, yes, we're still in Chapter 1. We'll probably move off of it in a few days. I list below the last series of questions I posted. Then you added the wonderful passage about solitude, although I have to admit I had a slightly different take on Nathan's decision to become solitary. I saw it as his dropping out of society, spurred on perhaps by depression. When, as you point out, Coleman danced NAthan back into life, I thought perhaps Nathan had decided to rejoin the human race, that his depression had lifted.

You also mention Lisa. Why was she so determined to do work that drained her of everything, that made her miserable. She had no instinct toward self-preservation. I saw her inability to get out of work that brought her down as evidence of her own low self-esteem. Why were both of Coleman's younger kids, Lisa and Mark, having such a hard time in life? Why were they so alienated from Coleman?

Maryal - so sorry you can't join us on this one - but even if you just lurk, stay with us.

Ginny - welcome. Glad you're enjoying the book. Why you say the book reflects Roth's own experience with getting older - do you mean the parts about Viagra and incontinence?

Why did Faunia irritate you? Because she was unable to leave an abusive relationship? Funny how we blame the one who didn't leave, rather than the one who perpetrated the damage. And yet, we very often do. Is it - there but for the grace of God go I - except that I would not be in that situation. Or is it more - I would not be in that situation and why the heck is she?

I actually was more irritated by Roth's treatment of Faunia - she was the intellectual's stereotype of a working class person - illiterate, uneducated, in an abusive relationship.

And here are the questions from before:

------------- Charlie referred to this quote about similarities between Jews-African Americans:

"All in all, he remained a neat, attractive package of a man even at his age, the small-nosed Jewish type with the facial heft in the jaw, one of those crimped-haired Jews of a light yellowish skin pigmentation who possess something of the ambiguous aura of the pale blacks who are sometimes taken for white."

This too was a revelation for me. Never heard that comparison made. But the relationship between blacks and jews has always been fraught with complications. I saw a program the other night - can't remember what it was - in which the jewish character and the black character got into an argument about whose people had suffered more. Why do we always have to compete in this way?

Lorrie, why don't you think you would like Philip Roth?

Dansker, great analogy between this book and Greek tragedy and myth. The use of the term "mythological" creeps in quite a bit in this first chapter (yes, we're still on the first chapter). Does anyone know the ancient myths? Can you illuminate us about how this story mirrors those stories?

Betty, I liked your point about ignorance, and that at a certain point people are accountable for their own failure to understand that certain words hurt. I wince when much older men call me a girl. There's a part of me that wants to give them a pass - things have changed, they're old, they don't realize, etc., etc. And then I think - how long has it been an insult to call women girls? Decades! So wise up, I think. You don't get a pass on ignorance anymore!

This Lester Farley is truly a scary character. It makes me think about what is in the heads of so many of the Vietnam vets that roam the streets of America. How can anyone go through such an experience and not go crazy? And yet, it's frightening to know what's in his head. Are you suspicious about Lisa and Mark, Coleman's twins? Why does Mark hate Coleman so much? Why the sudden shift in Lisa's attitude? (I am deliberately avoiding reading ahead this time, because I understand Coleman has a secret and I don't want to know what it is until I get there). I suspect, without knowing, that Coleman's secret has something to do with his kids. (If you know, don't tell us, but if you don't know, what do you think the secret is?)

Maybe Mark's rebellion - his support of Nixon, his choice to become an Orthodox Jew "while the rest of his family, taking their cue from their anticlerical atheistic parents were Jews in little more than name" - is entirely predictable. Every kid needs to rebel just a little bit. I am far more traditional than my untraditional parents. But I sense something sinister at work here. Do you?

Do you think Mark is right, that if Coleman had simply apologized for the "spooks" remark, everything would have been alright? Somehow, I suspect not. And yet there was something deliberately self-destructive in how Coleman reacted to the whole episode. As if he wanted to escape from his proper life into the depths of "humanness."

-----------

And one more question - does Roth think humanness is a good thing or a bad thing? I'm confused on this at this point in the book.

Delphine is a name that fits in importantly in Greek tragedy, at least the route of it does --- Delphi. It was the oracle at Delphi's prediction that Oedipus tried to outrun when he left Colonus in his escape to Thebes. The oracle predicted that he would kill his father and marry his mother. In his attempted escape from his destiny he uses his brilliance to solve the riddle of the sphinx. His rise to power in the kingdom is directly connected to his quick thinking. But the oracle's prediction cannot be outrun as we know from the conclusion of the play.

My thought is that Delphine Roux must in some way be connected with the oracle of Delphi. I don't think Roth is trying to allude to Oedipus Rex particularly, but to point toward man attempting to escape his destiny. Am I out on a limb here?

Hi, Sarah, and Everybody! After returning from a long Labor Day weekend, it's a pleasure to look in here and see all these wonderful posts. Sarah, I think your chapter by chapter is a great approach, maybe because I still have a little more to read. Life seems to keep interfering here! Haha I'll post more after I get caught up on the subscriptions. Great comments on this book! One thing, Sarah. You asked why I don't think I'd like Philip Roth----perhaps it's because I feel like Betty Gregory does, that he manipulates his readers.

Lorrie

Hi!--I'm lurking--it makes me feel uncomfortable and confessing absolves that, somewhat. I haven't read this book, yet; but have just finished "I Married a Communist" which is my first exposure to Roth and in part explains my need to read what you're discussing. My list of books to read is l-o-n-g and your thoughtful discussions are so much better than a review! In response to the questions on mytholodgy--it seems to be the trend in current fiction--could it reflect the overwhelming challenge of instant communication that pushes us to find solutions to many problems that our common sense reacts that "none one god" can solve all this? Yvonne

Yvonne: You're on the right track. "I Married a Communist" is part of the trilogy, with "American Pastoral" first and then finishing with this "Human Stain"----all very good books, with the same writer/protagonist, who I think is an alter ego of Philip Roth himeself.

Lorrie

Theron: I think you may be right. Other people seem to feel that many of our discussions tend to over-analyze a bit. Do you feel that, Sarah?

I think the dancing scene with Nathan and Coleman was very touching, somehow. There was a sort of closeness between the two men, completely void of any homosexual overtones, that actually seemed sweet. Then, too, it’s commendable that Nathan’s becoming involved with Coleman’s troubles was the catalyst needed to bring him (Nathan) out of his self-imposed hermitage. As he says himself, and quoted by Betty, “Coleman Silk danced me right back into life again!”

Charlie put it so well with his Rorschach allusion to all the different names: Faunia Farley, Coleman Silk, Delphine Roux, I love them, don’t you? They seem to trip right off the tongue.

And I like Dansker’s post about “Imperial Silk.”

Hairy asks, “tragedy or pathos?” Well put, Linda!

Sarah: Another reason I don’t care for Roth himself, besides some of his insufferably long passages, is his obvious feeling of superiority to less-educated people .I feel that his portrayal of Faunia is his usual way of showing disdain of the Intellectual for anyone without at least a doctorate in education, preferably in the Classics. But I do agree with his rantings about the self-righteous puritanism of these times.

So far I find the book unnerving sometimes, often hilarious, with a sort of savage humor, and then oftentimes equally sad. It’s a joy to read!

Lorrie

I remeber that we read this before. Can you tell me where I can find the discussion portion of this book. I am about to join a bookclub that is reading this and I need to refresh my memory. Thanks

Giovanna

Giovanna, how lovely to see you again! Thank you for wanting to use our Archives as a reference, too! That's great! How about come back in and tell us what your Face to Face Book Club thought and how we compared?

Our Archives are the very last clickable on the main B&L page and here is the url for Poisonwood Bible

Come on back and join us sometime again!

---

I came in here to say one unerudite thing, has nobody noticed that Coleman had an order for 3 gallons of milk weekly? That's a lot of milk for one man living alone, Guys? Isn't it?

ginny

Ginny, I was under the impression that he bought the milk only to please Faunia. Whatever he did with it is not mentioned. That would make an awful lot of "hobo stew," wouldn't it?

Lorrie

Coleman chooses Faunia for a variety of reasons. First, she's available, vulnerable, and easy. But his choice is more subtly based than on mere sex. Roth shows us this clearly when he compares Coleman Silk to Thomas Mann's college professor in Death In Venice. In Mann's short novel, his professor briefly encounters a young man and his homosexual, sensual side is awakened by the youth and beauty of him. Shortly before the professor's death he becomes intensely aware of living because of this passing moment, seeing Tzadio. Roth's Nathan alludes to Mann's work and his character, comparing them to Coleman's ritual watching of Faunia at work:

"It was something, I suppose, like watching Aschenbach feverishly watching Tzadio --- his sexual longing brought to a feverish boil by the anguishing fact of mortality --- except that they weren't in a luxury hotel on the Venice Lido ... It was high summer and we were in a barn in the Northeast of our country...."

Besides sex, what Coleman finds in Faunia is a life force, an almost animal reaction to survive on her own terms. In addition, there's her adherence to quality work, to detail, her energy, her genuine earthiness, much as that which had to exist in the surviving women who helped found our country. (I believe there's a mention of that aspect of her in the chapter.) There's got to be, also, a sense of impending loss of that mortality in him, something no chemical passport will maintain for a seventy-one year old man. There's no future here for Coleman. So, he watches.

I think, too, that Coleman likes to take the road less traveled. He is a rebel often taking roads to suit himself and the heck with the rest of the world.

Since day one (August 31 it was) I have been following this fascinating discussion with eagerness and great admiration.

The trusted local library was as wonderful as ever, ordered The Human Stain (henceforth THS here) early and provided me with a "virginal" copy. What joy. I took copious notes and paid a hefty fine for returning the book late. It is those notes I have been hunting for, alas, without success.

Hence I cannot participate in a chapter-to-chapter discussion but will have to rely on memory - for what it is worth. If I may, a few comments first.

I have followed Roth's work ever since he wrote Goodbye Columbus and was always enlightened and made the richer by his phenomenal literary eloquence. He has the remarkable gift of being able to take in, i.e. absorb the "scene", life as we live it and the varying external circumstances, to process it and bring forth his own thoughts, doubts, criticisms, etc.---- all that within the framework of a novel with credible protagonists the readers come to care about.

Over time he has become a bit irritated, perhaps impatient, or so it would seem from portions of THS, even - dare I say - disillusioned to a certain extent. But that may be true for some of us as well.

I don't think Roth manipulates the reader as much as he TEASES him a bit, and the reader might do well not to jump to premature conclusions. I believe it is best to forge ahead and read, read, and take notes along the way -- then go back and rethink.

Also, I don't think he is high-brow intentionally or otherwise, but rather that the reader may simply be overwhelmed by the author's brilliance. Whoever thought of describing a thinking person as an "egghead" should be sent back to a cave.

In THS, one of the issues Roth addresses is political correctness, which has been most eagerly embraced especially in Europe and produced there some of the same absurdities we have encountered here, mobilizing opposing factions.

Here comes Roth to point out how ludicrous and indeed how devastating some of the consequences can be. And no, I won't give anything away.

In a rare interview to the NYT when the book came out, he said he saw the book "as a thematic trilogy dealing with the historical moments in postwar American life that have had the greatest impact on my generation..." When the interviewer asked him whether Nathan Zuckerman is his alter ego (as the faithful have long believed), Roth replied "alter BRAIN".

I am sorry, in this mode in this forum my computer doesn't give me italics or bold type, only quotation marks and caps.

And if there are typos, I humbly as

Sorry. I meant to say, I humbly ask for your general pardon. T.

From what I've read somewhere in the past, one determines character in life or in quality literature by the decisions one makes. In The Human Stain Lester Farley makes a critical decision to take a second tour in Viet Nam, particularly to be a gunner in a helicopter. I understand the impetus for his choice came from his return home and the consequent rejection that he received, plus an inadequate debriefing period so he could adjust more slowly to civilian life.

My question here is "Where is there free will here?" Is such a man a mere pawn of historical movements (for want of a better phrase)? Or does he have some responsibility to staunch the flow of emotions that have been released in him with all the killing he's experienced? In effect, he chooses to sate himself with killing, devalue his life risking death, let the brute within him rule.

If he is irresponsible, then his brutality toward Faunia, his bitterness toward his community all are to be tolerated. To a degree, he is tolerated. He's shunted to the VA, given Thorazine(?), allowed a low caste job on a road crew. But "Everyone knows" his state of mind, and no one knows how to deal with it, beyond keeping him chemically dependent. Lester is Roth's agent, with the author looking at a critical aspect of modern America, connecting the dots that issue from the Viet Nam disaster to the homefront.

So, Traude, you sound a bit condescending to the "reader" overwhelmed by Roth's "brilliance." So, let's see if I can get this in order. Are you looking down on the reader who is looking down on the (high-brow) Nathan/Roth who is looking down on poor (low-brow) Faunia?

Btty, I was merely trying to answer a question raised earlier in this discussion as to whether Roth is deliberately aloof. I will scroll back until I find that post and the precise word in the question.

What I meant to do was to dispel that notion, which I believe to be false. I am surprised that this was interpreted as condescension on my part; but why ? I wasn't looking down on anyone. Besides we are not concerned with me here but with Roth

Just read all of these comments today. Very interesting. I appreciate the comment about Delphine/Delphi. I did not make that connection. Thanks. Regarding Faunia -- we have noticed the name reminds us of a weak, innocent, trusting fawn; but we have also noticed that Faunia is not as weak and innocent as her name says she is and is not as "dumb" as she says she is. Perhaps she is also not as illiterate as she says she is. I just can't figure out why she chooses to play the role. Hope I find out later. I'm sure a psychologist would know, but I sure don't.

Welcome Fran in Fla, Yvonne and Traude - so great you joined us! I really appreciate your insights.

Fran - you have my intrigued about Faunia. It's funny; when I first read her name, I thought of Fauna - animals in nature. They seem innocent and unknowing, at least in man's view, but they are really quite in charge of their own surroundings. She certainly has a hold on Coleman - so she is not nearly as weak as she would seem at first blush. It's the illiteracy that bothers me. Why must she be illiterate - a product of the natural world, perhaps, more animal than human?

Dansker also makes this point when he says "Besides sex, what Coleman finds in Faunia is a life force, an almost animal reaction to survive on her own terms."

Dansker - you say: "If he is irresponsible, then his brutality toward Faunia, his bitterness toward his community all are to be tolerated." Are you saying that if he exercised free will to do a second tour of duty in Vietnam (and therefore is irresponsible), his brutality is justified? Not that it would ever be justified, but wouldn't it be the reverse in your equation? That is, if he had no free will, and simply was driven back to Vietnam by some involuntary instinct, then he likewise might be less to "blame" for his brutality. The other point you make about Vietnam's effects on the homefront - I hadn't thought about it as I was reading it, but Vietnam is really old news in America. Roth tells us that we shouldn't consider it that way - many of our "baby boomer" generation are still living the horrific effects of that war.

Traude - the quote you use of Roth's about postwar America - was he speaking of WWII, or Vietnam? Given what I say in the previous paragraph, it almost seems as if he thinks Vietnam had as profound an effect on American life (at least for a sector of society) as did WWII. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read Goodbye Columbus (although it's on my list). Do you think Roth is running out of steam? Just feeling the effects of growing older? If literary prizes are any indication, he is just getting started! You also mention - as Theron did awhile back - that there may be a danger in taking the first chapter(s) too seriously in this book. I have read on, and I know at least something of the "secret" (although it was not at all surprising), and am not yet convinced that all we said about Chapter 1 is meaningless.

Theron or Truade, without revealing what comes later, can you give us a sense of why one should not draw conclusions from the first chapters of the book?

Traude: I was also surprised to hear that political correctness has caught on in Europe. I would have thought they would have a different take on things there. While the "spooks" incident isn't a good example, I think the term "political correctness" gets used to shut down honest debate about changes in society that some don't want to see happen. It's a label that doesn't always apply, don't you think?

Yvonne, can you give us other examples in which mythology has crept into modern literature? I find myself noticing these things much more than I did before I started reading with SN.

Lorrie, you're right about how touching the dance scene between Coleman and Nathan was. You said there was not a hint of homosexuality in the scene. I had thought so too - but then Dansker's explanation of the Thomas Mann story got me to thinking about whether that truly was the case.

Are we about ready to move on to Chapter 2?

Fran in fla, oh, you'd be surprised what psychologists don't know. Being one, my guess about Roth's intentions for Faunia's choices are just that: guesses. I reserve the right to be wrong....often.

Traude, with further thought, I can see that your comment on Roth's brilliance wasn't necessarily a putdown, but a possible interpretation of how readers can view him---somewhere up in that lofty realm. His treatment of Faunia, however, does hint at some stereotypes that he's been accused of elsewhere. His treatment of other women in the book doesn't require brilliance but, dare I even venture here, shortsightedness. Many chapters down the road.

Joan - that is quite a tribute to this book. I am glad you are enjoying the discussion. You're right, that it is HARD to discuss the intricacies of a book after a break in time. Nonetheless, I appreciate that you are with us, and invite you to jump in any time!

Betty - see my post about Faunia's illiteracy. It's that aspect of Roth's treatment of the working class that really bothers me. There's this sense of her as almost animalistic - "natural" - that is a turnoff. I agree with you there.

Hairy - how interesting that you see Coleman as a rebel who prefers to take the road less travelled. I'd really like to explore that theme as we move forward into Chapter 2.

With Chapter 2 in mind, do you still see him this way?

Fran

I enjoyed your comments on Faunia. I agree with you on her intelligence and her probable literacy. Somewhere in all the abuse she's suffered is the real woman that I expect to see before the novel concludes. The main reason for this is the horrible death of her children. Indiscrete or not, Faunia has suffered a terrible loss. We see what it seems to have done to Lester, but Faunia's dealing with it, so far, hasn't been revealed.

Sarah,

Sorry about the logical error. I meant that we ought to focus on Lester's second choice. Is he responsible or not for his return to the killing and thus letting his brute side take full charge of his character? I'm not so sure. I'm asking. Apparently, this Thorazine is a fix-up for his problem, as long as he takes it. Is his will effected by a fault in his body chemistry that a new dose of chemicals can correct? After all, not every veteran who experienced war has gone of the deep end.

Roth presents him as a decent farmboy, fitting right in with the community. It would be safe to say that the horrors of war were distant from his experience. It was the contact with savagery that changed him. He certainly didn't return to war motivated by patriotism. He must have been aware of the changes in him. If not, the community signalled its discomfort with what he had become after his first tour.

Whether or not he made a controlled choice to return, the result of that return was to commit him to the eventual role of a pariah, not a hero. Indeed the various wars have had and still are placing their stamp on returning combatants. Roth makes a good point in presenting us with Lester.

Joan G, your enthusiasm for the book is catching! I, too, am enjoying this discussion, and am lucky enough to be able to go back and forth and mess up my pages.

Fran in Florida and Dansker: I like your perceptions of Faunia, also, but I wondered something: Does anyone else have a feeling of incredulity about Faunia's illiteracy? To me that sems too contrived, a little too pat, and Roth portrays her in the most patronizing way.((BETTY?) A woman of obvious intelligence, it seems hard to believe that she has made it that far in life without the ability to read or write.

And what of Delphine? I found, on reading further, that she's not just a snooty French "wannabee," the woman you love to hate, but a person both recognizable amd even pititable, with her inability to even place a personal ad. Delphine Roux seems to me to be an apt example of that particular era, where Coleman falls so swiftly from grace.

Lorrie

Found part of my notes. I am beside myself! Now I feel a little better equipped to participate.

I don't want to sidetrack or unnecessarily prolong the discussion of Chapter One, but I was rather struck by the highly original way in which Coleman interpreted the quarrel between two Greeks, Achilles and Agamemnon, as the BEGINNING of European literature. (Also I would not necessarily call it "European" literature.)

The brawl, as Coleman calls it, took place during the Trojan War, which was then in its NINTH year (see the ILIAD) and was also fought over a woman, Helen of Troy. In light of the chronology and the fact that a woman was the cause, one wonders how Coleman arrived at his novel reconfiguration. But we had better not go into that.

Literary references to Greek mythology occur with increasing frequency; Charles Frazier's best seller COLD MOUNTAIN has been called an American Odyssey, the weary warrior struggling to get home toh is waiting wife. There are any other examples.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all emotions known to man are depicted in the ILIAD, THE ODYSSEY, and later THE ANAEID; there is nothing new under the sun. As for Faunia, she can at best have been a functional illiterate. She did have 2 years of HS after all ! One slight annoyance is the treatment Roth gives to his women protagonists. Life with the author cannot have been easy for Claire Bloom. I think his relationships with men might be less bellicose.

But the reader is swept up nolens volens and carried along at dizzying speed. Read on, new friends, there are more surprises in store.

". Read on, new friends, there are more surprises in store."

Indeed!

Traude: I was going to post yesterday and compliment you on your insights AND tell you that I hoped you would find your notes!! YAY!!

Linda

Dansker - I wonder if it is the mere fact of choosing to go back for a second tour of duty that predicts who will go crazy (or is already crazy) and who will not after the war. You have to wonder about people who chose to go back to Vietnam. I can't quite figure out if Farley was dangerous before he left the first time, or if he only became dangerous in the course of his first tour. In answer to your question about who survives war (mentally) and who does not, I wonder if it depends on who you are before you go.

How could I have omitted to mention the death of Faunia's two children? What is Roth trying to tell us with this horrific story? Are we to blame Faunia for this? Is Lester's rendition of the story even credible? Not sure what to think - it's almost a story too pathetic and heartbreaking to be believed. More stereotyping - or, shall we say, mythology, Traude?

Hairy, Lorrie, Traude - you have me intrigued to no end. Are you hinting that the surprise in Chapter 2 is but one of many?

Chapter 2: The revelation (which I guessed after I thought about it for awhile) that Coleman was a black man passing as a jew. (There's that black/jew thing again. Such an interesting connection between our two peoples.) So this brings me to Hairy's comment about Coleman being a free spirit, doing as he chose.

If he was a free spirit, why would he disguise his race in this way? (I have this sinking feeling that Theron is going to tell me that I am - again - being misled by another Roth red herring). What was he escaping except a good family and a pretty good life?

I have this funny feeling that I've read something just like this before. The way Roth just subtley sneaks in the fact that Coleman is actually "colored." Those of you who have read his other books recently, did Roth use a similiar device in I Married a Communist or American Pastoral. (Or am I just having deja vu?)

Traude - yes, I found intriguing Roth's description of ancient myth as being about battles over a woman, and wondered if his interpretation was correct (haven't read The Iliad or the Odyssey since college) Even if it is not correct, what is Roth trying to tell us about the Coleman Silk story by interpreting the original "European" literature in this way?

Another guess at the surprises to come:

On the front cover is the "Everyone knows" letter. Was Roux talking about someone other than Faunia when she accused Silk of taking advantage of a woman?

Sarah, what an exciting discussion this is ! So many things to comment on and more questions to ask ! If I may tie up a loose end : there was a question early on about Coleman holding forth on Gulliver and "those horses". What Coleman, Nathan, i.e. the author, is referring to here, I believe, is HOUYHNHMLAND (pronounced whinnimland, said my father), the 4th country Gulliver visited and lived in, for some time, in Jonathan Swift's GULLIVERS'S TRAVELS.

That country is inhabited by (bear with me) HOUYHNHMs, a race of HORSES, who are the embodiment of all that is good in mankind, possess all virtues including reason and lead an idyllic existence. They consider Gulliver inferior, but he learns from them, so much so that when he finally returns to his own country, he finds his fellow men repellent and becomes a confirmed misanthrope. I hope that has been of some help.

As to Coleman's (?) classical reference, which loomed LARGE in my refound fragmentary notes: That hit me like a ton of bricks as an early warning sign, if you will--- an indication specifically of the astonishing ability of the Coleman character not only to reinvent HIMSELF, profoundly affecting his immediate family, but even ancient history and literature. Indeed.

"All of European literature springs from a fight", Coleman says and picks up the Iliad (we can imagine the wide-eyed students before him ...) and proceeds to tell them about the beginning of European history. HIS version. Repeat HIS. I could tell you about the reference at least, but only if ask

Sorry, that was one of the periodic interruptions we suffer here, they last only a second or two, but gosh - what conseqences they have.

There is so much more to say, and I will be back later.

There may be more important questions concerning this book than the passage regarding the Iliad, but I have references at the ready just in case.

As for the lengthy discussion in Chapter One of the narrator's prostrate cancer surgery - Through the voices os his protagonists, Roth has shown an anxious preoccupation wth virility in earlier books too, starting with Portnoy's Complaint.

Broad-minded though I am, I found myself uncomfortable at times with the descriptions of male physical functions and/or dysfunctions, which is clearly my problem and quite besides the point. But I did want to reply to an earlier comment.

As for Faunia and her violent past ante Coleman : Roth has addressed interfamiliar abuse and brutality before, in fact in an early book titled WHEN SHE WAS GOOD. I would only repeat that one should simply stay immersed in this passionate rush of words and ideas and, AFTER closing the book each time, take stock - so to speak. This is not a book for the impatient who turn to the last page to see how it all turned out. Instead, each word, each sentence must be read and savored, and reconsidered ---- even though the final picture may not please the reader.

In conclusion, no one has described physical and spiritual solitude, voluntary or otherwise, better than Roth. No contemporary author has his unique voice.

And yes, Sarah, I think Roth put in this antagonism between Jews and blacks deliberately.

Traude: First of all, that's a fascinating piece of information about Gulliver's Travels. It's been so many years since I read that book that I don't remember the horses at all. What a wonderful analysis, Traude, about "when Gulliver returned to his own country he found his fellow men so repellent, in comparison, that he became a confirmed misanthrope." Coleman Silk, himself. Good post, I'll add more later.

Lorrie

Traude - thank you for clearing up the horses references. Just to remind everyone else how this came up. In chapter 1, as Coleman realizes it will just hurt HIM to write his "Spooks" book and therefore decided to abandon the project, he says: "Not that I've given myself over to forgiveness. Don't get me wrong: I hate the bastards. I hate the f'g bastards the way Gulliver hates the whole human race after he goes and lives with those horses. I hate them with a real biological aversion. Though those horses I always found ridiculous. didn't you? I used to think of them as the WASP establishment that ran this place when I first got here."

Why the title - "Slipping the Punch"? A mere boxing reference?

Did you stop in your tracks and read and reread the sentence on p. 86: "[Dr. Fensterman] knew the kind of obstacles that the Silks themselves had had to overcome to achieve all that distinguished them as a model Negro family"?

Why would a black man choose to be identified as a Jew? Is it that blacks are so hated and put down in society that one would choose to identify as one of the slightly less-hated group just to get through life with a bit more ease? Something along the lines of choosing to be anything but a Jew in Hitler's Germany, even if what you chose - being a homosexual or a Gypsy, let's say - let you to the camps as well?

We have several references in this chapter to Julius Caesar. The preacher reads a passage at Coleman's father's funeral: "Cowards die may times before their deaths; the valiiant ones never taste of death but once." "What can be avoided/Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?" He realized that although he had viewed himself as an I, and individual all his life, was just, in Washington DC, another n----r, another Negro, one of them, not free.

He realizes that with his father gone, and his brother Walt overseas, he is free to be whatever he wants - "as free as his father had been unfree."

Hairy wrote of this freedom awhile back, and I saw Coleman's choice to "pass" as a Jew to be the ultimate expression of being imprisoned - to live a lie. And yet she has a point - the father's death frees Coleman from the expectations that he will be a "good Negro," go to Howard, live in upwardly mobile black society. He is free instead to hang out in Greenwich village, date white women, and pass as a Jew? And yet - given the choice to be absolutely free, is Coleman really choosing freedom?

As I recall, it seemed that his time spent at Howard University may have been the "straw that broke the camel's back" with him. He didn't seem accepting of the Negro people there. He didn't feel a part of that society.

I can't get over that he would turn his back on his own family like that. That really sticks with me. I am hard-pressed to find much likable about the guy. The Human Stain may be man's tragic flaw or, as we learn in our religion, it's the result of the first sin of Adam and Eve and we are left with that "stain" on our souls and the residual effects. We are weak, our minds are clouded, and prone to fall when tempted. That may be the "simplified version" and I am certainly open to other interpretations.

The stains that we leave behind us are an interesting topic as well. Our misdeeds have residual effects, too, like a pebble being tossed into a pond. Roth often deals with the father's sins affecting the sons. I don't really see that here though. Perhaps, in general, but not in Coleman's father's case. Or am I wrong?

Linda

for Coleman ? Hardly. Less so as we learn more. His selfishness is monstrous, not to mention some of his actions ... Let's see what feelings are left at the end of the story.

On PASSING, please consider this : here is a man, highly intelligent and of unusual perspicacity, labeled as "colored", whose skin is "white as snow". At some point he makes the conscious decision to take flight as it were, to reinvent himself as white - and not SIMPLY white, mind you, but as Jewish. What audacity ! I am inclined to think that genuine admiration could well have been the motivating factor here, rather than an attempt at an uncertain alliance.

As for the stain, Nathan tells the story from the 1998 perspective. Early on he riles against the righteousness of those seeking punishment for, yes, deplorable misdeeds, but isn't it just possible that the stain on a certain blue dress was also in the author's mind when he chose the book's title

Well, sure, Traude, I also find it difficult to understand Coleman's "passing." I DO feel empathy in general with the many who passed, for whatever reason, although I may not warm to this particular character. However, it has occurred to me more than once that this is a white discussion (as far as I know) with a less than subjective knowledge of what could inspire a Black person to elect a safer life. As I've learned from a close friend, fear of being killed, not just fear of discrimination and inconvenience, is an every day experience of living Black. The price of leaving behind family?? I can't even speak to that. I can't know if that is right or wrong.

Sympathy for Coleman? No way. I would never forgive him for what he did to his mother. In a way, his brother was more admirable than he.

Lorrie

Hairy - Did Roth's portrayal of Coleman's reaction to Howard University ring true to you? Why would Coleman be driven to "pass" as Jewish as a result of that experience - as opposed to something that happened out in the white world?

Lorrie and Traude - I, like you, saw nothing in Coleman's parents that might have inspired such rebellion. Are we missing something? Did they actually drive him to his decision to pass as a Jew and reject his former life? Was there something in their acceptance of their lot - and their belief that Coleman could get ahead simply with the benefit of education - that Coleman knew was a lie and thus rejected?

Betty - correct - no way that you can walk in a black man's shoes if you are not black. It's not so much that I don't understand the concept of passing. It's that I don't understand picking to do so as a jew.

Lorrie - why do you find Walt (Coleman's brother) to be more honorable than Coleman. (I understand why you would find Coleman to be less than honorable. I haven't focused on Walt, however, and I would be interested in your insights about him.

Traude's comment about 'the human stain' on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress (hahahahaha) reminded me - do you all find the discussions of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair in the book to be a distraction? They certainly are entertaining. However, I'm not sure they add anything to this story.

Clinton-Lewinsky taught us that smart people are brought down (or nearly down) by sexual indiscretion. It revealed the sexual prudishness in this society. Lewinsky is Jewish, so maybe there's some connection there - hadn't thought about it. But what does the affair tell us about Coleman's battles with political correctness, his decision to pass as Jewish, his affair with Faunia?

I think Roth could have written more about Coleman's stay at Howard. Roth spoke of both the stain within us and the stains we leave behind.

Wasn't the neighborhood that Coleman grew up in Jewish? Weren't his boyhood acquaintances Jewish? I may have forgotten but I think they were.

And wasn't the father of the boy about to graduate who came to Coleman's father Jewish? (He asked that Coleman get lower grades than his son so his son could be Valedictorian and get into his prestigious med school.) Maybe Coleman thought, "Why not the best?" when choosing to be Jewish.

Linda

Exactly. Linda, that is precisely the idea I failed to convey in my post yesterday ! Isn't it possible that Coleman fully intended to associate hinmself with the best and the brightest, their intellectual companionship and stimulation, and their success.

No white person could ever comprehend what it means to be born black, and what seemingly eternal limitations that entails.

John Howard Griffin tried : he darkened his skin so he could pass for black, and he did. In 1959 he traveled through several southern states, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia among them, and Alabama, I seem to recall, to see what it is like for a black man to look for a place to eat, sleep and try to find work. His book BLACK LIKE ME details his experiences. I am trying to find my paperback copy.

Traude

Post 45: Dansker (tragedy) - In many ways Clinton does stand as a tragic figure, because of the promise of his Presidency. The legacy of this guy will be forever "stained" by his tragic flaw - the inability to keep it zipped. Tragic, because this guy had the intellect and the times were right - so much could have been accomplished. Now, the primary marker of this Presidency will be the grinning beret-toting Lewinsky. What's the chances of "Lewinsky" or "Lewinskied" enteriing the lexicon?

---

Post 47-48: Betty (realistic conflict) - One is left with the impression that Roth delighted in making Silk's "transgression" completely color-blind (both literally and figuratively), thus giving us an innocent man cut down by what he sees as a modern disease. And yet, he gives us a man that we don't necessarily feel sorry for, doesn't he?

---

Post 52: Sarah (hurtful words/Roth grows old) - Isn't it at least somewhat troubling though, that our language can be hi-jacked like that? A valid use for a word or phrase "falling out of use" (forced out, more like) is just guilt by association, I think.

And Roth is very mindful at this stage of his life of his (and our) impermanence.

---

Post 76: Lorrie - Please send recipe for "Hobo stew"

---

Post 77: Dansker (Faunia/Tzadio) - Excellent post!!

---

Traude, Traude, Traude - Wow! Where have you been! Please stick around!

---

Post 100: Sarah ("And yet - given the choice to be absolutely free, is Coleman really choosing freedom?"). Coleman is choosing the blueprint for freedom (and success) that our society reinforces as the norm, the easier route. Not fully understanding the price tag that comes with this...There was a blue print in place for the "successful negro" also. Coleman, in a position to choose either route, chose the former, chose to be Silky Silk - slipped the punch, survived, got through it. Why a jew? Because, as Coleman's father had taught him:

"the jews...were like Indian scouts, shrewd people showing the outsider his way in, showing the social possibility, showing an intelligent colored family how it might be done."

Caught up!


Charlie

Coleman tried it his father's way. Went to Howard to become a doctor and marry a "light-skinned girl...from a good Negro family...settle down and have children who would in turn go to Howard." The Blueprint. Then he was called "nigger" for the first time and realized how protected his life had been - "he finally recognized the enormous barrier against the great American menace that his father had been for him." And then his father was dead. Time to slip the punch. The ultimate rope-a dope.

"...it was, like it or not, his father who had been m,aking up Coleman's story for him; now he would have to make it up himself..."

Suddenly, a "nigger". But also a "Howard Negro." He didn't want anything to do with being these things that society imposed upon him. Being a "DC nigger". Being a part of the we called: "Howard Negroes." He wanted, like everyone, to define himself.

SELF-DISCOVERY - THAT WAS THE PUNCH TO THE LABONZ."

To me this is the heart of why Coleman did what he did, spelled out on page 108 - and it rings absolutely true to me - white novelist though he is:

He saw the fate awaiting him, and he wasn't having it. Grasped it intuitively and recoiled spontaneously. You can't let the big they impose its bigotry on you any more than you can let the little they become a we and impose its ethics on you."

Charlie

In a way, I believe I understand Coleman Brutus (well named) Silk. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's not a Black issue.

I don't think Roth succeeds in convincing me it is an issue about being Black.

I think it's something else, as far as I've read.

He wants out, he wants free. He feels that his secrecy feeds the part of his ambition--"feeds that conception of himself that's been driving him all his life."

He lives a half, secret, imaginary life. His big extended family intrudes on it. He wants out.

As the mother of a son getting married, I feel sorry for his mother here. I understand how she feels, I understand how he feels. Roth is very careful to make his mother about as heart wrenchingly perfect as she can be, but nobody is perfect, and we all know that.

"You can't let the big they impose its bigotry on you an more than you can let the little they become a we and impose its ethics on you."

Somebody sometime in Coleman Brutus Silk's life has imposed their "they" on him, and his desire for distance is the result, in my opinion so far. This is as far as I've read. Roth was very sly in the way he introduces Coleman as a black man. And for Coleman to turn away from the close supporting structure which is the black family and church makes it doubly stunning. Not sure the black as issue holds true in this story. So far.

I don't think he wants to be labeled, I don't think he wants to be contained, I'm not sure where his story is leading, but I can't see it coming to a good end.

I grew up among the Haddonfield Quakers. I never heard of this black settlement, but my high shool (class of '61) was totally integrated. I can't imagine an Episcopal priest behaving as stated in the story, but Roth may have found some anomaly somewhere and quoted it.

I don't know either, Sarah, but I would like to: what does "Slipping the punch" mean? Is that the same thing as holding back? Or sneaking it in sidewise? I admit I skimmed the descriptions of the boxing matches, boxing not being my idea of sport.

ginny

Interesting observations, Ginny. Not a black or white thing...a HUMAN thing. The HUMAN stain.

Yes, the ethics imposed upon us is mentioned at length for a while in the book and how we shouldn't let the "shoulds" get ahold of us. Need to get some time to check those notes again...

Slipping the punch---ducking (I think), getting out of the way, avoiding destruction narrowly. But with skill, not accidently.

Hmm, hadn't considered the relevance of comments on Clinton---although it's some of Roth's finest writing. Something about Charlie's words "silky Silk," however, made me think of Clinton. AND, just think of all the punches HE has narrowly missed, and finally, didn't miss. Pow!!

Silky Silk and Slick Willie. Wonder if that is intentional.

I wonder if Slipping the Punch isn't giving someone a punch. "He slipped me a Mickey Finn." I didn't miss it; I got it.

Thunderstorms on the way so can't get too into this at the moment. Be back when I can.

Linda

Well, Ginny - I do think it is a black thing. Who is the "big they" imposing its "bigotry" if not the white society pegging Coleman as a "nigger". And who is the "little they" becoming a "we" if not Negro society in the form of Howard University - that "overbearing solidity" ?

---

Slipping the punch is a boxing term: a fighter who never takes the direct hit, who bobs and weaves, lets the ther guy punch himself out and waits to land the decisive blow himself. What should be a left hook directly to the temple, becomes a glancing blow to the shoulder doing no damage. Now Silky Silk was just this sort of boxer, picking his spots and letting the opponent do the most serious damage to himself. "You're a counterpuncher, Silky. That's what you are, that's all you are." Besides the specific boxing reference, Roth uses the term as a metaphor for Coleman's method of coping - getting through it. At East Orange High "no matter what the slight or the obstacle, he took it the way he took the low hurdles." He "shrugged things off" [he slipped the punches].

Doc Chizner's advice to Coleman on their trip to West Point: "If nothing comes up...you don't bring it up. You're neither one thing [white] or the other [black]. You're Silky Silk. That's enough. That's the deal." This same philosophy had got him through the Navy [Don't ask - Don't tell].

[EDIT - Theron: Although the ultimate punch slippers (Ali, Archie Moore) were so skilled that they could never be "mapped."] Charlie

Ah, our Chollie is back and in rare form, too.

Yes, I agree on the people in this discussion, they're fabulous, welcome, Traude, I agree, don't you go anywhere else, and thanks, Linda and Joan G, for the nice comments. Your own comment, Joan G, about clapping your hands a while ago sent me smiling all week. For some reason I loved that.

---

And while Charlie and I usually don't agree, this time he might be right. Half right. hahahaahha

I went back and reread the quote. I guess people wonder how on earth anybody could see it not a black and white issue.

Roth has been pretty subtle up till this moment? Kinda surprised us, sliding in Coleman's race there, didn't he?

Now in Chapter Two every other word is Negro, Black, N--- etc etc. etc.

ETC.

I got up thinking there IS no "Black Ethic." Is there? If there is, there must be a collary (help! I know this is a word, how is it spelled??) white ethic?

Right?

Is there?

What have I been missing all these years?

What is the "white ethic?"

But the quote, which I took out of context, IN context is clear.

"he was a Negro and nothing else. No. No. He saw the fate awaiting and he wasn't having it...You can't let the big they impose its bigotry on you any more than you can let the little they become a we and impose its ethics on you. Not ......Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard. Instead the raw I with all its agility."

That's pretty plain. The they of Woolworth's and the we of Howard.

So it's not subtle at all.

The title of this chapter means that Coleman slipped the punch of being black?

OK, if so I am so disappointed in Roth, because he has NOT created a black entity here, to me.

He has created what Charlie posted above, "You're neither one thing [white] or the other [black]. " There Roth is exactly right, he's not. He's nothing. And I must say after reading Roth all this time I'm disappointed.

But there are more chapters to go, maybe I'll be right in the end about the larger picture? Maybe it's not about black or white in the end but how the we ususally means me and not thee .

What do the rest of you think?

Me

Even as Coleman tries to convince his father that he can outthink his opponent and keep on slipping punches because the ring "has rules", his father thinks on to situations in the army where boxers were head butted until they were disfigured by the illegal tactic.

Further, there was the elder Silk's optician's business which failed during the depression. There is his present humiliating substitute as a steward (waiter) on the trains. Things weren't supposed to go like that. Coleman's father has seen the real world. There was no slipping the punch.

You know what else, Dansker? I hate to say this, I really do, but in the real world of Coleman's father, people who are enamored of a subject refer to it. Often. It doesn't slip by them, either. It's a part of them. Like it was for the elder Silk. It comes out at the strangest times, just like Coleman's "lily white," and "spooks" came popping out.

But it doesn't come out from Coleman, that I can see.

Coleman does not think like a Classicist. In that way he slips the punch, too.

His MOTHER even references classical things: (page 140)..."your father would tell you. And there'd be something in Julius Caesar to back him up."

Bingo.

That's how Classicists think under stress. Why a Classicist for Coleman's occupation? Why that? He never refers to anything pertaining to the classics anytime, or did I miss a reference?

He might as well be a Nuclear Scientist? A Home Ec professor? A Forensic Pathologist? Why a Classicist?

He's not that, either.

Don't kill me, Sarah, but I think Roth slipped the punch, here.

G

Silk is not the only one slipping the punch. Other characters made choices to do that. Right??--those of you who are keeping other surprises secret?

Strategy to protect oneself---one way of thinking about slipping a punch---is just one way to think about what Silk accomplishes, the "protecting oneself," that is. If we thought about it, I'm sure we could come up with many examples of life choices that protect us. Some might be thought of as cowardice, others as intelligence.

I also have a guess. My guess is, if we could take a poll of 50 or so Black people, most would say Roth has no business mucking around in this "passing" subject, that he cannot represent it fairly or with insight. Even the author who wrote Black Like Me was free to return to his white life. He probably got further down the path of understanding than any of us who have not lived a year (was it longer?) as a Black man, but even that was limited to the knowledge that he could, if in true danger, call upon his whiteness.

Reminds me of the 24 hours that a graduate class of mine "lived" a disability. On an honor system, off we went in our (not needed) wheelchairs, eyepatches, tapping canes, ear plugs. Even though my waxy earplugs (specially made--no sound came through) brought amazing insight during the disturbing 24 hours (I stopped communicating, even with those I felt most at ease, felt isolated from the world), I wasn't truly experiencing deafness even during the 24 hours---I could have ended the soundless existence at any time.

I don't know that Roth could have done any of this differently, or if there is another white writer who could have done it better. I just understand intuitively that he's out on a limb in his attempt.

Joan G, I finished the book some time ago.

Sorry for such a short note, Joan. I was about to edit when the phone rang, Sam the cat attacked and someone knocked on the door. I was on a slow trek to answer the phone and momentarily forgot to watch for the highlight of Sam's day---when he can successfully hide somewhere on a regular route of mine and spring through the air to slam into me about waist-high. His saunter away from the attack zone is, in my imagination, one of pride and demonic giggling. Since I'm a cinch to knock over---no balance, etc,---he has me pegged as the best game/catch of the day. No amount of yelling, training, pleading has had an effect. He lives to do this several times a day. I'm happy to report that he's only won this game once, back in June. However, I did not admit to the EMS group who came to get me off the floor that a cat had knocked me over.

I DO think Roth has written about how a Black man feels, how he might behave. Several years ago, I don't think it would have occurred to me to wonder if that was even possible. Now, I feel ready to say that the attempt might be one to admire, but maybe not. What I wanted to convey in my earlier post is, if we want to understand "passing," white Roth isn't where to begin.

Ginny,

there is a paragraph early on in Chapter 1 which describes Coleman as being a professor of Latin and Greek (albeit not the prototypical pedantic variety), who started a Greek and Latin Club and offered a very popular course in ancient Greek literature in translation, known as GMH for Gods, Heroes and Myth. And how he picked up the Iliad and read the opening lines.

That is the paragraph I was referring to in an earlier post.

As for black vs. white, I also feel it IS an issue, but certainly not the only one. As for Griffin, the autor of BLACK LIKE ME, he traveled the Deep South in black disguise for less than a year; a few months only as I recall (at not inconsiderable personal risk, one must assume). Even that short period of time left an indelible impression.

As for Roth, I am with Joan. Read and savor it all. Then close the book and assess. You may be surprised.

Betty, have read the description of your cat's (Sam was it ?) exuberance with amusement and with special feeling :

I have experienced sudden canine interruptions here when I was suddenly nudged off AOL --- though thankfully not knocked off balance ! Ah, our beloved four-footed companions ...

Ginny - "And while Charlie and I usually don't agree"!!!WHAT??? And "What is the "white ethic?" Well, inAmerican Pastoral, Roth pretty much lets us in on it - according to his world-view at least:

"...escape...insignificance. You must not come to nothing! Make something of yourselves!"

"There was a big belief in life and we were steered relentlessly in the direction of success: a better existence was going to be ours. The goal was to have goals, the aim to have aims.

This ethic was engendered by "the enacted ideology of parental self-sacrifice." Roth might say - he didn't - exactly - that the ethic included a deep seated desire to have Breakfast at Tiffany's.

---

Aside toBetty - Still love your cat vignettes!!
Charlie

"...escape...insignificance. You must not come to nothing! Make something of yourselves!"

That's what Coleman's father instilled into him. Looking back on his father again I am beginning to think maybe it is the sins of the father being paid for by the son or whatever the expression is. coleman was trying to escape being a Howard Negro. He was running from what his father wanted. Perhaps he ran too far away by trying to pass for white.

The classicist that he became was instilled in him by his father.

He always loved to have a secret. It was something he always had to have in order to be himself - to be happy.

I wonder why Howard was such a turn-off for him. Didn't the Delaney Sisters go to Howard? It sounded like a wonderful place to me. What exactly is a Howard Negro?

Maybe his flight into boxing helped him become himself which is what we all want to be, isn't it? And the ultimate himself was passing for white. It was his personal, special <thing and he succeeded save for some gigantic ironies along the way; esp. "spooks"!

Linda

Guys, what he did in his professional life, the courses, the clubs, the opening of the Iliad etc., and how he chose that profession (because of his father) is not what I was talking about. His father was the classicist. Coleman Brutus does not ring true, he is no true classicist, not even of the high school variety, not revealed as such yet, but I will suspend judgment til I get to the end of the book.

Theron, after that hint, I am going to suspect that he was a car mechanic!

Now there's our Chollie with the "white ethic," now, as per usual, I have to go brood on that for a while, just as it's been suggested we may want to brood on this book itself later. Can't be better than this discussion.

Such good thoughts and cat doings here tonight, fun, no?

ginny

Linda -

Perhaps he ran too far away by trying to pass for white.

Yes. That's my take on it. And

What exactly is a Howard Negro?

I guess I won't presume....There have been books written on it though - and there is a definite recognized phenomena....lighter skin elitism included. Wolfe touched on it in A Man in Full.

As a prelude to a sort of historical recap of Coleman's love life, Roth writes:

..."he walked away understanding, as outside his reading in classical Greek drama he'd never had to understand before, how easily life can be one thing rather than another and how accidentally a destiny is made...on the other hand, how accidental fate may seem when things can never turn out other than they do."

Again - one of those Roth passages that skip just away beyond our (or at least my) total understanding - yet feels like white-light truth. Along the lines of his American Pastoral "People think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing."

And so he goes on to delineate his lovers from Steena to Iris and the "interlude" in between: Ellie Magee who is black. Very illuminating don't you think? I think he tells you right here what his motivations are. Take a look (pg 135). He talks of "scale" and self "conception" and "ambition" the missing "dimension" and his regained "innocence" and getting "back in the ring" [with Iris]. And here was Coleman whose friends all think he is a white guy dating a black woman and and all her [Ellie's] friends think she is dating a white guy. Delicious.

By the way - fell across this passage in Pastoral where Zuckerman says: "Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on." So Roth may not have got it exactly right about "passing" - but damn - what an attempt.
Charlie

Been out of town two days - and look at this fabulous discussion! Will need a day to catch up, and then will have some more questions. Keep it up, folks.

Hairy - you talked about the "stain within us and the stain we leave behind." Can you say more about that?

Both Charlie and Traude talking about choosing to be Jewish because it was "choosing to be the best," or choosing the group with an ethic toward education. I sometimes wince at the characterization as Jews as always being smart - somehow, it sets us apart. I went to a mostly black junior high and I was voted "smartest." I was called "gifted." Somehow, I felt like a freak.

I think maybe Coleman was simply choosing the white privilege. The only whites in his world were Jewish, so he became one of them rather than another white person.

Ginny, Hairy and Joan G, you talk about Coleman's choice as not being a black issue, but more about freedom. I think it's both. But I understand Ginny's/Betty's concerns that Roth had no right trying to get inside the head of a black man, and that Roth's portrayal of the African American experience did not ring true. That may be why it didn't feel like a true black issue - because it wasn't written in a way that felt real.

Betty/Joan G - how interesting that you've both finished the book, know all its secrets, and yet have a difference of opinion about whether this book was about being black. You have me intrigued to no end!

Ginny - you talked about Coleman's spooks and lily white comments as being almost freudian - Yes! If Coleman weren't so obsessed with race he wouldn't have uttered those remarks.

Is the spooks incident different now that we know (or think we know) Coleman is African American? For example, if I'm a Jew and I say something that has two meanings, one of which is an anti-Jewish epithet, am I more culpable than someone who is not Jewish and utters the same word?

Why did Nelson Primus, Coleman's lawyer, advise Coleman to end his affair with Faunia? What was the purpose of Primus being such a fop?: "sleekly goodlooking, raven haired young man, tall, trim, athletically flexible. . . in crisply tailored suits, gleaming black shoes, and starched white shirts discreetly monogrammed. . . ." His desk is like a clean slate. "There will be no spooks in Nelson Primus' life, no Faunia Farleys or Lester Farleys, no Markies to despise him or Lisas to desert him. Primus has drawn the line and no imcriminating impurity will be permitted to breach it."

Is Primus trying to avoid the human stain? Is he a representation of everything Coleman is not? The embodiment of all that is "lily white"? What is the purpose of this character?

Didn't you hate Dr. Fensterman? - first he asks Coleman to take a dive in order that Fensterman's son might benefit, then he doesn't even deliver on his promise to make Mrs. Silk head nurse!

Are we about ready to move on to Chapter 3?

"I think maybe Coleman was simply choosing the white privilege. The only whites in his world were Jewish, so he became one of them rather than another white person. "

I agree.

The human stain inside might be our tragic flaws and the remnants of original sin, which means, we are born imperfect with certain "genes" if you wish, that bring us down if we are not careful.

The stains we leave behind might be the ripples from our hurtful words, our anger, blood, semen, etc.

Primus: Sounds like Kenneth Starr to me!

"Primus" remnded me of the movie Analyze This, where "Primo" was the slick head of the insurrctionist mob.

Can't get past Roth's names!

Interesting theory on the "stain," Linda!!! I like that!

ginny

Sarah - I don't recall "talking about choosing to be Jewish because it was 'choosing to be the best,' or choosing the group with an ethic toward education." That can be a touchy stereotype and I hope I didn't unintentionally engage in it. In fact, I agree with your assessment that "Coleman was simply choosing the white privilege. The only whites in his world were Jewish ...". Simply, Coleman took his cure from his father here:

For Coleman's father, the Jews, even audaciously unsavory Jews like Dr. Fensterman, were like Indian scouts, shrewd people showing the outsider his way in, showing the social possibility, showing an intelligent colored family how it might be done."

Sarah - this is an excellent question: "Is the spooks incident different now that we know (or think we know) Coleman is African American? For example, if I'm a Jew and I say something that has two meanings, one of which is an anti-Jewish epithet, am I more culpable than someone who is not Jewish and uses the same word?" I had not thought of that before and it now gives me pause. I still think his usage was utterly innocent - but I'll leave the door open a crack,

The Primus character: Another excellent question (Sarah's on her game!). I don't know!! I will note however, that I recognize the personality that leaves their desk each day "like a clean slate." That fits someone who is buttoned up tight and compulsively, severely organized. I work with a few. And I did get a kick out of his line: "It's 1998. It's years now since Janis Joplin and Norman O. Brown changed everything for the better." The juxtaposition of those two things captures a period in the sixties perfectly, as a mater of fact. I've still got my copy of Love's Body around here somewhere!!

There are explicit 'Human Stain' references in Part 4.

But for now....Chapter 3 - here we come....






Charlie

Now Part 3 dips right back in to the Bill & Monica episode - so Roth refers back to it periodically. It really is a touchstone for him here. He's at his rapier best on Linda Tripp ("the sincere performance is everything" - I can still see the wronged Linda, lip quivering from the "merciless" attacks on her "character") and Monica ("this girl has revealed more about America than anybody since Dos Passos.") And then there's the "dopey culture": "sincere and empty", "relationships", and "closure". "Any kid who says 'closure' I flunk. They want closure, there's their closure." Too funny.


Charlie

A sharper wit? on this subject? Not anywhere else. I've never laughed so hard as at Roth's mean spirited, ON TARGET, disgust with all sides, re Clinton's mess. Very European, his view of us during that time. Why didn't the NYTimes, Boston Globe, San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle or Washington Post offer him anything he wanted for a weekly column during that time? Maybe the legal departments would have all had heart attacks but the rest of us would have eaten it up. Where, oh, where is my book with all the underlinings. This is the chapter with the "deep throat" quote---hilarious!!

I wonder what Roth's thoughts are on the recent rumors that Clinton might be considered for the president of Harvard, a spot coming open.

Betty - You must mean: "This isn't Deep Throat. This is Big Mouth."

Oh, the party is livening up a bit! I'm just sitting back laughing now!!! How enjoyable this is!

Linda

All worthy of consideration. The following are not answers, only my gut reaction. With apologies, where thought to be necessary. I am acutely aware of being a newbie. But I have always been frank, may I continue in that vein.

I agree with Charlie that the "spooks" remark was totally innocent - without a doubt.

What disturbed me (not mentioned before) are the preceding words : " .... Who are THESE PEOPLE ...) These people !!!

Said with just the right emphasis, accompanied by raised eyebrows and a sneer, those two words have been more offensive to me over time than I can possibly express.

Charlie, yes I think there is a difference. Put briefly, one does not soil one's nest. The definition of a Howard Negro is, I believe, right on the mark.

Ginny, regarding the RIGHT to portray anyone or anything- or slip into a different skin in the guise of a protagonist : IS there such a right ?

Sarah, I would like to stay with my original assessment. Expand it even.

What is wrong with striving for intellectual excellence ? Why is it that ever since Ike dubbed thinking people as eggheads, they became self-conscious ?

Why is it that the term "elite"is instantly understood as an ineradicable, fatal blemish ? Why is there such an overwhelming desire to be counted as just one of the crowd ? What happens to those who don't fit the mold - like square particles in a sieve intended for round ones only ? A very significant aspect, I agree. But only ONE aspect of a multi-faced book.

May I share with you what the novelist Francine Prose said in an article about book reviewing in BOOKEND in the NYT Book Review of Aug 6, 00 with reference to Roth <<... the sentence structure, his word choice, his ability to raise language to the ideal temperature (not too hot, not too cold) for expressing his passions and rages ...>> Something to appreciate and cherish ... in whatever book, in whatever context. I would like to second Theron (if I interpreted the message correctly)

We must not lose sight of the forest for all those trees ... A propos : A look at Francine Prose's latest book BLUE ANGEL may

The word is MULTI-FACETED. Henceforth, could we please be forgiving of typos and other minor discrepancies ... T

Part of the previous message I edited disappeared into some black hole (!). The intended term was MULTI-FACETED (please read this as underlined), Sorry. I DID put in a correction, quite a complicated thing to do.

Could we please be forgiving of typos and minor linguistic discrepancies where they (regretably) occur? Heartfelt thanks T

I feel constrained by the limited possibilities for expression I have here (caps only available!). Typos are common, editing even for content is a chore, and sometimes the edited version vanishes in the dust. Aha. What I meant to say is that the latest novel by Francine Prose, BUE ANGEL, ranks high on the list of books to be checked out, right now. For better or for worse, there will be no editing. T

Traude, your bloopers fit right in with the rest of ours---no need to worry. Besides, we need SOME things to keep us humble, or at least I do. Your comments are rich and thought-provoking (hehehehehe, you provoked me, didn't you???) :>)

And Traude, I second Betty's comments! You've already added much to my understanding of this book.

Traude - Thank you for the reference to Francine Prose's Blue Angel. I have posted a link to it in our NEW FICTION Discussion. Russel Banks said her writing about sex is "politically incorrect on the subject of sex as Catullus and twice as funny". HA! I remember devouring all the Catullus I could get my hands on as a college student - maybe we all did - and if she's twice as funny as that - well - that's saying a lot!

"Ginny, regarding the RIGHT to portray anyone or anything- or slip into a different skin in the guise of a protagonist : IS there such a right ? "

Traude, I did go back thru my posts and only see the word right used once: "There Roth is exactly right, (in other words, that rings true) he's not."

I thought, to me, that was ironic and also characteristic of Roths's writing in that he critiques himself while he writes. I've seen it in almost every book of his I've read, and was just (not very well, apparently) pointing it out?

I'm not sure that I implied that Roth did not have the right to pen a black protagonist?

Was that the reference?

If that was how everybody perceives what I meant, however, I'm glad to have the oppportunity to explain less incoherently what I meant?

Sure I think Roth has the right to portray a black character. He has the right to write one as a talking Ferris Wheel if he wants to.

What I was saying was that, to me, and maybe only to me, but that's what our Book Clubs are about, he fails. Coleman is not Black, to me. Neither is he a classicist. Those two things, to me, do not ring true: they are not right , somehow . Thank you for calling my attention to that!

The White House thing about "A Human Being Lives Here" to me said, hey, we're all, just like Coleman, capable of sexual pecadillos (all have sinned and come short of the glory of God) let's not crucify the man. A separation, not only of church and state, but man and character. Wonder why Roth thinks it's ok for Clinton to "pass" as a moral leader lecturing foreign nations on morality, when it's not for Coleman to pass as white?

I haven't figured out what Roth thinks about Coleman's passing, yet. Roth had Coleman be awfully harsh on his mother and his brother's reaction was less than cordial, but what are we to make of it?

Wonderful points, Everybody!

I've been thinking over Charlie's "white ethic," all of whose tenets I think apply equally to black families, but I do think there is a black ethic in the land, to wit: "You have to do everything the white man does, but you have to do it better. You have to be better than he is, just to stay equal."

ginny

I have a kernal of an idea. For a few seconds, I can get hold of it, then it evaporates. (No guarantee I'll be thinking about this at the proper time, re schedule, so here goes, in raw form.) Could Roth be saying (among other things) that what the collective we did to the black population among us is what we are now guilty of doing to ourselves. The irony of it all. The irony of turning our various levels of hate (or restrictions, constraints, pc rules, etc.) in on our (white) selves.

I don't know that I agree with this premise or if I think he succeeds in his point (necessarily), but I'm SURE that, in a more general sense, he IS ridiculing our various holier-than-thou pronouncements. Staying with the above premise, though, maybe he's warning that pc correctness is on the same dangerous path as the more serious (life-threatening) treatment of Blacks in our culture.

Which would answer why he chose such an innocent word "spooks" for Silk to say. That word still makes me throw my hands up and say, where's the conflict? Why didn't he choose something easier to find fault with? If this is all a warning, though, a view of some slippery continuum, all the way from an overreaction to an innocent word to a suppression of a race of people, then a few more things fit into place---for me.

Ginny - You wrote: "Wonder why Roth thinks it's ok for Clinton to "pass" as a moral leader lecturing foreign nations on morality, when it's not for Coleman to pass as white?" ..........I suspect that Roth does NOT think it's ok. But he's not addressing that issue here. Plus - Joan is correct.

I'm not sure, even now, Charlie and Joan, I agree with you, but I agree with your right to an opinion, that's for sure.

I am seeing judgment in Roth's writing, so far. It may not be aimed at Coleman. It may not be aimed at (and certainly is NOT aimed at Clinton) (hahah you guys were quick to spot my own subterfuge there) but still I see judgment, it's floating, I'm uneasy about it, and if I still see it at the end, I may have to disagree on the "judge not" aspects of the book, but if I do come to that conclusion, I sure will say so!

I may be in the minority here, but the quote on page 77, "It's years now since Janis Joplin and Norman O Brown changed everything for the better" leaves me kinda cold? I don't know who Norman O Brown is, and Janis Joplin did not change anything in my world for the better, tho I liked "Me and Bobby McGee."

That was Primus speaking. Was it sarcasm? What did it mean?

ginny

Betty, I know that feeling so well, isn't it maddening? I feel the same way about the book, it's swirling images and...it's a great book to discuss, isn't it?

I have a feeling too, an....I don't know what it is, but I also have a feeling of something being there that I can't grasp. I think I am going to be disappointed at the end if I can't understand what it is.

ginny

There's a feeling I have for Philip Roth, on a personal level. His struggle with the fact that he's getting old----the threat of prostate cancer, his incontinence, (so vividly described in the book) is obviously affecting his daily life. I feel sympathy for this gifted writer, and am pleased that it hasn't affected his quirky humor.

I realize my comments are not as profound as some of the other posts here, but I've decided I can only tell it as I see it, without too much soul-searching, perhaps. But then again that's who I am.

Lorrie

p.153 - all the terrible things happening in their world and here they are up in arms about Lewinsky, Faunia, Silk, Clinton. The luxury of their lives is "disquieted so by the inappropriate behavior of Clinton and Silk." "A century of destruction unlike any other in its extremity befalls and blights the human race" and Clinton and Coleman are in the spotlight.

p.165 The crows going after the glitter of the barretes in girl's hair are like Coleman going after Faunia.

p. 169 The crows crowing altogether may make more sense than we do down here. Crow observations on Faunia's part show her intelligence and a nice calm depth to her. Maybe her mental problem is due to her life - not a lack of intelligence. I rather enjoyed Faunia's scene with the crow.

p.184 How many bottoms does a man have to hit? Seems the story is at times a vehicle for Roth's thoughts on life and pet peeves - well done and well-received though. Not a cop-out, but an enrichment.

p. 196 "not to be cowed by the Coleman Silks" is speaking of "men in their presumed authority or their sage pretentions."

p. 168 and I forgot the best: "My status crow."

Lorrie - You have said far more than many of us by just stating your gut reaction and it was well-said, too!

Linda

I like it that you've reminded us, Lorrie, that this writer we're dissecting---motives, skills, intentions---is a person growing older, like many of us.

When Primus mentions Norman O. Brown and Janis Joplin, he's lecturing Coleman, and saying that the sexual Revolution of the sixties hasn't cracked the Berkshires yet. Norman O. Brown wrote pop psychology about human relationships back in those days

---

Lorrie - I think you readAmerican Pastoral. Zuckerman talks about his prostrate surgery there too - although we can't know absolutely that this is autobiographical material - I feel (as you seem to) that it is.

---

Linda - Your references to Faunia's crow reveries reminded me of something else about Roth. I want to veer away from the issues just for a bit and talk about the art of Roth. Remember the title of this part is What Do You Do...?. Coleman spots Faunia while on an impulse visit to his old campus. He remembers a talk with his daughter and her teaching of remedial reading ("What do you do with the kid who can't read?"), Coleman decides he must call Faunia and rectify his "idiotic mistake." ("And what do you do with such a kid?"). It's just amazing the subtle ways in which he switches voices - but 'switch' is the wrong word. He eases into it and almost unnoticeably the voice is now Faunia's. You have to reread very carefully (if you care) to find the exact place where the switch takes place. He did the same thing in American Pastoral when Zuckerman dreams "a realistic chronicle" and the voice of the novel is now Swede Levov's. I've never seen anything quite like it that has struck me so. I remember being so taken with it in AP, and so when it occurred here again, but in a slighty different way, I recognized and appreciated it immediately. Just the craft of it.


Charlie

Hairy says so eloquently: "The stains we leave behind might be the ripples from our hurtful words, our anger, blood, semen, etc." We leave emotional stains and physical stains in this life. I can see the emotional stains Coleman leaves for his family, but what physical stains does he leave behind? I feel like Betty; there's a germ of something here - something about Clinton and his physical stains and Coleman (even those names sound the same) and his emotional ones - but I can't quite grasp it.

Charlie and Ginny - I think I lumped comments together, so please accept my apologies for mischaracterizing who said what. I don't have a printer, and therefore take rough notes from the screen. It's a technique that's bound to get me into trouble!

Charlie - Chapter 3 certainly starts out with a bang:

"If Clinton had f'd her in the a--, she might have shut her mouth." Kind of catches your attention. Roth says that Clinton lost his ability to dominate women, "played it safe." What? Played it safe?

It's all highly entertaining stuff - but, in my view, stuff of another book, plopped into this one without much connection to the story. Am I missing something here? What does Clinton being an a-- man have to do with Coleman's choice? Is this mere shading for effect - an attempt to portray an era to set the context for the book?

But if that's the case, it doesn't work; Coleman's story, his decision to be "free" takes place long before Clinton/Lewinsky. I'm puzzled here. Why start the chapter this way? ------------

One thing I keep forgetting to say about Chapters 1-2: It now makes sense why Coleman gave up and chose to resign so easily. He didn't want his secret revealed - not the secret about him and Faunia, but the secret about his being black and choosing to pass as a Jew (or maybe some other secret we haven't heard about yet). I still think there's something troubling in Coleman's relationship with his kids Mark and Lisa. Until I knew Coleman was hiding a secret, his decision to resign in light of what he saw as absurd charges was difficult to understand. ---------

Is Faunia illiterate or not? There's something in this Chapter - can't find it again - that suggests she is not. Then again we have Lisa with her Reading Recovery program. What does literacy have to do with this story? Is Roth making a commentary on today's "dopey" culture: he disdains illiteracy but disdains even more attempts such as Lisa's to teach people to read? It almost annoys me that he takes these seemingly inconsistent stances: if you're going to criticize illiteracy, and then criticize attempts to create literacy, aren't you just criticizing for the sake of criticism?

I think Roth is letting his intellectual snobbery show once again.

Betty - that's where Roth's Ch. 3 material on Clinton/Lewinsky should have gone: in a column for one of the periodicals you mention! It feels as if he wrote this stuff for the New Yorker and never got around to submitting it (he HAS been busy writing prize-winning books these last few years).

Traude - I don't think there's anything wrong with being smart. But Jews, like Asians, are also stereotyped as always being smart. It's a compliment to be called smart, but there's a fine line between a compliment and a put-down, between admiration and resentment. We're not all smart. We're not all good in school. We don't all value education. Just because a stereotype is positive doesn't mean it isn't a stereotype.

A putdown in the compliment. You've reminded me, Sarah, of the stigma of "being smart" in high school and college. Similarly, there is a bitter edge to the classification of Jewish people and Asian people as always "smart." Stereotypes are always confining. Even in this positive sounding one, hard work is ignored. Often, good grades in school are a product of discipline and hard work. All this also reminds me of things said about women who did well in the business world---that they were "overachievers." Groups of people who have not enjoyed equal status are often seen as all the same within the group, not complex people. Absence of complexity is at the heart of stereotyping. Every time we read or hear on television what "Black people think" or "what women think," or every time a book has the words men or women in the title, I'm reminded how we're still being thought of in narrow stereotypes.

Maybe that's what's bothering a lot of us about this book - it is built on stereotypes. The black boxer (Coleman); the shrill female professor (Delphine Roux); the illiterate, abused working class white woman (Faunia); the smart Jew (Coleman and all other Jews); the hard working, long suffering steward on a train (Coleman's father); the kind mama (Coleman's mother); the politically correct University environment (Athena); the do-gooder with low self esteem teaching poor people to read (Lisa); the slick lawyer (Nelson Primus); the beautiful Nordic blonde (Sheena).

These characters are all drawn like caricatures.

And, of course, by its very nature, a stereotype is a judgment, isn't it?

ginny

It was impossible last night to get access to SrNet Showcase on the Web and this forum through AOL. I had read yesterday's posts by midafternoon and jotted down thoughts. Conditions were no different this morning. BUT they JUST changed for the better and here I am.

All posts were thoughtful and are worthy of further discussion. Perhaps - if I may say - even more so once readers have absorbed the book and its message IN ITS ENTIRETY. May I therefore second Joan and Theron.

Lorrie mentioned an excellent point not taken into consideration before : of course Roth, at age 67, is preoccupied with ageing and debilitating maladies. As is his wont, he confronts the problems head-on Betty, Ginny and Linda made excellent points.

Charlie referred to Catullus. That brought back memories of reading TIROCINIUM POETICUM, a poetic sampler, which also contained (no doubt carefully) selected contributions by Tibullus and Propertius. A lifetime ago.

Sarah, I respectfully disagree with the view that the book is based on stereotypes. IMHO the book is based inter alia on Roth's very real political and societal concerns: he is troubled by the decline in humanism generally and the alarmingly decreasing basic civilities. He speaks to the reader through his protagonists, they are his mouthpiece. Where else in modern literature can the reader find anything remotely like this - expressed with such linguistic perfection ? Linda cited some beautiful examples. As a translator, I am extremely aware of words, their meanings and their impact. In an effort to be precise and to the point, I have been accused of splitting hair on occasion. Perhaps justly so.

Of course these are very relevant, basic and also very personal issues that might be worthy of a separate discussion. However, within the framework of THIS discussion as I understand it, should we not perhaps proceed and see what happens in the narrative and then go back to anything seemingly unresolved ?

I feel very privileged to be here. Lorrie had tried to alert a very unaware very naive me time some time. And Mal Freeman from WREXERS told me. Never mind the arduous passage to get here, I am grateful. Traude P.S. I am not checking this for typos. If you find any, please be generous and overlook them. Gratefully, Traude

Traude says: "Perhaps - if I may say - even more so once readers have absorbed the book and its message IN ITS ENTIRETY. May I therefore second Joan and Theron."

I asked up front if anyone had any strong ideas about how we proceeded with the discussion. Everyone said - no, Sarah, however you decide is fine. So I chose the chapter by chapter approach, which I'm personally loving. It's sort of fun to guess at what is to come, analyze things that we know in each chapter - and maybe be dead wrong! Doesn't worry me in the least! We'll get to the end, but in the meantime, let's stick to this approach, ok?

Sarah, Ginny, the one clue I have (or the one piece that stays unresolved) that makes me question whether Roth is writing through stereotypes is the word "spooks." Caricatured innocence. The university's response is just as overdone. Everything has a crazy-house mirror focus.

In other books, American Pastoral and I Married a Communist, his few stereotypes are either more offensive or less offensive, depending on how much credit you give to his vision of "how things are," which is/are often eerily on target. I'm trying to find a fancy way to say he's not dumb enough to use such common stereotypes here.

Having said all that, though, in case he deserves any of this credit I'm giving him, it also drives me crazy. Who is he writing to, himself? Why not take the tougher route and write of these issues closer to reality. Why not a story of how people are really struggling with learning inclusion while growing bitter, or people who follow the rules, work hard and still feel left out, or people who see their entitlement eroding. This backwards format of irony and mystery is challenging and sometimes fun, but I find myself thinking, what a waste of talent.

Hmmmmm.

Quoting myself, "people who follow the rules, work hard and still feel left out," that's American Pastoral.

Sarah, it was not my intention to suggest that he modus operandi be changed in any way. That would be presumptuous of me.

All I said from the beginning is that it might be a good idea to withhold final judgment. I note that Joan and Theron wrote in a similar vein.

Traude

I think it's fine the way we're doing it. As Charlie, I think, said a while back - Just don't set your mind on any one opinion until we get to the end. We can vacillate all we want. It's just a discussion; not a review for Atlantic Monthly or anything. Nice folks; nice chatter - very interesting slants!

When I first finished the book I wrote a fistful of questions. So - even when finished we may end up with questions. One that I can remember was: What do you think was Roth's purpose for writing the book? I still don't know. What was he getting at? I am not sure.

Hairy and Betty hit the nail on the head: Who is Roth talking to? What was he trying to accomplish by writing this book? Traude, I'm with you - I'll withhold judgment. But where do you all THINK Roth is going with this story? How do the piece parts fit together - all those characters I mention, plus the Clinton/Lewinsky references?

The stain of being human - in all the ways Traude and Charlie and the rest of you have talked about - certain is a theme throughout the book. The stain is in our color, our failings, our desires. Is this stain a good thing, in Roth's mind, or a bad one? Still not clear on this.

Betty, Traude, Charlie, Lorrie all give examples of Roth's exquisite writing. That's something I've always loved about him. Maybe I should just revel in the writing. And yet, like Betty, I'm struggling to see the purpose of Roth's beautiful words.

--------------------

"If Coleman kept on like this, he'd end up in a ditch with his throat slit. Look at where he was now. Look where he had come to hide. And how? Why? Because of his credo, because of his insolent, arrogant "I am not one of you, I can't bear you, I am not part of your Negro we" credo. The great heroic struggle against their we -- and look at what he now looked like! The passionate struggle for precious singularity, his revolt of one against the Negro fate - and just look where the defiant great one had ended up! Is this where you've come, Comean, to seek the deeper meaning of existence? A world of love, that's what you had, and instead you forsake it for this! The tragic, restless thing that you've done! And not just to yourslef - to us all. To Ernestine. To Walt. To Mother. To me. To me in my grave. To my father in his. What else grandiose are you planning, Coleman Brutus? Whom next are you going to mislead and betray?"

"The passionate struggle for precious singularity" - isn't that something we're all engaged in? Don't we all live a lie in some way? No one can get inside our heads and know who we truly are. This passage makes me wonder, as Ginny pointed out, whether this book is about being black at all. Maybe it's just about trying to be an individual, refusing to give in to expectations, being rebellious, not wanting to repeat the lives of our forbears.

Lorrie: "There's a feeling I have for Philip Roth, on a personal level. His struggle with the fact that he's getting old----the threat of prostate cancer, his incontinence, (so vividly described in the book) is obviously affecting his daily life. I feel sympathy for this gifted writer, and am pleased that it hasn't affected his quirky humor." So beautifully put.

I forget that Roth is getting older. His quirky humor, his sharp sense of social sature, make me forget that he, like the rest of us, is a human being with worries and frailties. He reminds me of my father, who was always sort of a hip guy, intellectual, worldly. That he grew old and ill just didn't fit in with my image of him. So it is with Roth.

I know that, in this story particularly, things will (and are meant to) fall into place eventually, like the pieces of a mosaic; ----then the meaning will be clear(er).

As the plant whose name I don't recall that opens hesitantly and slowly, this novel reveals itself only by degrees.

I am thinking of the role illusions play in our lives, but it is too soon to ask

I'm on the side of Coleman's conflict being human and black, but with the accent on human. In the recent film "October Sky" (reputed to be biographical) a coal town youth (white) pursues his rocketry interests in spite of his coalminer father's dictums and his community's derision. His persistance with his experiments and his subtrefuge in doing so parallel Coleman's approach in THS. If the lad in the film yields to the pressure of family and community, he goes down in the mine and works there 'til he dies. If Coleman yields, he goes to Howard University and loses his fight to escape his "we" destiny. Coleman's is a universal conflict first, it seems to me.

But in his search for "singularity" hasn't he become just downright "self-ish"?

I never thought of the human stain referring to color. Isn't that odd that I wouldn't think of that? You're right on, Sarah, and doing one heck of a good job here, too! Your questions are thought-provoking.

Linda

If you are referring to Coleman, yes, I concur. He was indeed selfish in the extreme.

Also self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, and completely self-satisfied --- until the incident that is, a bitter irony.

Could Roth have had a wider aim in mind here ? For our society now ?

Thank you, Sarah, for being here. Traude

Traude,

I like your plant reference connected with the revealations in THS. I can't help thinking of deleafing an artichoke. As one reaches its center there's more meat on each leaf, until one finally peels and tastes the full richness of its heart. I'm enjoying the unraveling of the novel and hoping it fulfills my metaphor.

Dankser - hooray, you're back! The artichoke; what a beautiful metaphor. Not only does it have the onion quality of peeling away layers, but also the quality of having more meat as you get to the center, and a very meaty heart. Love it.

Now dying to figure out what plant Traude was referring to.

I'm more and more with you Dansker and Traude - this is a universal story about reinventing oneself, running from one's history - rather than about being black.

Hairy - funny thing how self-ish almost sounds like a good thing! Why do you find him self-ish? Traude?

-------------

There are a couple of incidents in Ch. 3 we haven't talked about. The first is Coleman's son Jeff's accusation about Faunia being forced by Coleman into having an abortion and then trying to commit suicide. What do you make of this? True?

The second is Delphine Roux's letter. First of all, didn't you find that from her view of things, Coleman was really dastardly? It was interesting to see things from her viewpoint: Tracy, one of the students Coleman referred to as a "spook," was so upset by the incident she LEFT CAMPUS?? Ms. Mitnick, the student who thought Coleman spoke to her in "engendered" language (hahahaha), was actually frightened of Coleman?? Then Delphine decides that Coleman is dating Faunia in order to get back at her?? Is Delphine delusional? Is there more to the Delphine-Coleman relationship than meets the eye?

With Delphine's fine French education, wouldn't she be immune from hysterical political correctness? And yet, she leads the opposition to Coleman. Does her perspective tend to make you believe that Coleman's "spooks" gaffe, his affair with Faunia, his treatment of his students are more sinister than we first suspected.

And finally, the letter. It's the letter on the cover of the book, right?

Everyone knows you're

sexually exploiting an

abused, illiterate

woman half your

age

Why does Delphine write the words in this pattern? What is going on between Coleman and Faunia that we don't know about? The plot thickens!

Sarah, I have a couple comments to make on Chapter 3, but I wanted to interject here with an interesting footnote: Some reviewers of THS have declared that Roth took his story of Coleman from a real-life biography of Anatole Broyard, now deceased, a former literary critic for the New York Times. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote a series of bios in his "Thirteen Ways to Look at a Black Man," and one of them was about Broyard.

There is a rather long article about Anatole Broyard by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the New Yorker, June 17, 1996 which is very worth reading. It casts an interesting light on many of the things in Broyard's memoir.

The main thrust of the New Yorker article is the revelation that Broyard had been a light-skinned Negro. Although his skin was light enough to enable him to pass for white, his mother and sister (and all his known ancestors) were unmistakably Black. (His father, from what is known, had been a Negro, but with fairly light skin.) For Broyard, this was a dark secret that he devoted much of his life to concealing. There is certainly no hint of it in his books.

Lorrie

Lorrie - thank you for that information. I found this article about The Human Stain, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Anatole Broyard:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/05.12.00/editorscorner.html

Neat article. And a quote from toward the end: "The moral in all of these works of fiction appears to be that America may be the land of endless possibility, but inventing a new persona for yourself only leads to defeat, if not doom."

Linda

How true, Linda!

To get back to that "French structuralist:"

At first I thought that Delphine had a definite sexual attraction for Coleman, beginning with their first interview. I felt that she considered him to be her academic equal, "worthy" of her attention, and the thought that he preferred an illiterate, taciturn janitor filled her with rage.

But in Chapter 3 when Roth fleshed out the character of Delphine Croix, I began to understand this woman more, and could see how truly insecure she was. Her resentment over Coleman's choosing this woman over her, a Leslie Caron lookalike with a fine French educational background, is written on page 198:

"He settles on this broken woman who cannot possibly fight back. Who cannot begin to compete with him. Who intellectually does not even exist. He settles on a woman who has never defended herself, the weakest woman on earth to take advantage of, drastically inferior to him in every way-----and settles on her for the most transparent of antithetical motives: because he considers all women inferior and because he's frightened of any woman with a brain."

Lorrie

Again, later chapters will flesh out more about Delphine.

Linda

Sarah, you wrote this may be more about a "universal reinventing of oneself" than "about being black."

I was one of several who voiced doubts about Roth being able to authentically represent being black. I never said I thought the book "was about being black." Maybe each of us who voiced doubts meant something a little different from the other. This book MAY be about the universal reinventing of oneself, but Roth chose to do it through a black man and I'm not sure he was able to do that with authenticity. Black scholars who write of the black experience often voice their doubts that being black can be understood unless you've lived it. I don't remember accepting that at face value the first time I encountered it, but over time, I've come to respect it and believe it.

We've run into this before, wondering if a male author can capture what it is like to be a woman, etc. If pressed, I guess I'd say some experiences are easier to understand and truthfully represent, but I think I'd put being black as one of the tougher challenges.

Also, Roth doesn't score that well over his life's work in representing women, so he has a record of missing the mark.

Sarah wrote that it was interesting to see things from Delphine's viewpoint. Yes, indeed. Here again, Roth slips into the voice of another of his characters - Delphine Roux. Delphine was in her own way, trying to reinvent herself in the face of the "WE" every bit as much as Coleman was. I turned right around on her with this section of the book. Her descriptions of her "otherness" as a woman, an attractive French intellectual in America were quite affecting.


Charlie

Dansker : The artichoke analogy is excellent and apt. An onion e.g. surely would not have done as a comparison - after all, there is nothing to find under the peel !

As for that plant I had mentioned - dimly recalled from long-ago botany classes that bored me : let me search my memory further, at least for a description (if not its botanical name).

Political correctness was enthusiastically embraced by many female professors, all in the effort of righting a wrong, or several wrongs. In that respect the Delphine character is (or seems to be) true to form. And yes, Sarah, she could be taken as a stereotype in the early chapters.

The article mentioned by Lorrie to which Sarah provided the link is of great interest (thank you both); especially the reference to The Great Gatsby. We discussed that very book last week at the library. We sat there for 2 hours and could have gone on longer. How sadly it ended : the laboriously reinvention/reconstruction of a life collapsed like a house of cards (none of the sycophantc freeloaders who had eaten Gatsby's food and drunk the boot-legged liquor at the mansion would even come to the funeral). Quite an indictment also of shallow Daisy from whose benefit all of it had been undertaken ! Doom indeed. T

Since I would like to add two points, may I make a correction first : in my previous unedited post, that should have been "for" whose benefit (not from). Sorry.

It should be mentioned in this context that an at times fierce backlash has been started against p.c. by women in academe; among the most vociferous is Christina Scott Summers who teaches here in Massachusetts and has been on several NPR talk programs fairly recently to promote her latest book. The book has a provocative title - which I did not commit to memory - and caused quite a stir. The author's special target is the position taken by AAUW, the American Association of University Women, of which I am a long-time member. I don't mean to go off on a tangent,just thought it might be a helpful piece of information.

Betty, in MIDWIVES, the male author Chris Bohjalian does quite a creditable job speaking in the voice of a woman. How successful such efforts generally are is, of course, debatable.

T.

It's 4:30AM. That and pain are my excuses for venturing into this seismic zone. Men wrote about men forever and ever. Only in the last few centuries have men written about women to any extent. The largest part of what all of us (in this forum) have read over our lifetimes is by white (Anglo) men, and more recently white women. Most white women have until very, very recently written in white male language---it was the available language of written word. During the last 25 years or so, women of many ethnic heritages and men of non-white heritage have found voices and languages that are distinctly different from the language of white men. Read Toni Morrison's Beloved and you know you're in a different universe.

The first time I read a book by a woman who didn't write in standard white male language was so shocking, so validating, so weird, I cried through half the book. And it was a textbook, not even a story to cry over.

Maybe it's a marvelous thing that someone as gifted as Roth attempts to capture such diverse lives, and we DO recognize some of the wildly different characters. However, I believe he doesn't really do justice to women; it is as if he's standing outside looking in and the light is all wrong. Delphine isn't real to me at all, either from Coleman's perspective (well, of course not) or especially from her private perspective. The angles are wrong, the degrees are wrong, the light is wrong. The language is wrong.

Ok, I'll dig out the book and look for quotes. This could take a while.

To me Delphine is as "real" as Coleman (at least for this brief period in Chapter 3). As "real" as Lester (perhaps more). Certainly as "real" as Faunia. The universe here is Adelphia College. I'm repeating, but I did a 180 on her which surprised me. And I though he [Roth] was quite good with this. To be sure, I'm not a White Female Academic, so I could be dead wrong here - but this was my honest reaction
P.S. - No luck in finding the White Male Language section at my local bookstore. Perhaps it's the whole bookstore? Or is there another, better description to differentiate, say Morrisson from Mann or Malraux? Is Roth to be tossed into that Briar Patch of the They?
Charlie

Betty: I'm with you that Roth is at his best when he talks from the perspective of an aging, male Jew. I have always enjoyed books written from this perspective (probably because my father and grandfather were both, at one time, aging male Jews). I agree that he gets into more treacherous waters when he strays from this perspective.

That said, I agree with Charlie that Delphine Roux became (as Traude notes and Lorrie illustrates) much less of a stereotype in later chapters than she was early in the book. We'll get to that in Chapter 4 (is everyone ready to move on to Chapter 4?).

I agree with Traude that Bohjalian did a great job with the female midwife protagonist in Midwives; as did Norman Rush in Mating, a book both Betty and I loved.

So how about Chapter 4?

Once again we start with Coleman's call to his son Jeff. Still not clear the purpose of that call - except that it ended with Jeff accusing him of forcing Faunia to have an abortion and causing her to attempt suicide. Is the point of the call that Coleman (unlike Anatole Broyard - see article in my previous post) never got to tell Jeff the truth about himself? I'm struggling to see the meaning of any of the discussion in the book of Coleman and his kids. Is the point that, as the quote from Linda about Broyard illustrates, trying to live a lie always damages you and those around you?

Chapter 4 begins to tie up some of the loose ends. We learn of the circumstances of Coleman's and Faunia's death. Les learns to eat Chinese food and visits the traveling Wall, then causes Coleman and Faunia to swerve off the road and plunge into the water to their death.

And, of course, Faunia visits her crow (beautiful scene, don't you think?). We learn yet another view of the human stain: man's effect on the natural environment: "That's what comes of being hand-raised," said Faunia. "That's what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The human stain," she said, without revulsion or contempt or condemnation. Not even with sadness. That's how it is -- in her own dry way, that is all Faunia was telling the girl feeding the snake: we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen -- there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. Without the sign it is there. The stain so intrinsic it doesn't require a mark. . . . All that she was saying about the stain was that it's inescapable.

What is Roth saying here? That we can never escape who we truly are; that all our efforts to reinvent ourselves are doomed to fail because our stain is inherent in us, intrinsic to us?

I also like the setting of this comment: man's effects on the natural world, on wild creatures, on a wild bird that is forever altered by someone's attempt benevolently to help the creature survive.

Charlie, I, too, was spun around the same 180 on Delphine and at first, tried to fit the prior perception into Roth's persuasive theme of how often we're wrong about someone. So, Coleman was wrong about her. That fit.

I know this drives you up the wall when I use words like "white male language," as you've written elsewhere. One example comes to mind to illustrate (and I know we're somewhat off the subject here, so I'll throw this in, then give it a rest).

The 1970s Broverman, Broverman study that was reported in the popular press as well as the medical journals (and has been replicated ad nauseum from every conceivable angle) was set up to:

Ask male and female doctors and psychologists to describe (1)a healthy adult man, (2) a healthy adult woman, and (3) a healthy adult. A good cross section of medical professionals was randomly sampled and randomly assigned to 3 groups to describe the 3 above subjects. (Three equal groups each answered one question.) The polar continuums they were asked to use were descriptive (commonly accepted) male-female opposites. (Working from memory here.) For example, on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being passive, 10 being aggressive, the participant was asked to answer, what is a healthy adult male. (Or in the 2nd and 3rd groups, what is a healthy adult female or healthy adult.) Some other stereotyped opposites were----cries easily, never cries; works out of the home, works in the home; expresses feelings easily, has difficulty expressing feelings; etc.

Even though the original intent of the study was to prove stereotyped perceptions of male and female patients, the results were more than the researchers bargained for and were very disturbing.

As expected, a healthy male adult was described in stereotyped male terms----difficulty expressing feelings, never cries, aggressive, etc. The healthy female adult was described with stereotyped female descriptors. The descriptions of "healthy adult" were IDENTICAL to "healthy male adult." Among the findings' implications was the disturbing "double bind" for women---to behave as "healthy adult women" and, therefore, be seen as unhealthy adults, or behave as "healthy adults" and be seen as something other than normal women. In both cases, one could be seen as pathological. (If one is too passive, for instance, a label can be applied. If one is too aggressive, a label can be applied.)

Quite a few subsequent studies have shown improvement in medical professionals' views of "healthy adult women," with descriptions of healthy men and healthy women more closely resembling "healthy adults," but as recently as the early 1990s, a survey study looking at many recent studies declared that the double bind still exists for women. Also, recent studies have begun to look at the male-generated language underlying many of these old, old polar opposites. (Thank you, Freud, et al.)

It has just been within the past 10-20 years that smart people have begun to wonder if "passive" is all that bad and if "aggressive" is all that good----or if "difficulty expressing feelings" belongs with "healthy adult" behavior. (Notice, also, that many of the stereotyped descriptors for women were seen as negative to begin with. The intrinsic differences of value of women and men showed up in the words of description.) A man who shows interest in his children is more acceptable today; a woman who wants to extend herself intellectually runs less of a risk of being labeled a bad mother. In some businesses, experiments of replacing competition with cooperation have been attempted. These changes in historically embedded roles have not been without cost or reaction.

The term "politically correct" has arrived to stereotype and dumb down the genuine efforts of inclusion and fairness. If I attempt to learn if the term "native American" has faded and, in its place, the term "American Indian" is now preferred, I run the risk of being ridiculed for being politically correct instead of understood to be respectful. The same folks who didn't quite get it 25 years ago why I didn't like to be called "honey" in a business meeting are still some of the same people who make fun of serious attempts to be considerate of, for example, American Indians.

And, oh, sure, I've seen plenty examples of so-called "political correctness" reach the absurd, and confuse and dilute the real issues. That seems to be part of the backlash, or on my more positive thinking days, I just see it as growing pains, further proof that the legitimate concerns are getting addressed and causing anger.

Suggestions wanted. Should I say "historical male language" to differentiate between origins and today's grand mix of male and female writers who work equally hard to be fair? Or what? And what else?

By the way, there's a funny/serious article in a recent social psych journal that listed the description "has an agenda" as a current popular method of discrediting and discounting women's thinking. One of several terms surveyed, this term was most often applied to women's words but not to "unpopular" men's words. If I remember correctly, other derogatory descriptions were used for men's unpopular thinking, but not "has an agenda." (This is not an example, though, of the thoughts above.)

One thing I haven't made very clear. When reading something as complex and satisfying as The Human Stain, it takes forever for that distant bell that I think I hear, then I doubt if I hear, then finally, am vaguely sure I hear---to add up to what's wrong. Nothing jumps out or sits there waiting to be discovered that says Roth hasn't done his homework. I know you must know what I'm saying. If you've experienced something like the death of a child, for example, you probably have an opinion whether a writer even touches your experience, maybe some writer better than another.

I'm also reluctant (well, this IS the 18th, I waited 18 days) to presume to say anything about anything regarding Roth's abilities. Oh the one hand, it makes me laugh at the audacity; on the other, I hold my breath and, agenda tucked under arm, sneak out in the open to say----he doesn't know women.

As a force, propriety is protean, a dominatrix in a thousand disguises, infiltrating , if need be, as civic responsibility, WASP dignity, women's rights, black pride, ethnic allegiance, or emotion-laden Jewish ethical sensitivity.

What does Roth mean here, or should I say what does he mean by the tyranny of propriety as it relates to, oh say...women's rights?


Charlie

Ok, I'll step off the cliff...although I'm not sure if tyranny is your thought or Roth's. (But I have no chance of making it through a contest of literate wits unless you give me a running start, give me a handicap of 10 points, move the goal post, tie one glove behind your back and play the second string quarterback. That's all the sports references I know.)

Here's a start...

Acting in socially acceptable ways reaches across many (comes in handy for, is needed in, is required in, is dictated by) many facets of one's external life.

I don't understand the point of reference, though (and don't know pg. number, etc.), but it seems to be from the perspective of external rules, societal rules. Not what is right or moral or fair, but what is required. You watch your back, you fear legal entanglements, you keep your job.

Is the emphasis on the endless requirements to do the right thing. The force (tyranny?) has colored everything, has ruined everything? One can't escape. No one can just be. No one can express who he really is anymore from fear of these endless, oppressive, infernal, external rules. One false (innocent) step and your life can be ruined.

"Infiltrating, dominatrix." Does Roth mean that these otherwise neutral or personal choices (in some cases, responsibilities?) that could have been carried out as a matter of conscience are forced, through rules, into a different permutation? That you can't say, "that's a good color with your hair," for fear of being misconstrued. That you can't say, "I don't like singling out only one month a year to celebrate Black history."

The right to argue, to reason, in good faith, is precluded by standards that you may not agree with, did not have a say in developing.

"Dominatrix" is a powerful picture Roth chooses. It's ugly as well as demeaning, containing bitterness. The person being humiliated and dominated has no free will and, in fact, can be hurt. There is no equality. There is enjoyment by the oppressor in lording over the oppressed----and no known script, just the whim of the oppressor. The external rules of propriety in all the dominating forms keeps one from knowing what might happen next, how one might be punished. The dominated has to playact compliance, has to pretend to go along with things that he might not choose.

"Infiltrated." Like a virus, the rules of socially acceptable behavior spread everywhere, are undercover, waiting to catch one offguard.

So, is this why he chose the word "spooks," to show that real innocence (truth) cannot protect one from the infiltrating domination of external rules and their unpredictable application. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Have found no mention of that in my notes, alas.

Since this discussion has spawned so many questions and ideas to which I would like to contribute (to the best of my ability) but found both my notes and my memory not quite up to responding adequately, I went out and got the book.

Am reading like mad and savoring every sentence, again, indeed the very medicine I had prescribed to you -- well now !

I admit to wincing (as I did the first time) at some of the raw language early on, especially the frequent use of the f- word, which was of course totally justifiable in the brilliant stream-of- consciousness narration attributed to Les Farley.

No less brilliant is the description of voluntary isolation, pg. 43, and on how to withraw so completely, " ...the only way is to ORGANIZE THE SILENCE (!) pg. 44.

Roth's long sentences remind me of the Latin texts we had to unravel, from Caesar's BELLUM GALLICUM ... all the way up to THE ANNALS OF TACITUS. (The only solution was to find the verb and backtrack, without the benefit of paragraphs and punctuation.)

I am trying to catch up to specifics and unanswered questions as fast as I can.

Betty, who knows whether Roth understood women. Does any man -- really and truly ? Is that indeed possible ? That would be a question for the male readers among us. As for Roth, there are those who have detected at least TRACES of misogyny in his portrayals of women... But is that point significant in the discussion of THS ?

Traude

Traude, pgs. 152-154, which I had marked and listed on the back flap is one place Coleman/Roth looks at the tyranny of appropriateness and is the source of Charlie's quote.

I learned a lot trying to stay put in shoes of the "other." It's endlessly fascinating to me how we can be on the same subject, but on closer inspection, not really.

I guess Roth looks at ANY restriction of thought or social "appropriateness" as oppressive. So, he would include my concerns on women's rights and recent moral posturing on Clinton and the right-wing religious thought all in one pot. I guess (only guessing) he would see laws protecting women from sexual harassment as abhorant as neo-nazi groups telling us what to think. Or maybe he just thinks we've gone too far. That the danger of restricted thought is restricted thought.

I don't know if this is relevant, but...several years ago while in London I saw a documentary that though filmed in NYC was banned in the US. A significant portion of the documentary was about a dominatrix- I was mesmerized- not so much by this woman as by the need the men had for her ?services. And yes the element of surprise is what they paid huge sums of money for...and some of her surprises were AMAZING! But all these years I could not let go of the fact that these men truly wanted and appeared to truly need her services. Most astonishing was an elderly man on a fixed income who visited her regularly and wept when he did not have the $ to pay her. A compelling force at work here.

I have not finished the book and perhaps I am behind you all a few pages, but looking at Coleman Silk I see traits that I noted in most of the men in this documentary- I wonder if Roth is showing us that side of the human condition- men who need suffering, punishment, degradation- perhaps they see that as the only path to redemption and see redemption as a necessary aspect of human existence.???

Betty- I really liked your explication of the tyranny of propriety, and especially your thoughts on the word spooks here. It makes a lot of sense to me. The context (pg 153) is where Roth (Coleman) really goes on a riff about "american propriety's enduring power." This rumination, by the way, it seems to me is a natural consequence of the Post-Monica Gate hubbub. The same atmosphere that brought Coleman down is the same that nagged at Clinton - and so I see the Clinton/Monica references here as naturally occurring.

But on to Chapter 4: Sarah asked about this stain that we leave. Yes, I think this is just the natural ("inherent") part of being alive, of being a fallible human. I especially liked the part where Roth talks about the "fantasy of purity." How "appalling" and "insane" the concept really is - given our inescapable selves. And isn't this where 'fiction' reaches a moment of truth for us as readers? For me, anyway. Yes.

I have so many favorite parts in this Chapter. Back tomorrow when I have more time. [EDIT - Welcome in YiLi!]
Charlie

YiLin: I found your post about Dominatrix fascinating. Too bad the documentary wasn't available here. This is an interesting complexity; I wonder what compulsion drives men to seek out a woman like that. And to pay for her services, as well!

Do you see anything like that in Roth's portrayal of the women in this book? I can't, actually. To me it seems like Coleman is the "honcho macho," and seems to be calling all the shots.

One note: I don't know if Roth meant it to be, but I found that one of the reasons Coleman married Iris because of her "kinky" hair was very funny.

Lorrie

Lorrie- You said: "One note: I don't know if Roth meant it to be, but I found that one of the reasons Coleman married Iris because of her "kinky" hair was very funny." I missed that one. I bet it WAS intentional and it IS funny!


Charlie

No so far I don't see the dominatrix in the women portrayed. I also don't have a long history of reading Roth so I don't know anything about his overriding themes. But I wonder in looking back from where I have read if that is part of Coleman's continued reinventions- maybe he is looking for a dominatrix- his mother just succumbed to his will, Steena left, the children wait for him to come to his senses, no one so far grabs Coleman with force, stands above him, punishes him or truly satisfies his need. Also when reading fiction, I tend to try to see the world through the character who is developed (even when developed poorly) not so much through the author's eyes. I see fiction as a story expressing an author's world view- but delight in the people created.

Funny Coleman reminds me of someone I know- but a woman.

Sarah asked (somewhere back there) about the mysterious trouble between Coleman and his children. No, I never did understand the origins of the trouble, either, Sarah, but I don't remember that bothering me much. I think I began to assume that those on again, off again difficulties with adult children were not that odd, were what so many parents experience. American Pastoral had much to do with the struggle to understand where things went wrong with an almost adult child, then continued for years and years. Not much resolution there. Considering a wider picture, ALL of Coleman's family relationships are troubled.

I think Roth was using "dominatrix" as a methaphor for the oppressive societal rules to be "appropriate," as he wrote in his "rant" between pgs 152-154. The many faceted external social rules to behave in socially acceptable ways had "infiltrated" all the activities that Charlie listed. Coleman/Roth is complaining about the oppressive tyranny of propriety, of having to act (literally act) in politically correct ways. He feels shoved around and doesn't like it.

When speaking of propriety, Roth mentions Philip Wylie and his "Momism" from many years ago. That rang a bell as I read it, but couldn't place it. I checked Amazon and the bell rang again when I came to A Generation of Vipers. I know I read that many, many years ago when I was probably a little young for it but I remember it being very good and interesting and possibly funny, too. Here is Amazon with that book and a few reviews. Sounds like it would be a great read today!Generation of Vipers

Linda - Right. I think Wylie's A Generation of Vipers was required reading in High School or college in the sixties.


Charlie

I agree with Betty in her interpretation of the "tyranny of propriety". I also concur in that "Dominatrix" is probably used metaphorically.

Lorrie is right. When the couple decided to marry 2 years after they met, Coleman went to East Orange to see his mother (pg. 136). In the last full paragraph on that page we read :

<< In the face of his mother's anguish, there floated through Coleman the eerie, crazy fear that all that he had ever wanted from Iris Gittelman was the explanation her appearance could provide for the texture of their children's hair. >>

God forbid that a latent gene of HIS should become apparent and destroy the carefully constructed edifice of his lily-white life !!

On page 137, in line 4 we read << Even as he remained seated across from his mother in what appeared to be a state of perfect self-control, he had the definite impression that he had just chosen a wife for the stupidest reason in the world and that he was the emptiest of men. >>

Sarah asked (earlier) why I consider Coleman selfish. Actally, I should have added "ruthless". Monstrous selfishness, even brutality, are nowhere more obvious than during this hours-long meeting between mother and son. How cleverly he lets (!) his eloquent mother make HIS apologia for him !! She says prophetically (top of page 140) << Now I could tell you that there is no escape, that all of your attempts to escape will only lead you back to where you began. >>

Of course, he is unstoppable. As he wondered (earlier on) how to prepare Steena for the visit to East Orange (and ultimately of course he does not prepare her and loses her), he sets forth several arguments in support of his "resolve" to enter the white world (pp. 120 ff) with perfect logic, seemingly unassailable. He does it again (pg. 155, second paragraph), << ... Nor was he a madman. Nor was he a radical or a revolutionary, not even intellectually or philosophically speaking, unless it is revolutionary to believe that DISREGARDING PRESCRIPTIVE SOCIETY'S MOST RESTRICTIVE DEMARCATIONS .. etc.etc.

As for his children. Roth is particularly caustic in describing Lisa's twin Mark who began at an early age to rebel against anything his father said, did and stood for and << had come to nurse his great life-organizing aversion with all the arrogance of someone who has succeeded at nothing .>> (!!) (pg 61)

After Idris' funeral Mark openly charged his FATHER for being responsible for her death in such a violent way that the two older brothers had to forcibly remove him from the room ... Traude

Good job, Traude! There it is about Iris' hair. Clear enough, no? It's amazing how many questions Roth answers unequivocally, isn't it, if you look for the answers?We talked before about Roth's obsession, as he ages, with death. And also with his idea of what we don't know (also a major theme in American Pastoral. And what a wonderful riff on both on pgs. 208-209. Zuckerman's at Tanglewood and spots Faunia with Coleman. Coleman says something to Faunia - and he muses that he can't really know what he has whispered in her ear:

Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows...How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows, Professor Roux. "Everyone knows" is the invocation of the cliche and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliche that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an uncliched way, nobody knoes anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning? All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

...I began , cartoonishly, to envisage the fatal malady that, without anyone's recognizing it, was working away inside us, within each and every one of us [and he goes on to describe its manifestations]...The stupendous decimation that is death sweeping us all away...The ceaseless perishing. What an idea! What maniac conceived it?

And then damn if he doesn't go on to describe one of life's redemptive pleasures. One of us. One of US. Making music.


Charlie

"...the solemnity and sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliche that's so insufferable..."

This is another part of Roth's (1) how often we're wrong and (2) the oppressive commands to be socially "appropriate."

It's also, if I can be so bold to think it, where I think Roth got stuck. I picture him being so put off by all pundits that he's thrown out the reasonable with the absurd. He would say, I suppose, that one person's reason is another's absurdity. There are those from history, though, that didn't get stuck and risked everything for what they knew to be "right." Ghandi, Mandella, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rosa Parks, physicians who treat only AIDS patients.

Sometimes Roth's themes make sense, but sometimes he seems to be wallowing in helpless anger, fixated on how nothing can be known. Moving forward isn't always a matter of being 100 percent certain of something, anyway. We'd all be stuck if we waited on perfection to move off dead center.

betty -

Moving forward isn't always a matter of being 100 percent certain of something, anyway. We'd all be stuck if we waited on perfection to move off dead center.

That's certainly a good point betty. Maybe what we have here is the artist as observer, rather than the man of action. People like Roth certainly leave themselves open to the charge/observation you've made.

---

It's when he affirms life (you have to look for it) though, that you know he's not completely stuck in his angst. Remember Bronfman at Tanglewood (pg. 208)? To Roth (Z), this guy plays the piano and leaves nothing less than "our redemption" in his wake! And after, "our own lives now seem inextinguishable. Nobody is dying, nobody - not if Bronfman has anything to say about it!"

I'd guess that Roth is after leaving behind something "inextinguishable" of himself, too. And the closer he gets to mortality, the greater the wrenching need to keep himself alive - in this way.

Remember the frieze of "eight beautiful bass fiddles" (pg. 210)during a break in the program? They reminded Z of death: "Why...[he] could not fathom." Why is a good question. What do you think? It's a vivid image, and I suppose it has to do with the silence of the instruments: the cessation of art, the lull in creation, the demise of the artist. So Roth is back in it - the other side of the coin. The joy that is the life force of creation...and the realization that though the creation may be immortal, the act itself is all too fleeting.


Charlie

You remind us, Charlie, of the two-sided perceptions (philosophies, themes, obsessions?) of Roth---his worries on passing out of existence and the need to leave something of himself behind. My heart softens instantly when he writes of this. What a universal human cry to be known, even from one who declares we can never know another.

That seems to be the great irony of Roth's impulses, doesn't it betty? A lonely place to be trying to speak out from.


Charlie

Charlie:

You quoted the passage I wanted to ask about - the passage for which Ch. 4 is named:

"I began, cartoonishly, to envisage the fatal malady that, without anyone's recognizing it, was working away inside us, within each and every one of us [and he goes on to describe its manifestations]...The stupendous decimation that is death sweeping us all away...The ceaseless perishing. What an idea! What maniac conceived it?"

Sorry to be dense - what maniac conceived what? Death? Why would Coleman think this? What does death have to do with Coleman's life choice to pass as white?

I was mystified by this comment. Please edify me!

Betty says "Sometimes Roth's themes make sense, but sometimes he seems to be wallowing in helpless anger, fixated on how nothing can be known." Yes! That's precisely how this latter part of the book feels.

Do you feel at all that Roth makes his point earlier on in the book, and that it starts to fizzle out as we near the end?

On Traude's quote: "In the face of his mother's anguish, there floated through Coleman the eerie, crazy fear that all that he had ever wanted from Iris Gittelman was the explanation her appearance could provide for the texture of their children's hair." This is a shocking admission on Coleman's part. As Traude says "God forbid that a latent gene of HIS should become apparent and destroy the carefully constructed edifice of his lily-white life !!"

As if he went out and found a Jew with kinky hair to cover for his decision, to produce the proper children that wouldn't raise suspicion. There's something so sinister about this, don't you think?

Yea - YiLi's here!!! Welcome!

YiLi, Betty and Hairy all talk about the tyranny of propriety, which Roth calls a dominatrix. It IS odd that Roth chose this word. Is there a male version of the word? Dominator? Maybe that word is so unused that dominatrix was the only choice - but it is strange that he chose a FEMALE word.

Does anyone want to weigh in on the human stain and its applicability to the natural world? As the book continus, and ends, I think Roth uses nature and man's effect on it not only as a metaphor, but also literally to illustrate humans' negative impact on the world around them. He seems to view humans as essentially and inherently evil.

Or am I mistaken? Is there optimism in Coleman's story?

Well, Sarah - but this is just Zuckerman-Roth musing about the "shocking irregularities that define human affairs." Musing about, not death so much as the perculair and each-more-bizarre-than-the-next ways in which we die. Read the litany agin. It's pretty funny in a ghoulish sort of way. Remember - he's cartoonishly thinking here. Can't you see this corporeal disintegration which is the precursor to death? See it as an old black and white Max Fleischer cartoon? Why should this magnificent existence end in such often painful and such myriad ever more bizarre ways? Yes....ashes to ashes and all that. But really. What is the point of that? Roth is, in so many words, calling God a Maniac for this conception, and to him, this never ending, ever changing and yes, "ceasless perishing." He's angry of course..........

"And yet what a lovely day it is today..."

- doesn't this bring a smile to your lips after the rage?


Charlie

"humans as essentially and inherently evil"?
"humans' negative impact on the world around them"?

That may be Farley's view, but I just don't see it as Roth's.


Charlie

The worries on death are background noise for Roth's characters. Life is going on but the noise is always there.

I like it. White Noise?

speckled noise...which reminds me somewhat oddly of the crows again. They may be background noise, too, but they added a softer note to the book and illuminated some intelligence and love about Faunia. Love! How often is that word used in the book? It is flat without it. What a dreary outlook on life Roth must have. He goes round and round complaining about so much. Perhaps it is the lack of love that causes the human stain. Seems the book is more about selfish wants and perceived needs.

I don't think he is saying humans are evil. I think he is saying they are imperfect. Is he also saying they are powerless to do anything about it? Coleman could have made different decisions - would they have made his life any better or worse?

What's that saying in the bible? Something about life or works without love is but a clanging cymbal (or a tinkling tin can or a human stain)?

Delphine was sure no sweetie, was she?

Linda

I think the setting - a college campus- is an intriguing way for these many messages to get out...are humans evil or is it the affairs of humans that are evil? are these affairs more visible in the closed society of academia, a place where there seems to be a nonchalance about the class system- the undercurrent of more than age is a background noise I hear- not just aged former dean with younger woman- but dean with a janitor! yet Roth takes the time to show us important glimpses in the lives of the underclass characters, hmmmm???

What chapter are you Guys up to, I need to catch up? Ketchup?

ginny

We sort of just got into Chapter 4, Ginny .

People whose whole life is spent in academia, in general, take certain things for granted, (YiLi mentioned "nonchalance about the class system" for example)and sometimes don't react well when things outside the ivory tower don't conform exactly to the way things are done inside. But that may be just a digression here.

So, Linda - how would you characterize Coleman's feelings about Faunia? Is that love?
Charlie

Is that love? I don't think it is from what I remember. Self-love feeding itself?

Yes, Hairy, "selfish wants and perceived needs" indeed.

It seems to me that the titles apply not only to the respective chapters (and are referred to by the author repeatedly throughout, as in Everybody Knows), but also have more than one meaning, e.g. chapter 3, Slipping the Punch. Also, in chapter 4, there is more than one maniac, clearly.

The description of higher education in France is right on target. "But in America no one appreciates the very special path she was on in France and its enormous prestige ..." pg. 189. The characterization of Delphine is merciless - and ultimately devastating.

And there are not only the political fulminations but also scenes of great tenderness in the book - alongside graphic, highly erotically charged descriptions. Some of the existential observations are almost aphoristic.

Love ? Not in the beginning, surely. But - read on.

Love or not, they seem to have found each other. Z imagines that there is a piece of Faunia "that is decidedly not there" and that Coleman has a part of him that has been blotted out, excised. "They are, together, a pair of blanks (as The Swede was a blank in American Pastoral. Z believes they have each, shared their secrets.

---

Traude- This (Chapter 4) part (starting on page 259) is what I was thinking of earlier when mentioned Delphine. No, Linda, she wasn't a sweetie - but Roth dimensionalized her character here and I did feel as sense of pity for her. Get the feeling that the whole TNYRB personal ad episode is a large inside joke of sorts?


Charlie

Does anyone else see something prophetic at the beginning of chapter 4 where Nathan sits in his darkened car, unseen, listening to the dance music coming from Coleman's house and picturing this "odd couple" dancing to the beat of Tommy Dorsey, "dancing their way stark naked into a violent death?" and then those ominous words "I am not alone here in listening to the music from the road!"

This sinister presence of Les Farley all through these pages hangs there like impending doom, and I'm afraid of reading further for fear of what I'll inevitably discover.

Lorrie

I don't like this Coleman character. The way he treated his mother leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no matter his reasons for doing this. To me he seems to be an egotistical, self-centered, and yes, Betty, a real chauvinist, although I agree with his rantings against the Puritanical hypocrisy of these times.

Lorrie

ahh but I am intrigued by this Les buildup and really found myself empathetic through the chinese restaurant ordeal, a shared empathy- even for the ladies shelling peas.

Les may have had a better sense of "family values" than Coleman.

On page 203, ragarding Faunia and Coleman, I believe, it says "...depressing result of their lives. The intimacy subdues their hatred of life."

Is this the story of who got screwed by the "ecstacy of sanctimony" that got Clinton?

good phrase ---> "...all too tangible enclosure of old age."

eeek, I can relate!

Pushing that "send" button was beautiful! A remarkable scene. Just desserts for Delphine except she finessed her way through it only too easily. boo hiss

Just a silly little thing, but did you notice that there is a paragraph that runs two pages long? (pp158-159)

page 242 is where he speaks of "human stain."

page 222 - an interesting quote: "Dare to give yourself to your own vitality and you might as well be in the hands of a hardened criminal."

Delphine is intelligent but doesn't understand the nuances of American men. (What are they?)

Linda

Dancing is of importance in the story; first Coleman and Nathan when their friendship develops; that the evening when Coleman opens up, slightly, and mentions Steena and her dancing. There is more in that vein but I don't mean to give anything away.

As Linda says, Coleman is selfish in the extreme, monstrously so, especially where his mother is concerned. But this is hardly the extent of his insensitivity. Think of the children who were never told ! They were deprived of an identity in a way, and, despite his intelligence, Coleman failed to see (or simply refused to realize) that we do not live in a vacuum. None of us.

Roth is scrupulous in describing Delphine's superior intellect, her flawless genealogical credentials and her physical attributes, but his contempt for her is palpable. The anonymous note combined with the erroneously sent computer message and the cover-up is highly unsavory. The woman has no personal integrity. Gifted as she is in intelligence and looks, she is in the end just another frustrated, hysterical female desperate for a man ... or so Roth portrays her. Well now. As for Coleman and Faunia, an unlikely pair if ever there was one. But there was an affinity there (have to find the page); both had only each other, each had turned his/her back to the world. It wasn't I, Charlie, who brought up 'love'. I only answered an earlier question, which was not that far-fetched. T

"The intimacy subdues their hatred of life." YES! remarkable how often a single sentence, can open a reader's eyes not only to aspects of the fictional character, but aspects of life. I am now rummaging through my impressions of each character in this book looking for the artifacts of intimacy, reflecting on each one's hatred of life. I see better now why the earlier discussion was so focused on Roth as the perpetrator of the events that moved these characaters.

That is an interesting thought, Les having a greater (though in my mind perverted) sense of family values. What I find also provoking is that somehow what Les is, is easier to tag than what Coleman is. There is a hint of sympathy for Les- post traumatic stress, his character moving with the tide of human emotion about viet nam- but is the motivation for Coleman to hide his identity caught up in too distant a past history or is the human stain the american history that compelled him to create the new, white, identity?

Funny, Les beats his wife, runs two people off the road, will probably remain the center of society's vigilence all his life, and the novel treats him with compassion. Coleman, like hundreds and perhaps thousands before him- to the days of Thomas Jefferson and before, takes advantage of a genetic expression, perpetrates a lie that is his own life and there is no sympathy. ?

None from me, I'm afraid.

Pity perhaps ?

Traude

Traude: No sympathy from me, either. Yes, pity indeed. I have sympathy more for poor Steena, earlier in the book, who was led unsuspecting into a very awkward situation, which I thought was extremely selfish of Coleman.

Lorrie

The only way I know I do have sympathy for Coleman Silk is that every time someone wrote "how could he do that to his family??" and similar family-related indictments, I just couldn't relate.

Not that I like what he did to his family or not that there was nothing wrong with it. I just have this incomplete, hard to explain thought on---this leaving behind of family was not the first act in the first moment of his life. It's hard for me to extract that one moment and look at it by itself. I might be guilty of filling in blanks that Roth left to get Coleman to this point of passing, but at any rate, I suppose I think it's not up to me to say whether someone who passes for white (with costs) is right or wrong.

Given that thousands of black people felt compelled to pass for white, I'm more inclined to look with disregard on the forces that brought them to that decision. Racist society's disregard for "family," those black families, is easier for me to criticize.

The blankness of Coleman---maybe I've been misreading Roth's ability/inability to portray a Black person. Maybe his blankness, his non-personness is one result of the attempt to reinvent himself. (Or maybe not.)

His affair with Faunia---again, maybe I'm filling in blanks and making this up in place of Roth's being clear---Coleman's affair with Faunia may be his first unplanned, un-careful act, a first following his heart without regard to what was socially acceptable, what others would think. An act that would not be understood by colleagues or his peculiar children. I know this was all supposedly in secret, but it wasn't very secret.

Lorrie - You asked:

"Does anyone else see something prophetic at the beginning of chapter 4 where Nathan sits in his darkened car, unseen, listening to the dance music coming from Coleman's house and picturing this "odd couple" dancing to the beat of Tommy Dorsey, "dancing their way stark naked into a violent death?" and then those ominous words "I am not alone here in listening to the music from the road!"

Prophetic and...something else. The line "I am not alone in listening to the music from the road" positively has a TS Eliot ring to it whose meaning goes far beyond this novel. To me it speaks of the observer, the one removed, the one apart. The writer - the 'Moviegoer', the 'Passenger'...

Funny. I have less sympathy for Farley than for Coleman or Faunia - or any other character in this book...

Since we've got into Farley, here - why don't we open it up through to the end and The PURIFYING RITUAL and the strange post-apocalyptic meeting with Farley on ther frozen Pond?


Charlie

Betty we're close in our thoughts, I like your better understanding of filling in the blanks. I think that is what I've been doing, I have attempted to look at these characters as people challenged as we all are to live our best each day- rather than as contrived symbols of the author's message. It is in looking at Coleman as a person that yes- I agree there are flaws- but I wonder what made these flaws so outstanding. Also makes me take a bit of a peek inward- wondering if the people around me only recognize me by my outstanding flaws or has anyone taken time to balance them out with my good points or at least some attempt to understand what has motivated these flaws.

A followup - We are told that Coleman was indifferent to the impressive genealogy on his mother's side and was never concerned about anyone but himself.

Who would/could BLAME him for "passing" if he could, which he so obviously was able to do ? As Betty said, untold blacks probably did the same thing.

BUT why should his bold act (even if we COULD manage to understand it as a motivation) inspire compassion from the reader ? Why compassion ?

Consider what it did to the family, not only his mother, but to his own children ! How can one possibly have compassion for a man who is living a lie of such magnitude every day of his life ? Yet, precisely that was Coleman's decision and he was FULLY AWARE of its implications and its finality.

Les is a different story. Here is a simple guy, drawn - like thousands of others like him - into a conflict he probably never fully understood, and was trained to kill. He learned the lesson well. Is it any wonder he (and countless other Vietnam vets) snapped, with such distastrous consequences for them and those around them ?? (you realize I didn't say "family")

Among my own friends at the time were several who quickly re-enrolled in college and/or got married --- simply to get a deferment......

Quick question : Since I came a little late into this discussion, and particularly since this is my first experience here, may I ask whether there are any guidelines as to WHAT specifically we are to look for and comment on ? In any book ? What are the criteria ? Are we do discuss the book, the story, the characters, their believability (among other considerations), or the author's perceived intentions in telling the story ?

Or are all these elements really inseparable and can be brought up at any time ? T

Traude- your last set of questions echo the ones I had but did not ask when I first signed on to this discussion, it was my first time participating where people seemed so knowledgeable about and interested in the author.

Compassion- isn't that something we strive for in this life- to have compassion for all creatures- does not mean we approve of their actions, nor love them, like them. In fact, not even necessarily accepting what they would do because theirs could be your circumstances- more like a feeling that hopes that person finds happiness. That is the way I look at Coleman and Les- both to me are worthy of compassion- both lead tortured lives and leave a trail of significance- my sense of compassion says I should not judge one nor the other, I may not wish to do what they do or have my sons do what they do- but that to me is the essence of my sense of compassion- I'm not saying this well- but it is because I would not want those things to happen to me or my children that I feel for both them and those they hurt along the way. coleman silk could be my son, for example, and I would feel wretched, not only that he would cast me aside, but the the pain that must be inside him that prompted such an act.

Even if Coleman's "pain" is depicted as greed or wanting something else, I think there is a gaping hole there someplace for him to respond to society's pressures in the way he did, giving up everything. And yes, I agree with you and all the other vets and personal friends devastated by that conflict- but that is my point- compassion for them both. (Oh yes, I am not saying this is an easy thing, as I began the post- something we strive for).

I find myself going back to "the sins of the fathers" concept from time to time. Could it be that Coleman's father caused Coleman's wishing to distance himself? He was such a perfectionist and forced Coleman to go to Howard and didn't want him to be a boxer.

Linda

YiLi Lin - I think when you wonder if the people around you only recognize your "outstanding flaws" or if they've "taken time to balance them out" with your good points...it seems to me you've touched on a persistent concern of Roth's.

---

Linda - In reading Roth, I'd say he'd have little tolerance for excusing Coleman on those grounds. It seems to me he focuses more on the futility of parental position that on their culpability.

---

Traude - I agree that understanding is a better descriptor for my feelings about Coleman than compassion. Living a lie is one thing - but the sort of psychic fratricide is another. And I'm not convinced that Les is just a simple guy, a representative of the consequences of his training - it's much deeper than that it seems to me. He's menacing right to the end - a foreboding figure.YiLi says it much better than I, however.

---

Traude - Sarah is away this week so if I may answer your questions from my perspective...Generally we kind of meander where we may. The Books here has led us to some strange but illuminating places. We do urge though, that everyone keep the book in mind in the final analysis. And as for analysis - well, all those criteria you mention are in play. Our discussions here have been structured in different ways, with varying degrees of success. We try to find out what works each time out. We try always to use any framework as a focus point only and not as artificial boundaries. Hope this helps.




Charlie

YiLi, I am exactly where you are in the post on compassion. I am aware, however, that where I am can get in the way of where the author attempts to take us. Left to my own devices, my mind settles on context and cannot see these characters in Human Stain in a vacuum. They all come from a world already in play. Even the political correctness that Roth has such fun caricaturing didn't just spring up from nothing. It came as a response to something. Coleman's passing came as a response to something. So did Roth and his ideas and his book, come to think of it. His angst in the form of a book is a response to something within a larger context.

Farley gives me the willies. He's the least tolerable, but still fits in the larger society. Understanding where the Farleys come from keeps me sane.....otherwise....

Traude, everything you list, as Charlie writes, is of interest. This discussion is less structured than others (my preference), but there are many choices to make, structure-wise, in Books. Discussion leader preference(s) and sometimes the book itself determines different levels of structure. But, say what you prefer and what you want!! Things aren't static around here---and feedback helps with ongoing changes!

I recall that Coleman felt great relief when he found that his twins were both white. What we did not get know is how Coleman's father felt when he found that his son would be white. Could he have recognized at that moment the inevitability of his son choosing white over black at some time in the future. Was this the reason he (prophetically) named him after the traitor, Brutus?

Interesting name Coleman, coal man. They sound the same. There'd be no escaping the black man side of him, if that were intentional. Maybe it's just Roth playing with the word?

Dansker, I missed that, entirely---coal-man for Coleman. No telling about Roth's intentions.

Betty, I want sympathy here. I've just had a posting blasted into the ether. This is the second time for me. Is this a common occurance? Or am I violating some e-mail dictum?

Well, concerning the dances. Is Coleman reliving his lost love Steena while Faunia dances before him. If so, it would explain why she sees him falling in love with her (Faunia), and that she "doesn't know" that he's lapsing into the past.

While she is dancing Roth describes the cuts and bruises on her body, which certainly would delete the power of the erotic moment. She's tried twice to commit suicide and now works at jobs that bring about a great deal of physical discomfort, reminding one more of a penitent. Some more sophisticated explaination might be forthcoming here from a psychologist.

Faunia seems to have arrived at a position of accepting herself as an unfeeling animal. When she runs from Coleman's place and visits the animal shelter and the crow, she all but engages herself with the creature, giving him the opal ring and severing her connection with Coleman lest she find herself commiting to another human being.

It's certainly depressing to think of such devastation of a human being as we see in Faunia.

I have a question, I am now caught up and I'm not sure this question has been addressed, and apologize if it has been, (loved that, Dansker about the prophetic Brutus thing, fabulous...COALman, fabulous) and I also thought, Linda, about the father's overbearing personality, but his overbearing stuff was of character, I think, not like Coleman's: maybe that's why Coleman doesn't have any, in reaction to his father's own.

WHY was it that Coleman, who almost told his secret, did NOT tell his secret to the administration when the scandal came out about his remark?

Why? That one admission which he almost made anyway, would have saved his career, his reputation, his very existence?

So why didn't he say, Listen people, I myself am Black, get off it, go take a hike.

It would be good for the faculty? A Black Dean? It would be good for his honor and reputation: a man does not have to explain his ethnic backgrounds to anybody, there would be no outcry about his own "secret?"

Why did he not?

I am beginning to think Coleman is writing his own tragedy here, but am not sure what his tragic flaw actually is.

ginny

Dansker mentions the crow, and I forgot to say the crow images, to me, were totally incomprehensible, but did underscore Faunia's total being down...

The crow is an extrememly nasty bird, totally hideous, capable of driving off nesting hawks by screaming at them incessantly, takes babies and eggs from other bird's nests, pulls out stalks of corn from the ground, dive bombs small dogs and will call, if an animal IS down in the road, the other crows to come and peck away.

For Faunia to identify with what good points this bird might have and to consider herself a "crow" in life is pitiful.

ginny

Ginny, in thinking over your question, why didn't Coleman Silk own up to his Blackness to save himself with the administration, I can only think that an identity gone for so long is gone. Also, so much, not just the safety of his career, was caught up in his being white---the self-concept of his children, history with deceased wife, every justification he had ever made.

This falls far, far short in comparison, but since it came to mind the minute I read your question, Ginny, I might as well tell it. I gave away my last name when I married. A decade later, still naive, I kept my old married last name when I divorced. Later, when I couldn't stand the thought of carrying around a last name of an ex-husband, I was in a business that honored a history of name recognition----it was too risky to let go of a last name that FINALLY had some long-worked-for recognition. The MINUTE I left to go to graduate school, I was ready to let go of that last name, only to realize---shock, shock---that I didn't have one to go back to. I hadn't been my maiden name since I was barely out of my teens. I'd lived my whole adult life with someone else's last name. I was nameless. I had to find a last name.

See, it's not the same at all as a racial identity, but it's what came to mind. How did I get "Gregory"? My early-teens son who was just then living with his father, son's first name Gregory (called Greg), had a surprising reaction to a weak joke I made. I joked that since the only name I'd ever picked out and loved was the name Gregory for him, that I ought to have it as my last name. I'd been half serious when I first thought of it, but had pretty much dismissed it by the time I joked with him about it over the telephone. His little high pitched, cracked-voice response caught me off guard. So, the decision was made in that instant.

BEtty- we are definitely kindred spirits- I have had a similar name identity for most of my adult life also- hmm adult? well back to childhood.

I am intrigued by the posts about Coleman's father - a lot to think about and I'm glad I did not yet return the book to the library, I think I want to reread some earlier chapters.

I would like to think that Coleman did not respond from a racial identity- because he was trulty appalled by the allegations. In a way I admire his holding on to his intent, regardless of his race, he was sticking to his point- in his mind the issue was semantics, not race. He reminds me of Coriolanus. I am one of the few people who have liked that character. I have a sense of regard for people (right or wrong, popular or not) who stand up for what they believe in. I may not agree with their beliefs- but the fact that they take a stand is something I regard.

I was so impressed with Roth's writing on page 242! Here we see the real basis for the title, and what a stunner it is!

Faunia hsas fled to the Audubon Headquarters, after picking a fight with Coleman, and she moves the crow outside the cage, while talking to the girl feeding a snake. She's talking about the crow, that interests her so:

"That's what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The human stain" she says without revulsion, or contempt, or condemnation. "We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint."

Why is Faunia so fascinated by that bird? As Ginny says, they're actually quite repulsive. And why did she give him the expensive ring that Coleman had given her? Am I missing some significance to that ring?

Lorrie

I am similarly mystified by this attraction to an otherwise quite hideous bird, and I for one fail to see the connection/relevance here. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Will have more to say ASAP T

Ginny - You said: "there would be no outcry about his own "secret?" - of that I'm not so sure. His wife, for instance, had some pretty harsh thnigs to say about the couple they knew who had been living a lie. That, to her, would haave been unforgivebale, I think Roth was saying there. Maybe just to answer the question you posed.


Charlie

I should re-read the part about the crow but she really related to that crow. Ugly, plain, mean as it was - she could relate to it. She had love in her heart for it. I thought it gave her some depth of character. So she could love someone like Coleman, too? Big-hearted gal. She thought she was really a crow...she wasn't mean. Must have been more to this...she saw something in crows that we don't usually think of. One thing - they are black and they don't try to be anything else...but Faunia doesn't know about that, does she? She saw a beauty in them...this one could learn. Could she relate to that? That was one of the most touching scenes for me in the whole book.

Betty,

I liked your answer and your personal example. The price Coleman has paid to invent himself was too great. I think the scene when he confronted his mother was the most moving in the novel. She was presented as an extremely worthy woman, intelligent and understanding and devoted to her family. Beyond that the lengthy heritage that Roth alluded to is also forfeited. One thing that connects Coleman with Delphine Roux is this inventing oneself at a great price, perhaps too great a price. I could see why he would hold on to his idea of himself, he bought it dearly.

Dansker writes:

"The price Coleman has paid to invent himself was too great...One thing that connects Coleman with Delphine Roux is this inventing oneself at a great price, perhaps too great a price."

Delphine feels some connection with Coleman, Perhaps this is it...

"Whom is she looking for? She is looking for the man who is going to recognizeher. She is looking for the Great Recognizer."

And later she says:

"I will go to America and be the author of my life...; I will construct myself outside the orthodoxy of my family's given, I will fight against the given...individualism at its best...She winds up as the author of nothing. There is the drive to master things, and the thing that is mastered is oneself."

These could have been words out of the mouth of Coleman Silk.

---

I liked what you said, Linda, about the crows. Remember when Delphine, rather hysterical, is rushing to her campus office to try and retrieve the e-mails she mistakenly (hmmm...mistakenly?) sent to her staff? She arrives at the campus and there's no one there:

"Only crows."

Charlie

LOVE that point about the crows (normally a hateful bird) being black and she looked thru the outside and saw the inside, Charlie, that's fabulous.

Coleman's the one in the cage, I'm thinking, and he built the bars himself.

ginny

I wonder if there is significance about the crow beinge a scavenger? I like that reminder about Delphine- she and Coleman both wishing to reinvent themselves- one did it- the other not- both running from family expectations along with the gene pool...so more to consider the one who becomes NOthing or the other who becomes Athing that onlookers do not admire.

Somehow I thought Faunia knew Coleman's secret- not that he told her, that she "knew" and that was part of her power or at least feeling of self power that allowed her to risk this relationship. She seemed very much in control to me, not just "dancing" but her reaffirming this is what it is. (and the unspoken- and you are what you are) anyone else think so?

Yes, Lorrie. Justly so. What author has managed to tackle that many urgent real societal concerns in a novelistic, totally believable form with credible protagonists ?

And, as LORRIE MOORE said in her NYT review of the book (from which I quoted here) some time in May: << .... an outpouring of unstoppable, idiosyncratic genius ... >>

BTW - The announcement of this year's Nobel Prize winners is imminent. Announcements are usually made on a Thursday in October - - with very little advance notice.

Speaking of the prize for literature, I feel certain that THS has been given due consideration, must be among the finalists -- and may possibly be a winner. ....... Back later T

Whoever suggested the connection of Coleman with 'coal man' deserves a 'bravo'. I think the suggestion is right on the mark.

May I get back to FAUNIA, the name. A link with FAUNA was brought up early on.

It has since occurred to me that the reference might possibly have been to FAUN (FAUNUS), the lascivious Roman god of fertility. FaunIA would be the feminine version of the name/word.

Re Delphine.

Madame de Staël, Swiss-born Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1766-1817), whose father was the French minister of finance, and whose husband was Baron de Staël-Holstein, the Swedish ambassador to France, wrote (inter alia) DELPHINE and CORINNE = novels considered by some critics as the first 'modern' feminist phsychological romantic novels, antedating the works of George Sand.

Mme. de Staël's celebrated 'salons' were attended by the leading political and literary figures of her day, and she was known for her charm, her vigorous mind, her talent for conversation, and her influence on Romanticism in France.

I am certain the author knew of her. With Roth, nothing is happenstance. Nothing is unplanned.

T

Traude - Thanks for the tip on the Nobel - be watching for that. And it's driving me crazy...Mme de Stael and her salons came up in our discussions some time in the recent past and I can't for the life of me....

---

How did you all feel about Roth's comments about funerals: The Purifying Ritual? (We learn after the funerals, by the way, that Faunia's "illiteracy had been an act." - "trumping learning" Roth/Z calls it).

a simple enough ritual, as sensible a solution to the problem as any ever devised but one that is never entirely comprehensible. You have to see it to believe it each time.

I love that. "You have to see it to believe it each time."!! I must say - he nails my thoughts on funerals and burials exactly. Aren't they the manifestation of "the human desire for a beginning, a middle, and an end." For "closure"?

---

It's been awhile since I read this book - I've only skimmed it again here to go along with the discussion (can you tell?). I'm much more into Zadie Smith's White Teeth at the moment. I only bring this up because a few people have commented that the young Zadie must be an "old soul." Roth is a phenomenal writer, a master with the written word - but he's stuck way down the karma wheel when compared to Smith. Her humor can be as biting as Roth's. But there's something akin to a peace and humanism with Zadie. Roth seems doomed to love this life again.


Charlie

Charlie, so far the library copy of WHITE TEETH has not come in, but I have absolute, infinite faith in the trusted local library.

I DO have BECOMING MADAME MAO -- in fact I renewed it today.

Alas, I have been totally unable to "get with it" ; I seem to have some kind of strange (unexplainable) resistance to ... whatever . Will explore this further.

Perhaps I am still too involved with THS. T

ooooo, a companion can't-get-with-it person, "resistence" and all. I've been through 6 months of that, Traude. I'm hoping the fall weather (to come) will knock me out of this. I'm in the middle of White Teeth, though, and it's well worth the trouble.

The innocent, empty, sparsely attended graveside ceremony (pg. 285) organized for Faunia granted her a modicum of dignity.

The presence of her (probably long-suffering) father, weak as he may have been, was a fitting coda to a troubled life (hers and perhaps his) - a redemption of sorts.

In the scurrilous posting (pg. 289), Roth goes back to Homer, and the ill-fated House of Atreus, specifically Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, King and Queen, and their children, Orestes, Iphiginia and Electra. More tragic figures can hardly be imagined.

After 10 long years of battle and unfathomable carnage that left Troy ultimately burnt and in ruins, all men and male children having been killed and the women carried off as bounty by the victors, Agamemnon made it home -- only to be killed by his unfaithful wife, Clytemnestra, with the aid of her lover Aegisthus. Agamemnon's prize bounty, Cassandra, was killed with him.

Clytemnestra became Agamemnon's EXECUTIONER : she could not forgive him for having sacrificed their daughter Iphiginia to the gods at Aulis in exchange for a favorable wind so the Greek fleet could sail on to Troy.

Can there be any doubt as to who posted the venomous online "eulogy" for Coleman?

Yet his children came through for him ... Now that is profoundly satisfying for the reader.

betty - C'mon, b. Get with it! (I have a feeling that WT will get you out of your funk.)

Traude - Thanks for bringing clarity to the anonymous Clytemnestra. Her e-mail address was House of Atrreus. I assume that is a Greek Epic reference also?The contrasts between the two funerals was somewhat interesting. I think you summed up Faunia's nicely - dignity. Coleman's, on the other hand, was a bit of a sham, would you say? Obviously more for the participants and "those left behind" than for the deceased. But isn't it always so?


Charlie

The dramatic scene at Coleman's funeral stays with me.

The Hebrew lamentation, the breakdown of Mark (who hadn't really cared that much for his father, anyway), the way the Silk children had of drawing out and sustaining the pathos, and finally, the confrontation of Nathan and Ernestine.

Didn't it seem fitting, that rather than the look-alike aspects of brother and sister, it was the facial resemblance to Lisa that made Nathan realize the truth, at long last?

I found the quiet dignity of Ernestine to be impressive. I liked that woman.

Because all these events supposedly took place during The Summer of Monica, I think we can understand Roth's hyperventilaing about "righteous grandstanding, and the "ecstasy of sanctimony," whereas actually the American people din't really give a damn. Did you?

Lorrie

if I may say, I believe many more cared than had the courage to admit it. And yes, I am one of those.

Not because of THAT sexual escapade but because of the interminable, self-deluding, persistent denials.

I know we are about books here, so I will say no more.

Yep. I liked Ernestine, too Lorrie. One of the parallels Roth makes about this taking place during the summer of Monica (as Lorrie puts it) is that here's a guy - Coleman - who "had the system beat" and then all of a sudden it was over. "Blindsided by the terrifyingly provisional nature of everything." Or again, "ensnared by the history he hadn't quite counted on: the history that isn't yet history...the stranglehold of history that is one's own time." Coleman got caught up in the mood sweeping the country - this seems to be Roth's thesis. Do you agree? I see what he is saying but it's not a completely convincing argument. Though he argues it spectacularly, as usual.

---

Well. What about the solitary figure our on the ice. Ostensibly out there to be closer to God, but really a man who has opted out. A menacing figure still. And how about Roth turning his book inside out by talking about (as Z) writing it to Farley? I liked that device.

He ends with a "pure and peaceful" vision - so he says. An uneasy one to me. An unsettling one.


Charlie

My late husband and I did a lot of ice-fishing here in Minnesota and Wisconsin in past years, so the setting for the meeting of Nathan and Les Farley on that deserted frozen lake rings completely true to me. It's not difficult to imagine the sinister overtones of that conversation, and there's someting very ominous about the presence of that auger.

Their double-meaning conversation about fishing covers the fact that Nathan realizes Farley knows that he knows about the deaths of Coleman and Faunia. Isn't it about then that he realizes that his five years alone in his house on these mountains were over---that he'd have to go somewhere else to love.

Yes, Charlie, that last scene left me very uneasy also, in its way it is quite haunting.

Lorrie

Lorrie - was that an interesting Freudian slip - perhaps quite meaninggful - that Zuckerman would "have to go somewhere else to l[i]ove?"

Yeah, Charlie, actually it was a typo that I didn't catch until too late, but it sure looks like a Freudian slip, doesn't it?

Lorrrie

So Nathan had to suffer for the sins of Coleman.

Please on what page is that Freudian slip ?

I wouldn't want to ever overlook anythingin a book by Philip Roth, not when I have to return the libr. copy before the discussion is finished !!

Astonishingly, few readers respond to (or understand ??) anything written in a cynical vein or even ironically ...

Why is that, I wonder ...

But let me now freely admit please that some of Roth's more graphic sexual, detailed, specific elaborations are sometimes a bit much for this reader. Greetings to all readers.

What a beautiful place. Too early for ice fishing, unfortunately!

Thanks to Charlie for keeping this discussion up so marvelously (my hero).

Haven't read all the posts - fill me in on where you are, where you've been, final thoughts on this book.

Did you like the book?

How might this discussion have been better - more structure, more adherence to the book, less adherence, less analysis, more analysis, questions posted in heading, whole book vs. chapter by chapter approach - anything is fair game!

I want to make an overview comment now that I am finishing up this book- my only about "the author". I think of Roth as simply a smart man, who writes smart prose. Funny how he took these observations that many of us have and boldly put them not only in print, but in succinct print- the book peppered with phrases that turn one's thoughts to the profound.

Sarah- I always like those discussion questions even if we don't always adhere to them or as time goes on not really need them. Something about them often keeps me thinking thematically. I joined this discussion late, and really had not intended to read the book, but glad I did and thoroughly enjoyed each post. Now I'm off to Zadie Smith- and thanks Lorrie- it was your comments over at the preview of Smith that really intrigued me and got me to read Roth. And yes, I see a lot of reference to both books that will pepper that discussion as well.

Sarah, welcome back from beautiful Vermont! I imagine the fall foliage there is almost as pretty as what we're seeing here in Minnesota! Not one of my favorite times of the year---I've always thought there was something poignant about Autumn. An ending, of sorts, I guess. Anyway, I wanted to say a few things.

Sarah: I can’t remember when I enjoyed reading and discussing a book so much. I like the idea of commenting as we read, and nobody kept jumping ahead! Great!

From the really perceptive posts made by everyone who joined in I was able to see Roth’s characters in different lights, and several people pointed out clues to Coleman’s “secret” that I would have missed otherwise.

Charlie your remarks were brilliant, and the rest of you left me in “awr,” as Ginny says. Betty, I especially liked the comment you made about not denigrating those of us whose remarks might seem not so provocative. ( I think that was in this discussion) YiLin, I’m so glad you came in, later or not, and Hairy, I always look for what you have to say, even in other discussions. And Traude and Dansker, you always add much to any discusssion!

******************************************************************** I liked the book very much, even though I didn’t think I would. Perhaps not as much as “Pastoral,” of the three, but what a gifted writer this man is! At first I didn’t think I cared much for Philip Roth’s writing, mostly for reasons Traude has already mentioned, but not any more.

Joan G, you were so right. The book was great! You mentioned early on how much we’d like it

Lorrie.

Sarah, I thought your leadership was terrific. You weren't overbearing, but your questions were very well put...so well done I couldn't even think of an answer to them!!

Charlie, Traude, YiLi, Betty - Yipes, you guys is good! I hardly knew how to talk after reading your posts.

Super, Folks!

Roth? I don't know anything deep and probing to say...just that YiLi's words struck home. She said, "Funny how he took these observations that many of us have and boldly put them not only in print, but in succinct print- the book peppered with phrases that turn one's thoughts to the profound."

I liked that!

The book was ok. It strikes me as heavy and dark and pessimistic or fatalistic in tone.

The discussion was interesting and stimulating.

'Nuff said. Linda

It is hard to see this all come to an end ... but I believe we are all much the richer for having read and discussed this book.

I also think the chapter-by-chapter approach was not only appropriate but the ONLY approach to take !

As I have said before, I had absolutely no idea something as wonderful as this group exists ! Thank you for allowing me to be part of it. Traude

Linda, Yili, Traude, Charlie, Lorrie, Ginny, Betty, Dansker, Fran, Fairwinds, Ed etc. - what a wonderful group you've been. I truly loved this discussion from beginning to end. You made this book come alive for me.

While I agree with Linda that the book was not great - and with Lorrie that American Pastoral was better - this discussion really sang! It was so great to have some new people - Traude, Linda - and wonderful friends from other discussions as well.

Final thoughts on the book:

The story of a black man passing as a Jew was thought provoking, but didn't ring true somehow. I guess I still don't understand Coleman's motivation for making this choice.

The concept of the human stain was also fascinating, and yet sad, since Roth thinks the "stain" exists regardless of whatever effort we make in our lives to erase it.

I still think Roth was trying to tell us something about that stain by using references from the natural world - the crow, the ice fishing pond, the use of the name Faunia which sounded a lot like Fauna. While I think most of his references to the human stain were more figurative, it seemed he was also commenting about man's effects on the environment. This is something Roth rarely does, and it intrigued me.

Loose ends:

Still don't get Coleman's relationship with his kids.

Can someone comment on the final scene at the ice fishing hole?

What was Roth trying to say about women with the Delphine Roux character? That those who appear strong and act stridently are actually weaklings?

Did you feel that the book became clearer as it went on? I had the impression early on that everything would make sense once we finished the book - and to me, it did not!

This discussion was good for me. Probably because of the flexible and high level of discussion, I felt really (I mean really) heard---therefore, I was so much more open to other perspectives. Given that it was Roth and his work that was under consideration, that's good!!!

Roth remains an enigma. As a feminist psychologist, I am floored again and again with his insight, his depth of knowing the human (mostly male) condition----why, then, why, why does he not let his natural ability to see, see women? My bias is that really smart people with open eyes see things clearly---so, his brilliant prose (as someone wrote) throws me off. Astigmatism? Nearsightedness? His personal history? Something is getting in his way. Too bad. I'd LOVE it if someone with his gift of expression lent a hand to the hard work of "writing women," as Carolyn Heilbrun calls it.

Forgot something . . . . I found that Ernestine was a lovely person, but that at some point she started on a diatribe that sounded like Roth venting more than a sister remarking on her dead brother's life. Roth clearly does not like what he perceives to be going on on today's college campuses, be it "political correctness" or a lack of appreciation for the intellectual.

This part of the book sounds dated - like something written during the early 90s or even late 80s. It also feels a lot like - I think it was the ending of Poisonwood Bible, which we read months back. There was a point in that book where you could hear Kingsolver making a speech. That's what happened here.

As Charlie says in the discussion of White Teeth - endings are important. Does this ending satisfy? (Both the meeting up with Ernestine and the ice fishing encounter between Nathan and Farley?)

Some questions may be unanswerable, I fear.

Coleman's relationship with his kids was based on his own insecurity. Perhaps the only doubts he EVER allowed himself to feel.

He knew that he should have provided a background, especially for Mark, who was so anxious to know for the sake of his own identity. To deny the children that was unconsciounable in the extreme.

In fact, Coleman cheated his children out of their genetic inheritance. The reader asks with considerable annoyance : did this man really ever, ever, ever, think of anyone but himself ?

The final scene is one of dread, of fear, surely justified.

It points to the very real, undeniable, undisputed presence of often personified evil in our lives. Nathan did the only thing possible, he walked away - at least physically unscathed.

And yes, Roth packed an awful lot of issues into this narrative (deliberately, I am sure), some clearly unsolved - even unsolvable for the time being -of course there are loose ends.

While one marvels at his stupendous knowledge concerning all KINDS of subjects, the reader may be forgiven to feel at times as though one were listening to a mini-lecture (on the civil rights struggle, e.g. with Ernestine), all highly commendable, who else has that courage in contempoorary literature, after all ??

The character of Delphine Roux is surely the least endearing.

The author endowed her with an inherent and incurable meanness that inspires nothing but loathing. Was she stereotypical in that sense ? I would not rule it out.

That brings me to your question, Betty. I am not sure Roth understands women. (Think of his own tortured relationship with the actress Claire Bloom. Both have committed their respective memories to paper ...)

Does any man understand a woman ? And want to ? Can he ?

The purely and exclusively sexual/erotic aspects will always be an overriding - if not THE ONLY measuring standard - for men and influence their automatic reaction to any woman.

The realization that women are actually (even !!!) CAPABLE oF THINKING, thinking independently, cogently for goodness' sake !!!, , still eludes a majority of men, and no wonder. Just look at the picture presented in media day in and day out.

P.S. If there are typos in this missive, kindly ignore them.

Traude

Sarah, betty, Traude, Hairy, any of you learned ladies, we need your help over in the Anniversary Celebration! If you could take a moment or two to enter our Quotations contest #2, (in the heading) it would be most appreciated. So far we only have three entries, and they won't let me out of the basement unless I receive at least ten. Don't let the questions throw you--they're so difficult that everybody's guessing, so your guess is as good as anybody's and you might win a prize!!


Welcome 4th Anniversary

The deadline is midnight tonight, Oct. 2!

Lorrie

Lorrie,

you know I need more help than that ...

WHERE exactly do I click ? Please, PLEASE help me along ! Thank you.

Traude

Click on the Welcome 4th Anniversary...

May I say it now, belatedly ? I found mention of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (twice, I think) highly appropriate and gratifying.

Traude

Saw a man in his forties, short haired, barefooted, sitting outside of a furniture store where I intended to shop. He was shouting, " They're coming. Here comes another one." Over and over, at the top of his lungs. His eyes were fixed on the distance. No one was there. I thought of Les Farley and felt a chill.

Roth's exploration of identity and its ramifications hangs with me. We try to achieve a specific identity. Others see us quite differently. Our moment in history influences us beyond our control. Our "stain" interferes with our rational control. All these facets of who we are make knowing anyone, including ourselves, difficult, if not impossible.

Dansker

If there ever was an Eden in winter, Roth presents us with it. However, Lester is oblivious to it. He sits on a bucket and stares down at the hole in the ice, reliving the hideous scenes of war that he's experienced. As he says warning Nathan, "It's real dark down there".

On the other hand, Nathan has pressed the limits of his author's curiousity. This is his venture into crossing the line of rational behavior. He's bating Lester to get a confession, to ascertain the truth of his theory concerning Coleman's and Faunia's death. Yet, caution prevails when he sees the truth in Lester's eyes. Nathan retreats to safety, yet knows the stain persists everywhere.

Traude has won the 4th Anniversary Contest #2 in Books and Literature. This was a difficult contest, and I am so proud of her. Traude is one of the most erudite and literate people I have ever known. She also is a fine writer and a member of the Writers Exchange WREX writers group here in SeniorNet Online.

Congratulations, Traude!!!

Of course, I will read "The Human Stain," but was Philip Roth's daughter murdered in New York about 10 years ago, or am I confused with another author?

I agree that Delphine was the least likable character, but going one layer deeper she really was sort of complicated- and that is the art of a gifted writer to engage us in complicated characters. Can't remember the pages where she really got into who she was and almost why. As I read your posts though, especially those of you familiar with Roth, I fear that perhaps Delphine is in fact his picture of academic (?smart) women. I think often in the book whether his soapbox or just plain showing us too much author in the story is the most significant flaw in the book.

After awhile Ernestine's "speech" did not seem to fit the picture of this woman, but I liked the essence of her.

thank you all for this engaging discussion, I am off to "home" for a couple weeks and unless I can sign on at the library will not be around the internet- I am looking forward to talking with you all on Zadie's page and hope you have decided to read Madame Mao.

WELCOME, JEAN!! It's nice to see you posting in here, even though we're just now finishing up the discussion of this wonderful book. We've got several new ones coming up for discussion, as you can see from the line-up on our main Books and Literature page.

BOOKS & LITERATURE

I'm not sure it was Philip Roth's daughter who was murdered. Are you sure you're not thinking of Dominick Dunne? Anyway, it's good to see your name, and I certainly hope to see you posting somewhere in our folder! You'll love it here.

Lorrie

Thank you all for your brilliant contributions.

Dansker - your post says it all: "it's real dark down there." Down there inside every person there is a stain that cannot be erased. It's a depressing last thought, but I think this is what this book was all about.

I ran across this article tonight and thought it might be of some interest to us.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001022mag-wwln.html

Phillip Roth is hard to take if you are an impatient reader. He is by far my idea of SENSATIONAL. The Human Stain was excellent, but it takes time (as all his books do)to find the plot!

Welcome, Waltruby, to our Books & Literature sections, we are delighted to see you here, and wish you had been on hand for this reading, please don't miss out on the next one, I agree with you, although in this one it seemed Roth took a bit longer than heretofore, how do you think this book of his compared to some of his other ones?

ginny

Here is another article on the complete trilogy of Roth's with The Human Stain being the last.

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

Linda

Thank you, Linda, we appreciate that very much!

ginny