Humanity's filth

Author: Philip Roth
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: Philip Roth is one of the most outstanding, most intellectually stimulating, and most popular writers of contemporary America. Born in 1933, he has spent nearly four decades in the literary world, authoring twenty masterful novels. Some believe that the literary era of contemporary America belongs to Roth, much like Hemingway for the 1920s and Faulkner for the 1930s. In his twilight years, Roth completed the last volume of his American Trilogy: The Human Stain. The other two books are American Pastoral (1997) and Marriage Story (1998). The Human Stain differs from the first two in its narrative approach, which instead places characters in a series of moral and political contexts horizontally—through this, we can glimpse the cultural background of contemporary America. However, Roth does not linger in the shallow waters of morality and politics; instead, he directs his exploration of characters' fates toward the deeper seabed of existence. The story takes place in 1998, with its protagonist, Coleman, being a black professor who has lived a nearly illustrious life in American society under a pseudonym as a Jew, only to be falsely accused of racism in an accidental event during his later years. Subsequently, he begins an affair with a young female cleaning worker, and the two die in a deliberate car accident together. The novel unfolds through a series of life reviews, with other characters joining in along the way, as their individual secrets and stains gradually surface.