| Review: Philip Roth, The Human Stain |
| There was a time in my life when I was passionate
about Philip Roth’s work. Portnoy’s
Complaint, The Professor of Desire, The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound,
The Great American Novel, My Life as a Man, Goodbye Columbus.
I’ve read them all, and in many instances hated reaching the
final page. I found his writing intelligent, brave, fresh. He took
risks. His characters sprang off the page. There was humor, wit, irony,
satire, his own unique take on the world. I looked forward to reading The Human Stain but came away from it disappointed. I actually read it twice, because after reading it the first time and letting several months go by, I began to doubt myself. Maybe it was me. Maybe I’ve lost too many little gray cells. Maybe I didn’t understand, didn’t get it. Maybe I was in the wrong mood, distracted. After all, Roth is a writer you pay attention to. His intelligence demands that. And things had been a little hectic around here. So I read it again. And I made sure I paid attention. I read it with the radio off, the kids locked outside, the dog in the basement. And long about page 57, I began to remember why I’d felt sorrowful after the first reading. I started skimming, as I’d done the first time. I tried not to. I made myself go back and read every word when the skimming started. But it was no good. The thing I like about good literature is how it engages you. If you have to put it down to answer the door or go to the dentist or pick up the kids, you continue to think about it. Not constantly, but it has enough volume to spill over into the rest of your life. In The Human Stain Roth seems to be making an effort to disengage you. He tells and he tells and he tells. His omniscient narrator is essentially bodyless, telling us about himself, telling us he is a real human being with a past and a present, but he’s used primarily as a device, and it’s impossible to experience him in a truly organic way. Roth leaves no room for discovery here, that thing that emerges as you take a book in and then digest it. I felt left out of the process, as though Roth was writing the book only for himself, to showcase his insight, his relationship to the state of the world. THE MIND OF PHILIP ROTH. Of course the writing is impeccable. The characters you’re told about stay in your head as if they were the people on the corner who you catch sight of on a regular basis. There are sudden little bursts of wit, sarcasm, irony that catch you unawares, make you smile. The story has an unusual shape with points jutting out here and there which come more or less into a tidy package by the end. It has density, weight, interest. And I especially like the way he flat out tells you what will happen to these people only a quarter of the way through the book. This is no mystery, where you wait until the end. This is a study of the human condition, and what happens is far less important than how and why. The Human Stain is not a waste of time, just too much of a good thing.
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