Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

This book finally comes alive at page 225 when it gives up following the main character and puts the supporting cast front and center. Unfortunately, that’s too late to save this work.

It’s not hard to see that Philip Roth sure can write. But the first section gets so tediously one-noted so quickly. Once I put it down, I just did not want to pick it back up again.

The Human Stain is one of those book-within-a-book works. Philip Roth writes Nathan Zuckerman, who is the fictional narrator/writer of The Human Stain. In a way, this does make the structure more understandable and tedium more interesting, but it doesn’t save the reading experience.

The main character is Coleman Silk. At the beginning of the novel, we find out that he is controversially fired from his deanship of Athena College. The rancor Silk feels goes beyond just being wronged. He has a lifelong secret that feeds ironically into his eventual downfall. Frankly, the secret is not that hard to figure out well before the actual reveal.

Then, except for a wonderful section where we learn about Coleman Silk’s background, we hear him complain and whine and rant. On and on.

He gets to be quite extreme and irrational about it all, but because all of this is experienced through Zuckerman, the writer who set out to write a book defending and explaining his friend Silk’s experience, we know that the ceaseless pounding of these injustices is really Zuckerman’s.

What was Silk’s real experience? We can’t know for sure.

Ah, the complexities of narrative voice.

In the end, I’m left questioning Zuckerman’s sanity, because if what we hold in our hands is the final product, the writer is a bit unhinged. The stories and first-person point of view storytelling get very compelling and are easily taken for truth, but we still know that all Zuckerman puts down is conjecture and imaginings. He wasn’t there for the scenes he laid out. He doesn’t know the other players’ thoughts exactly.

I don’t know if this is what Roth, the real writer, had in mind. That what starts out as Nathan Zuckerman‘s examination of Coleman Silk‘s obsession with the Athena College outrage becomes our examination of Nathan Zuckerman’s obsession instead.

And that obsession made Zuckerman/Roth put out a book that is more messy passion than fulfilling reading. Somehow, I just don’t think that was Roth’s goal.

1% Well Read Challenge: four down, nine to go.
1001 Books To Read Before You Die list: 86 down.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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This is a book filled with one-page (or less) nuggets of usefulness. Rather than being a straight-up business book, You, Inc. offers plenty of life lessons, which are also going to be the points leading to a successful business life.

On one hand, the short tid-bit format makes reading this book extremely easy and fast. On the other hand, this is really unfortunate because many of their points bear internalization and deep consideration.

I got this book from the library, but if it were mine, I’d probably have sticky notes all through it. It would work so well as a self-improvement tool. Every morning, open up to a random page and make that entry your goal for the day.

Now that I’ve read two of the Beckwiths’ books, Selling the Invisible being the other one, I find myself very impressed and looking forward to the remaining ones.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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Rubyfruit Jungle has the reputation of being a ground-breaking popular work that features a lesbian protagonist.

While I really did enjoy the novel, I didn’t feel that it was especially focused on the theme of growing up lesbian. Instead, I feel that the work deals more with the difficulties faced by fiercely independent women who reject social expectations for whatever reasons.

I know that my interpretation probably has to do with the times I live in and how public the discourse about homosexuality has been for years. But really, the main character just does not seem that controversial to me.

Molly Bolt grows up in rural America. In this part of the book, she reminds me a lot of Scout Finch. She’s just a little too smart for her own good.

Spoilers below.

As she gets older, she treats sex and her sexuality with serene matter-of-factness. But we all know that in America, she’s going to be in the small minority on that front.

She questions the need to get married and have a family. She wants to learn, improve herself, and do her own things.

This, I believe, is what brings about the dramatic moments in the book. Of course her relationships are going to be challenged and censored, but if she does everything she does with men rather than with women, I believe she still would have been met with (although perhaps not to the same extent) rejection and disapproval.

She dares to live single, have non-committed sexual partners, be intellectually hungry and remain non-apologetic about it all.

I think that is what society finds so dangerous about Molly Bolt.

What’s In A Name Challenge: three down, three to go.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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