The Human Stain.(Review)

The Human Stain, by Philip Roth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 361 pp., $26.00 hardbound.

Understandably enough Academic Questions does not, as a rule, review works of fiction. The Human Stain however is the kind of novel that has much to say to the readers of this journal. It exemplifies art imitating life, illustrating as it does the blight of political correctness (PC)--the key dramatic ingredient of the story. Philip Roth has an excellent grasp of what has been going on in our colleges over the past three decades, a knowledge acquired presumably in part during the years when he taught comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania and literature at Hunter College in New York. He knows intimately the terminology, the cliches, the styles of solicitude, the verbiage of the prevailing politically correct conventional wisdom. The fictional "Athena College" can be readily substituted for many others personally known to the readers of this journal.

This novel is a powerful work of fiction, both in its imaginative and realistic aspects, that grasps certain defining characteristics of our times. In any work of fiction the artistic-imaginary as distinct from the sociological-social historical dimension requires separate consideration. The latter, in these pages, will be given more attention. But it should be made clear at the outset that this is a fine novel, quite apart from its focus on matters that weigh heavily on the minds of the readers of Academic Questions.

It is in itself significant that Philip Roth, veteran chronicler of the afflictions of contemporary American (and personal) life turned his attention to the two major components of PC--the preoccupation with racism and sexism--and found them a dramatic enough point of departure for a story that is by no means limited to these current concerns. (Another recent novel of his, American Pastoral, too dealt with political issues associated with the 1960s and could be read as a cautionary tale of the fruits of idealistic, if mindless, political violence.)

Future readers of another era may wonder how much of this novel is pure fiction, a product of the fertile imagination of its author or one that was inspired by actual events, rooted in social realities? Could it really happen in the 1990s that a professor of classics (Coleman Silk) in a small New England college would be harassed, hounded, and denigrated as a racist for referring to two students who never showed up in his class as "spooks," and who were, unbeknownst to him, black? Could this have led to the automatic, reflexive attribution of racism and the attendant demands for apologies, penalties and humiliations? This is how it began:

 
   He was astonished to be called by his successor, the new dean of faculty, 
   to address the charge of racism brought against him by the two missing 
   students, who turned out to be black, and who, though absent, quickly 
   learned of the locution in which he'd publicly raised the question of their 
   absence. Coleman told the dean: "These two students had not attended a 
   single class. That's all I knew about them. I was using the word in its 
   customary and primary meaning: `spook' as a specter or ghost. I had no idea 
   what color these students might be. I had known perhaps fifty years ago but 
   had totally forgotten that `spooks' is an invidious term sometimes applied 
   to blacks ... The issue, the only issue, is the non-attendance of these 
   students and their flagrant and inexcusable neglect of work. What's galling 
   is that the charge is not just false--it is spectacularly false (6-7). 

The dean and the rest of the college community were not convinced. (As we all know the non-attendance of students is hardly a matter to exercise administrators.)