Overview:
The Human Stain completes Philip Roth's thematic American trilogy, a meditation on the historical forces in the latter half of the twentieth century that have destroyed many innocent lives. In this trilogy, Roth takes devastating aim at the "American dream" and its empty promises of prosperity, freedom and everlasting happiness.
The trilogy began with American Pastoral, which some believe to be the high point in Roth's career. American Pastoral explored the effects of late-sixties radicalism on the idyllic life of Swede Levov and his family. I Married a Communist, the second book of the trilogy, was somewhat of a disappointment after the near-perfect American Pastoral, but it was still an engrossing story about the McCarthy era, a portrait of a country in which paranoia had displaced reason, allowing rumor and innuendo to run rampant and ruin lives.
The Human Stain closes the trilogy and brings us to the year 1998. The United States is awash in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and citizens feel the "ecstasy of sanctimony;" they are ready to accuse, blame and punish a very good president for what amounts to nothing more than the sexual peccadilloes almost every person becomes involved in at some time during his life.
On its surface, The Human Stain condemns the political correctness of McCarthyism that effectively turns college campuses away from creative thought and toward middle-aged, white, male oppression at any cost. Does this make The Human Stain a campus satire? Yes, but it is so much more and those who think it is not are simply missing the book's deepest level. It is, at its heart, a sad and poignant statement on the very essence of human nature, a statement that, in Roth's talented hands, becomes utterly convincing. It reminds us of our very unpraiseworthy proclivity to condemn, sully and even find some secret and voluptuous joy in ruining the name of others and delivering their lives into the hands of misery. The real truth, Roth tells us, is both "endless" and unknowable, no matter how much we may wish to label it with our petty accusations. Most of us, however, find this unknowability unacceptable, and so, we leave our own unmistakable "human stain" in our wake.
ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Sincerelyours
And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!
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