Indelible

What such a posture offers is a way for Roth to enlarge The Human Stain to the level of myth. If there is no knowing, after all, then there is only conjecture, versions of the truth that we accept or disregard in keeping with our beliefs. The notion is enhanced by Zuckerman’s narration, which adds a further conditional layer to the events he describes; his outsider status means that much of what he tells us must, of necessity, come from his imagination, as he tries to piece together the details of Silk’s life. At times this can backfire; Zuckerman’s riffs on Silk’s children, for instance, are mostly pat and two-dimensional, while his portrayal of Delphine Roux, the feminist professor who becomes Silk’s most outspoken adversary, never takes shape beneath Zuckerman’s judgment as anything other than a stereotype of political correctness run amok. Such flaws, however, end up working to Roth’s advantage, by illuminating the biases that mark Zuckerman (or is it Roth?) as much as anyone in the book. “For better or worse,” the character tells us, in what may be the novel’s truest moment, “I can only do what everyone does who thinks that they know. I imagine. I am forced to imagine. It happens to be what I do for a living. It is my job. It’s now all I do.”

Ultimately, Zuckerman’s admission stands as a powerful coda not only for Silk or the novel he anchors, but for our whole voyeuristic culture, which, Roth suggests, has let itself be consumed by “America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony.” This is what provoked the McCarthy witch-hunts and, in a different way, the political upheavals of the 1960s, as well as the Clinton impeachment; and it is the through line that joins The Human Stain to American Pastoral and I Married a Communist. Equally significant, though, is Roth’s understanding of just how easily public sentiment can inform private crises, turning our most personal dramas into passion plays. “The truth about us is endless,” he declares. “As are the lies.”