exploiting her. Delphine Roux is a hyper-educated French intellectual, but her
life is entirely unfulfilling outside of her position in the college. Moreover, the
book offers alternatives to formal education through the characters of Faunia
and Lester Farley. Lester begins to understand himself through experience and
emotional education, while Faunia’s tragic life experiences help her to deliver
some of the most powerful passages in the novel. Even Nathan Zuckerman, a
highly educated novelist, relies on his experience and imagination for knowl-
edge of Coleman. In what ways is formal education valued in the novel, and
how do the characters’ actions also speak to the importance of less-formal
education, the education that comes from life experience? See James Wood’s
essay review for a thoughtful approach to this topic.RESOURCES
Bibliography
Derek Parker Royal, “Philip Roth: A Bibliography and Research Guide” http://
rothsociety.org/resources.htm [accessed 16 December 2009].
A full secondary bibliography of works about Roth’s novels. It is up-to-date and
currently lists more than forty articles about The Human Stain.
Criticism
Geoffrey W. Bakewell, “Philip Roth’s Oedipal Stain,” Classical and Modern Lit-
erature, 24 (Fall 2004): 29–46.
Discusses the relationship between The Human Stain and Sophocles’ Oedipus
cycle.
D. A. Boxwell, “Kulturkampf, Now and Then,” War, Literature, and the Arts:
An International Journal of the Humanities, 12 (Spring–Summer 2000):
122–136.
Treats culture conflict in The Human Strain.
Jennifer Glaser, “The Jew in the Canon: Reading Race and Literary History in
Philip Roth’s The Human Stain,” PMLA, 123 (October 2008): 1465–1478.
A discussion of critical-race theory with regard to Jewish writers, using The
Human Stain as an example.
Bonnie Lyons, “Philip Roth’s American Tragedies,” in Turning up the Flame:
Philip Roth’s Later Novels, edited by Jay L. Halio and Ben Siegel (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2005): 125–130.
Argues that Coleman Silk is a man whose tragic nature comes from trying to
escape his cultural identity as an African American. Lyons argues also that this is
a truly American tragedy because the setting for this novel displays the Puritan-
ism surrounding Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
Timothy L. Parrish, “Becoming Black: Zuckerman’s Bifurcating Self in The
Human Stain,” in Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, edited
by Derek Parker Royal (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005), pp. 209–223.