Practical decisions

Philip Roth’s The Human Stain asks us to think practically about secrets. In order to move up in life without the handicap of racism, light-skinned Coleman Silk tells no one that he is black. Roth does not portray a man tormented and torn, or lost and broken. Silk’s family life is sufficient and his professorial life brilliantly successful. We turn the pages shocked and saddened by the society that exacts such a price for dark complexion - and yet we cannot but admire Silk’s self-fashioning. Even his wife didn’t know. In the final reckoning, whatever his purpose or motives, he stubbornly chose his course.