The Human Stain
Language: English
Published by Vintage, 2001
Series: Book 3 of 3 - American Trilogy
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: AwesomeBooks, Wallingford, United KingdomAwesomeBooks
AbeBooks seller since November 28, 2006
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 75.00
Quantity: 2 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
The Human Stain This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. .
Seller Inventory # 7719-0099422131
- Title
- The Human Stain
- Author
- Philip Roth
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Publication year
- 2001
- Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0099422131
- ISBN 13
- 9780099422136
- Series
- Book 3 of 3: American Trilogy
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
But shocking, intensely dramatised events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication", and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble", and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado", Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.
In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"
Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
AwesomeBooks
Wallingford, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since November 28, 2006
Shipping rates from United Kingdom to U.S.A.
| Item | 14 to 28 business days | 14 to 28 business days |
|---|---|---|
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Started in an unfortunate mother's basement in 2004 with books that a student layabout no longer needed, AwesomeBooks now stocks over 2 million titles which are ready to be sent to your door within 24hours of ordering. Our heritage is in supplying great quality used books. We have over 1.8 million books in our distribution centre ready to be shipped to you at any time. We also sell new books and are increasing our range of titles every day.
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