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The Human Stain ::
Back in 1998, it seemed that this country was doing incredibly well. So much so that it needed a crisis just for all of us to feel normal again. That crisis came in the form of a sex scandal that involved the American President and a 21-year-old intern, and the resulting story served as an effective backdrop for The Human Stain. This novel tells the story of Coleman Silk, a 71-year-old former college dean turned Classics professor who resigns his position while embroiled in a battle in which he was branded a racist. Shortly after that he watches his wife die, and he blames the school for her fate. Then he gets involved in a romantic relationship with a 34-year-old custodial worker employed by the college from which he was exiled.
News of this affair gets around the school and Silk is summarily dehumanized for his actions. He is made to be a racist, a power monger, a misogynist. He is reinvented as a villain that, as his real life is revealed throughout the novel, he so clearly is not. By no means is he innocent, but he is not the embodiment of evil that he is made out to be. From this discrepancy comes the idea of the ìhuman stain,î for which the book was titled. The lies we tell, the secrets we keep mark all of our lives. They are the stains we leave. They are the things that tie us together and, ironically enough, are also the first characteristics that are sought out and misinterpreted and sometimes even made up when people are looking for a scapegoat. Within the novel, people found a scapegoat in Coleman Silk, and he suffered more for their false claims then he did for his real, private transgressions. As the novel progressed and I watched his life degenerate, I was saddened by how real and familiar his plight seemed to be.
Odds Off ::
I remember when I first saw Slackers, how empty and weird I felt at the end of the movie. It was that same nasty feeling that made me want to see it again and again, the two-dimensional creepiness of all these intersecting characters mesmerising me into wanting to press rewind, play, rewind, play on my VCR. But the graphic novel Odds Off, though it had a similar narrative style, had nearly the exact opposite effect: I found I wanted to read the stories of these bizarre, fantasical characters because they had some definite authenticity to them. In these times, when writers seem to be more interested in out-snobbing their friends with cleverness and irony, I can truly appreciate Madden’s fully sincere writing.
Selected Early Poems ::
I can’t help but feel a bit pretentious engaging readers of this site in a discussion about poetry, so I’ll spare you all that and only insist that you go to your library and check out the poem “Butcher Shop.”
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