More great language from Philip Roth, in “The Human Stain”:

[T]hat is the test too, to give the brutality of the repudiation its real, unpardonable human meaning, to confront with all the realism and clarity possible the moment when your fate intersects with something enormous. This is his. If, in the service of honing himself, he is out to do the hardest thing imaginable, this is it [...]. This takes him right to the heart of the matter. This is the major act of his life, and vividly, consciously, he feels its immensity.

Am I loving The Human Stain? Absolutely. It’s speaking to me. Consider this gem:

[...]a scene of pathos and hypnosis and sexual subjugation in which everything the woman does [...], his greedy fascination appropriates; a scene in which a man taken over by a force so long surpressed in him that it had all but been extinguished revealed, before my eyes, the resurgence of its stupefying power.

Or this:

To Primus, it seemed almost as though Coleman Silk had not been unfairly diminished enough, as though, with a doomed man’s cunning obtuseness, like someone who falls foul of a god, he was in crazy pursuit of a final, malicious, degrading assault, an ultimate injustice that would validate his aggrievement forever.

Or this:

[h]e wanted nothing to do with them, fearful that should he stop to chat, even idly, he’d be incapable of concealing his pain or concealing himself concealing his pain – unable to prevent himself from standing there seething or, worse, from coming apart [...]

I’m loving this novel.

Just started reading Philip Roth’s famous novel The Human Stain and am already enchanted by the language he uses, and the direct, true way that he describes the human condition. Take for example, this paragraph:

There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It’s more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it. Once you’re in its grip, it’s as though it will have to kill you for you to be free of it. Its raw realism is like nothing else.

That last sentence could describe the whole book thus far.

I’m only a quarter of the way through but just had to share my early love for this novel. Roth uses such evocative phrases – “the contamination of desire” is wonderful – that I will be sure to read his other novels when finished with The Human Stain.